Cloud-Bearing Mountain is a Christian spiritual retreat center.
We provide a structured and quiet environment for the practice of contemplative prayer (Christian meditation). Silent directed residential retreats form the heart of our programming. We also offer other retreat programs, classes, and spiritual direction. Rooted in the fullness of the ancient Orthodox Catholic faith, our programs are open to all, regardless of ecclesial background.
No matter what program you attend, as a retreat guest and program participant at Cloud-Bearing Mountain Christian Retreat Center you can expect to spend time every day in formal silent prayer, singing the Daily Office, and helping with the daily chores on the farmstead. You may also choose to meet privately for individual spiritual direction.
Our name takes its inspiration chiefly from Exodus 24:18, which describes Moses’s ascent up the Holy Mountain into the cloud of the Shekinah Glory, the presence of God. This theme is taken up in the New Testament in the passages dealing with the Transfiguration of Jesus on Mount Tabor and the Ascension, for two examples.
These texts, and others like them, have consistently been read by the great spiritual wardens of the Church in terms of encounter with God, who is ultimately dark to the conceptual mind (the cloud) but luminous to the heart or nous. Christian spiritual classics such as Dionysius the Areopagite’s “The Mystical Theology”, Gregory of Nyssa’s “The Life of Moses”, Maximus the Confessor’s “Difficulty 10″, and the 14th century anonymous English work “The Cloud of Unknowing” all follow in this tradition, as do numerous other writings through the age of the Church and up to the present day.
In the practice of contemplative prayer, or hesychia (silence, stillness), we calm the disorderly blather of discursive thought, to discover underneath the tender, faithful, longing love that is buried within each of us. Moving beyond conceptual ideas about God and being, we begin to encounter the transfiguring reality of the divine life.
Our Facility
Guests arrive at Cloud-Bearing Mountain Christian Retreat Center after a sustained drive through rural Vermont or New York’s Adirondack Mountains. Our 206 acres of forest and pastureland are situated on a quiet road and backed by tens of thousands of acres of wilderness preserve. Guests stay in simple but comfortable rooms while with us. Unless we are unusually full, it is likely that each guest will have a private room. Facilities are shared. With a maximum capacity of six, retreat participants are never lost in a crowd. A guest can always find a quiet nook for study and prayer, someone to talk to, or a winding path through wooded hills.
Our Clergy
Fr. James Krueger, founder of Cloud-Bearing Mountain Christian Retreat and Training Center, holds a B.A. in the Humanities with a minor in Writing and Literature, an M.A. in Gerontology and Long-Term Care Management, an M.A. in Theological Studies with a focus in Ascetical Theology and Spiritual Direction, and a certificate in Eastern Orthodox Theology through the three-year Saint Stephen’s Program of the Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese.
Prior to ordination, Fr. Krueger served ten years as Executive Director of a grassroots community center in the rural Catskill Mountains. He has also served as Priest-in-Charge at a rural Anglo-Catholic parish, also in the Catskills. Now a priest in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia’s (ROCOR) Western Orthodox Diocese, immediately under the pastoral guidance of His Eminence Metropolitan Nicholas, Krueger is priest of Saint Herman of Alaska Orthodox Church, which meets at Cloud-Bearing Mountain Christian Retreat Center in Moriah, New York.
Krueger’s inspiration for Cloud-Bearing Mountain Christian Retreat Center grows out of his own struggle to find authentic personal spiritual transformation and healing. As a youth, he lived in a Zen monastery, where he studied for over seven years, but left his training to re-embrace his native Christian faith. After decades of study and practice, he founded Cloud-Bearing Mountain in order to provide a place where others might also train in the Christian spiritual life with a focus on the ordinary lay person. At the heart of this training is the practice of contemplative prayer or hesychia (watchfulness, silence, stillness) as it fits within the rich tradition of the Orthodox Church.
Cloud-Bearing Mountain Christian Retreat Center’s programs are intended for regular people who have to navigate the daily concerns of home, family, work, and life in this world. As a married priest with a secular job, Father Krueger understands the challenges that such a life presents, while affirming that all Christians are called into an experience of deep prayer; into union with God the Father through Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit.