Welcome to Marymount Studio
More than a place to stay, Marymount is a place to be received.
Marymount offers carefully prepared, personally guided retreats where beauty, spiritual direction, contemplative practice, and attentive hospitality create space to encounter the welcoming love of God.
What Is Marymount Studio?
Tucked into a neighborhood garden, Marymount is a small retreat house devoted to the generous and attentive hospitality of God.
Unlike retreat houses that offer solitude through distance, Marymount offers a different kind of quiet: a place to withdraw from the demands of ordinary life without being removed from its beauty, rhythms, and relationships. Here, solitude and communion belong together.
Guests are welcomed into a thoughtfully prepared space where they are free to rest, pray, read, wander, create, or simply be. There is no prescribed experience or expectation of productivity. Some come carrying grief, exhaustion, or difficult questions. Others arrive longing for renewed imagination, clarity, or a little room to hear themselves think. All are invited to receive the gift of being cared for.
For those who desire it, Marymount also offers the companionship of spiritual direction, creative practices for prayer and reflection, and opportunities to participate in the sacramental life of the Church. Silence is honored here, but so is the human need for someone to listen, to pray alongside us, and to bear witness to the mystery of God at work in our lives.
Named in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary, whose willing welcome made room for the life of Christ, Marymount is shaped by a deeply Marian imagination: that receiving is itself a holy act, that love makes room for life to grow, and that the hidden and ordinary places of our lives are often where God is most tenderly at work.
We believe that beauty is not an ornament to healing, but one of the ways we become receptive to it. That rest is not something we must earn. That creativity can give expression to what words alone cannot carry. And that attentive, unhurried presence can become a small but sturdy encounter with the love of God.
Above all, Marymount exists for those who have spent themselves in service to others, offering a place where they may, for a little while, be the ones who are received.
Before we are useful, capable, or needed, we are beloved.
Marymount exists to make room for that remembering.
Every Marymount retreat is thoughtfully prepared for each guest. Rather than offering lodging alone, each retreat includes spiritual direction, personalized retreat planning, creative practices, and attentive pastoral hospitality in a contemplative setting.
Preparing for Your Stay
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Marymount is sustained by the generosity of those who believe weary people deserve places of beauty, prayer, and rest. We never want finances to become an obstacle to receiving this gift.
Guests are invited to make a suggested contribution toward the cost of their retreat as they are able. Those who can give more help make it possible to welcome those who cannot.
The actual cost of offering a retreat at Marymount is approximately $295 per day.
If you are able, we invite you to contribute toward these costs.
If that amount would prevent you from coming, please tell us. Through the generosity of our donors, we are committed to welcoming every guest we reasonably can, regardless of financial circumstance.
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Every retreat at Marymount includes a thoughtfully prepared space, personalized retreat planning, two ninety-minute spiritual direction sessions, creative materials and invitations, access to the hermitage and gardens, and ongoing pastoral availability throughout your stay.
This is one of Marymount's most distinctive gifts.
People are increasingly isolated.
Some retreat centers leave guests entirely alone.
Some conference centers never leave them alone.
Marymount seeks to inhabit a third way.
We are neither absent nor intrusive.
We are available.
We hope this allows you to relax into the retreat without feeling either abandoned or managed.
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Marymount is named in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary, whose life reveals a quiet, courageous hospitality toward God. Mary's open heart became a dwelling place for Christ, and through her faithful welcome, the world received the gift of God's presence.
We hope this little retreat house reflects something of that same spirit: a place of beauty, attentive presence, and gentle welcome where weary people can rest, pray, create, and discover anew the love of Christ.
In that sense, Marymount is not simply named after Mary—it is inspired by her posture of making room for God and for others.
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Yes.
One of the most meaningful gifts a church, ministry, family member, or friend can offer is the gift of rest. If you'd like to sponsor a retreat for someone, we'd be honored to help make that possible.
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At this time, Marymount is designed primarily for individual retreats so that each guest receives focused attention, spaciousness, and personalized care. From time to time, Listening House may offer small guided retreats or gatherings using Marymount and the surrounding spaces.
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Marymount welcomes anyone longing for a place of quiet, beauty, and attentive care. While we have a particular heart for clergy, ministry leaders, caregivers, and those who spend their lives tending others, our retreats are open to anyone navigating a season of exhaustion, discernment, grief, transition, creative renewal, or a deep desire to reconnect with God. If you are weary and longing to be received rather than to perform, Marymount may be a place for you.
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Because every retreat at Marymount is thoughtfully prepared and tailored to each guest, reservations begin with a simple Retreat Discernment Application rather than an instant booking.
After submitting the inquiry, we'll review your hopes for the retreat together, discern whether Marymount is a good fit for your current season, and discuss available dates. Once your retreat is confirmed, you'll receive a second Welcome Questionnaire that helps us prepare the space specifically for you—including practical details like dietary needs, as well as your hopes for prayer, creative practice, and spiritual direction.
Our hope is that your retreat begins long before you arrive. Every guest is welcomed with intentional care, prayer, and preparation so that when you step through the door, the space is already ready to receive you.
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Every retreat is intentionally designed around the individual guest. Retreats include exclusive use of the hermitage, personalized retreat preparation, two 90-minute spiritual direction sessions, a tailored creative practice with materials, and gentle pastoral availability throughout your stay. Guests are also welcome to participate in the worshipping life of St. Mary's, including Sunday Eucharist and Thursday Healing Eucharist, if they desire.
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Marymount currently offers three retreat experiences:
Sabbath Afternoon (approximately 4 hours)
Day Retreat (approximately 8 hours)
Overnight Retreats (one to three nights)
Each option provides a different rhythm of prayer, rest, and spiritual companionship.
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Marymount offers quiet without isolation.
Nestled behind my house and beside a garden in a peaceful neighborhood, the hermitage provides privacy and contemplative space while remaining connected to ordinary life. Guests often find this combination deeply comforting—it is a place to withdraw without disappearing.
A welcome sustained by generosity.
At Marymount, we believe that rest, beauty, prayer, and attentive care should not be privileges reserved for those who can afford them.
For this reason, every retreat at Marymount is offered freely, without a required fee or expectation of payment. Guests are welcomed not according to their financial capacity, but simply because they are worthy of being received.
This is not because hospitality comes without cost. Quite the opposite. Every stay involves the tangible work of preparing a room, tending a garden, offering spiritual companionship, and making space for another person's life. It is work we love deeply, and work that requires the generosity of many hands to sustain.
Marymount is part of Listening House, a nonprofit ministry supported by individuals who believe that those who spend their lives caring for others deserve to be cared for, too.
Guests who have the means are invited to make a donation in gratitude for their stay or in honor of the person who will come after them. Others may receive their retreat as a gift, made possible by the generosity of those who have gone before.
There is no difference in the welcome.
We hope this creates something more beautiful than a transaction: a living circle of generosity, where the care one person receives becomes part of the care another will someday know.
No one has to earn their place here. The welcome is already waiting.
The Retreat Discernment Application
