Follow the Narnia Lights

By Allegra Fisher

Until a few months ago, I had never heard of Nashotah House. 

A few years following graduation from seminary in Texas, I moved to New York City, where I work as a pianist, teaching private lessons and accompanying for an arts school in Harlem. I began attending Emmanuel Anglican Church and immediately felt at home and started researching why. As I learned about the tradition and started serving in various capacities, I began to think I had been Anglican long before I knew the name. I devoured books on church history and theology and learned to love the Book of Common Prayer, but my appetite was insatiable.

Drew and Shannon Bradford, dear friends and parents of former piano students in Dallas, emailed to extend an invitation to Nashotah House in case I ever wanted to get out of the city as a sort of monastic retreat. They mentioned that Hans Boersma would be teaching a weeklong winter class I might be interested in auditing. I was tempted to wait for summer instead of braving a Wisconsin winter, but when a fellow New Yorker who had studied with Dr. Boersma heard about the opportunity, she urged me to go as soon as possible.

So I cancelled my lessons for the week and flew to Wisconsin. The campus was dark and the ground covered with a snowy blanket as I pulled my rental car into the parking lot. I settled into my room in Shelton Hall, a towering stone English hall in the Gothic Revival style built in the 1860s. I asked a friendly face how to find the chapel where Evensong would be. “Just follow the Narnia lights.” As I followed a snowy path lit by lanterns, I mused that I have been following Narnia lights for quite some time now.

Over the next week, I was fed and rested—body, mind, and spirit. Each day began with a one-ton bell calling us to Morning Prayer and Eucharist in the chapel, another Gothic Revival building from the 1860s. We would make our way through the winter wonderland to the refectory to break our fast. I didn’t know what to expect that week, even armed with the class title, Theological Interpretation of Scripture: Five Things That Theologians Wish Biblical Scholars Knew. It turned out to be five things I wanted to know. We were not allowed any electronic devices during class, which had the effect of electrifying the classroom. We paused for lunch, resumed class in the afternoon, and ended the day with sung Evensong in the chapel. I returned to my room, humming the Magnificat and stomping the snow from my boots while the smell of incense lingered on my sweater.

I spent several evenings in the lively common room of Shelton Hall, swapping stories over a pint with residential and visiting students and faculty until a rousing chorus of the seminary song signaled the last call. Other evenings I spent in my room, relishing the quiet and catching up on my reading in a corner wingback chair.

As I sipped my coffee in the airport before boarding the flight back to NYC, I couldn’t remember feeling more rested and refreshed, ready to resume my life and work in the city. Nashotah House was an answer to a prayer I didn’t know to ask.

Allegra Fisher has been teaching students of all ages to play the piano since 2001. A student of Daniel Jackson, Julie Rivers, and James Rivers, Allegra completed her Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance Summa Cum Laude at Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas, then completed two Master of Arts degrees from Dallas Theological Seminary. She deeply enjoys performing and teaching music of all styles, from Bach to Broadway and all the sacred, jazz, and movie music she can fit in-between. Her goal is to inspire a lifelong love of music in all her students.