Ed. Note: At the Big Springs groundbreaking on April 24, 1998, Gary Priour delivered the keynote address to 300 friends and supporters who attended. Here are excerpts from his talk:

by Gary Priour

In the last 8 months, I’ve learned more about what it is to feel like one of our wounded children. During maximum stress, I’ve noticed that the mind focuses on details differently. Like the look on people’s faces, or the tone in their voices. There is one look, of such power, the unmistakable look of Christian kindness, the one that steadies a person in danger and helps him return to himself. I have seen it in so many of you, and my fears have been quieted when I do. I don’t know what would have happened without you, in this time of great trial. What the kids have said to me for years, I am saying to you today: You’ve made all the difference. You were there when it counted.

I think God brought us here today, where the river speaks and the trees sing, so that we could remember who we are, in this valley that’s like a cradle of dreams, to touch again our calling . . . And this is what I hear and see today in the sparkling river, as I have so many times at this spot: a thousand angels dancing and rejoicing and encouraging, saying that we must love even when love has become suspect, that we must care even when caring has become confused with something else. That it will all be made clear in the end. Our task: to listen for the way, to keep dreaming, and working, and, most of all, loving. For that is a torch that still needs carrying in this tired old world.

LeeAnn Atherton, one of Austin’s premier singers and songwriters, who helped us with our children’s music project, wrote a song with the line, "The only glory is to love and be loved. It’s the ageless story that dreams are all made of."

Thornton Wilder put it this way: "We ourselves will be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough. All those impulses of love go back to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There’s a land of the living and a land of the dead, and the bridge is love – the only survival, the final meaning."

And William Saroyan: "The best part of a good man stays, it stays forever, for love is immortal and makes all things immortal. But hate dies every minute."

Not that love is easy. It is perhaps the most difficult of all tasks. Add to that, that when we’re emotionally damaged, we reject the usual formulas. And so it takes even more skill to love a damaged spirit. The damaged child doesn’t run straight to find healing kindness in others. He doesn’t believe in it. He lives outside the circle of caring, forgiveness and reconciliation. He’s been hurt and he doesn’t want to risk being hurt again. Only a patient listening can grasp an opening. Waiting for just the right moment. Not being in a hurry, striving to prepare the space, even in the face of failure and discouragement, looking for the mold of Jesus, striving to be like Him, however small and deflated we feel at the time, and however insignificant the act in front of us to perform.

The children tell me over and over how powerful it is to meet a person who cares in a way that lifts them up and away from their ailments and complaints, who has that special presence of peaceful acceptance in a fleeting moment that changes their lives – almost a trifling moment sometimes. A gesture, a word, a look. That’s all that matters, that they can remember, that has survived the pain and the fears.

Oma Bell Perry has persevered in seeing a special future for this land, a seeing which I have been privileged to absorb through knowing her. Stay around this project, and you’ll pick it up, too. God is in this place, and he calls us together to walk with him today and dream and treasure this moment. So remember what you see here, give it a place in your conversation and in your thoughts about the future. Today you are the vanguard, the first vessels of the nurturing of an exciting new vision on the landscape of tomorrow. For this will one day be a whole village of healing. Here will be a homestead, joined by four others in the next several years. Across the river will be a school, offering the finest Christian private education. On the west Ranch, a wilderness adventure program in a landscape equal to any national park. Upriver, a conference/retreat center especially for professional caregivers. And so much more.

This is a mountain no person can climb alone. Unless God be with us in this, it is, in fact, too much. He will have to send many to help. Oma Bell has taken the first step, and now we shall take another. It is our covenant that we shall deliver this land into the service of Texas most vulnerable citizens, first children, and then seniors. When Paul talked of the saints who would carry forward the heart of our Lord and become his body, he meant you and me, undaunted in our devotion and desire to please and glorify Him. Surely he is smiling today, that this loveliest of spots has been given to Christian service, and that His people have come to consecrate it. We step out now in faith, knowing that God will send His people, as he has sent you and me – to volunteer, to build, to give. And then the caregivers to come to live here, our warriors on the front lines, who will need our ambassadorship and support, so that they, who daily share the children’s pain and live with the nightmares of their injured spirits, will receive from us health-building nourishment and guidance. So we thank God for the caregivers, and we thank Him for the children, and for the love that will be made possible in our lives as we seek to meet their needs.

And now it’s time. Enough talking, as Oma Bell might say, there’s work to be done. Let’s get started. There are lots of ways to join in. Just offer. I want to leave you with this. Someone asked me the other day, why keep doing this. Twenty-nine years of childcare with all its stresses, and now at 50 looking into the afternoon sun, and the long road ahead.

Here’s an answer, borrowed from George Bernard Shaw.

"This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one, the being thoroughly worn out before you’re thrown on the scrapheap, the being a force of nature, instead of a fevered selfish clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to God and to the service of His community, and as long as I live it, it is my privilege to do whatever I can. I love life. Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of bright torch which I have got hold of for a moment, and I want to let it burn as brightly as possible before passing it on to future generations."