Faith-Based Gatherings in Beautiful Places
There are places where the distance between heaven and earth grows thin.
The Celtic Christian tradition speaks of thin places. Locations where the distance between heaven and earth collapses to almost nothing. Where the veil grows so fine that what is sacred becomes unmistakably perceptible.
Makom is a week-long faith-based gathering in a thin place. We bring together a small community who are ready to hold space. This is not a retreat from your life, it is a return to the depth of it.
The Pillars
Rest is Not a Reward
It is a design principle. The world was made with a pause written into it. We are not inventing the sabbath, we are recovering it.
Makom (מָקוֹם) means "place" in Hebrew. Shortened from HaMakom, which refers to "The Place," another name for God. It notes that the space we occupy is not where God is, but what God is.
We are rooted in the Reformed tradition and in the conviction that scripture is the word of God, that Jesus Christ is Lord, that the Spirit is present and active, and that the resurrection is a historical event with present consequences. We take the resurrection seriously enough to believe that joy is not incidental to faith but central to it.
Tables Are Thin Places
Some of the most important moments happen around a shared meal, in an unscripted conversation between strangers who become less strange.
Excellence is Worship
We believe that excellence, whether in food, hospitality, or art, is itself an act of worship. You are worth a generous table and beautiful things.
Joy is Theology
The resurrection means the people of God are the most free, most alive people in any room. We intend to act like it.
The mornings belong to you.
Before anything is required of you, there is a beautiful setting. A path along the water, a cup of something warm on the terrace, the particular quality of the dawn's light that makes everything feel close to something.
For those who want it, there is a prayer walk or Lectio Divina. For those who don't, there is a chair on the rooftop or a library that has been chosen carefully. The morning is yours to hold lightly or to hold still.
Nourishing Days. Restful Nights. Nothing is wasted.
The Experience
Movement as healing prayer.
Each day we offer optional fitness and movement. We have quality teachers lead group sessions to awake the body alongside the spirit. Everything is designed to move at a pace where you feel comfortable. If the rest you need is more relaxed than that, there are also guided walks through the estate grounds or the town.
Afterwards, a contemplative breakfast, nourishing and unhurried. The coffee is good. There is time to connect. You do not have to say anything to anyone yet.
Words that do something.
Each day holds a gathered teaching of about an hour with a speaker who has been chosen for depth, honesty, and connection to the land, not platform. Questions are expected. Silence is welcome. The teaching is not an answer but an opening with something to carry into the afternoon and return to at the table that evening.
Most afternoons there are small group conversations for those who want to go deeper. There are excursions into unique places where our pastor moves us through its meaning. Some afternoons there is nothing scheduled at all. We always have time available for one-on-one spiritual direction with those guiding the week.
Permission to do nothing.
The spa. The beach. The reading room. A game of pétanque in the courtyard. Fly fishing on the canal. Horse riding through flowing hills. A watercolor or pottery session on the grounds with a local artist. A private conversation with the spiritual director if you want one. We curate a variety of things to experience, much of which is only revealed in the moments where they happen.
But, we welcome doing nothing. You are allowed to sit in a garden and stare at the sky for two hours. We believe leaving space for the Spirit to move might be the thing we need most, because we often do not know how to give ourselves permission to sit still.
The table is a thin place.
A world class chef who comes from the region cooks every meal. Food that tastes of the land it came from, served at a long table, eaten slowly, with conversation that nobody wants to end.
Some evenings will have hospitality demonstrations. Not a class, but a conversation about what it means to host people well, to set a generous table, to offer hospitality as an act of faith. Another evening: a sommelier guides a single wine experience built around the theology of abundance with nonalcoholic options. On the final evening we host a farewell banquet with the finest meal of the week.
The evenings belong to everyone.
A fire is lit in the courtyard or in the living room every evening after dinner. The conversation is open. There is a worship set or traditional music from local performers, and singing that you didn't know you knew the words to. There is a letter writing station to share three kinds of letters: Gratitude for fruit grown from a seed someone else planted, honest requests for forgiveness on your part, and blessings written for the next generation.
On the final afternoon we have a celebration. Tables pushed back, a caller teaching the steps, trad musicians playing, twenty to thirty people who arrived as strangers moving together in a new, yet old pattern. It is joyful in a way that is almost embarrassing and entirely necessary.
A Place at the Table
Everything at Makom is all-inclusive. One price covers everything.
Including accommodations in your chosen room type with carefully selected gifts. All meals including breakfast, lunch, and dinner each day, plus morning coffee and afternoon refreshments. All teaching sessions, worship services, counseling, and advisors. Professionally led morning movement sessions. Evening vespers and morning prayer walks. The chef's hospitality demonstrations. The curated wine evenings. All excursions and all the other events around the estate. Access to the entire estate grounds and contemplative spaces. Private transfers on arrival and departure depending on location. And much more that is hidden until you arrive and experience it first-hand.
The only extras are personal spa treatments at-cost when available. There are no surprises.
New Orleans, LA
The Garden District estate is a ten-bedroom house with oak-canopied streets, antebellum architecture, an indoor heated pool, and a courtyard that earns its keep on warm fall evenings when the city is at its most itself. New Orleans invented the second line, that begins in grief and turns a corner into dancing.
November 2026
6 Rooms & 6 Bunks Available
Tulum, Mexico
A Moorish-Mexican villa in the Tulum jungle, ten minutes from ancient Mayan ruins and ten minutes from the Caribbean Sea. Six nights of worship, teaching, cenotes, unbelievable night skies, whale sharks, and a cultural culinary experience that draws from millennia of tradition at long table in the courtyard.
April 2027
14 Rooms Available
Burgundy, France
Château de Mailly sits on the edge of a cliff above the Yonne valley, a 19th-century residence with a piano in the salon, panoramic views across the Burgundian countryside, a heated pool built onto the cliff's promontory, and a dining room that seats forty. Just down from Vézelay on its sacred hill.
Early May 2027
18 Rooms Available
Essonne, France
Sitting in the Essonne countryside an hour south of Paris lay three restored stone houses with a heated pool, Nordic bath, and a garden in full bloom. To the west is Chartres Cathedral, whose labyrinth is open to walk every Friday from Lent to All Saints' Day, and to the south is a humble village to explore.
Late May 2027
13 Rooms Available
Catalonia, Spain
CasaKubrick is a Catalan architect's private house on the rural plateau of El Moianès with mountain views and a stillness at altitude that the coast never quite manages. Near the Romanesque monastery complex of L'Estany and a short trip to Montserrat, where Ignatius of Loyola laid down his sword.
June 2027
12 Rooms Available
Limburg, Netherlands
D'Ouffenhoff is a 17th-century farmhouse on the banks of the Maas in Limburg, five minutes' walk from a 14th-century ferry crossing to the monastery village of Steyl, where in 1875 Arnold Janssen arrived with nothing and founded a missionary order that sent brothers and sisters to every continent.
July 2027
13 Rooms Available
Cotswolds, England
Painswick is a 15th-century wool merchant's manor in the heart of the village, arranged around a central courtyard with a heated pool overlooking the Painswick Hills. Across the lane is St Mary's Church with its famous ninety-nine yew trees, and ten minutes up the hill is the only surviving English Rococo Garden.
August 2027
10 Rooms Available
Cornwall, England
The house is eighteenth century. Cornish slate walls, original beams, fireplaces that have been burning in this building for two hundred years. It is in the sleepy hamlet of St Issey just a stones throw from Padstow. There is a Swedish hot tub, a fire pit, pizza ovens, and the Camel Estuary is five minutes on foot.
Early September 2027
12 Rooms Available
Peak District, England
An old paintworks building restored to new life with the River Dane running on three sides of the property, and the sound is audible from every room. This is the driest month on the moorland with the heather turning and the temperature inviting us to explore England's largest national forest reserve.
Late September 2027
10 Rooms & 6 Nooks Available
Norfolk, England
Wells-next-the-Sea sits on the north Norfolk coast lined with salt-marsh, tidal creeks, and the longest beach in England, as well as Walsingham, a Christian pilgrimage site visited for nearly 900 years. The former church rooms that make up the property have carried prays for decades before us.
Early October 2027
10 Rooms Available
A note about pricing:
We have priced Makom honestly, not cheaply, and not for excessive margin. The cost reflects what it actually takes to gather a group of people in a special space with a world-class chef, exceptional teachers, staff to run everything, quality goods, thoughtful touches, and the care this experience deserves. We believe beauty, quality, and care are tenants of our faith and want to express them to our very best ability. We recognize this will create a barrier for some, and we do our best to create scholarships and sponsorships to help all we can.
Common Inquiries
If we haven't answered what you're asking, please write to us at gather@makom.house. We read every message and will reply.
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"Surely the Lord is in this place — and I did not know it." — Genesis 28:16