The Abode of the Message

Shaker Barn, the Shaker community's horse barn

Most of the Abode's Main Campus structures were built in the mid-19th century by the Mount Lebanon Shaker Village community as housing and workspaces for their South Family group.[3][4] Formally established in 1787, the New Lebanon Shaker Society (renamed the Mount Lebanon Shaker Society in 1861[8][9]) was the second major Shaker society formed in the recently created United States of America. The society established its home at the Mount Lebanon Shaker Village, which became the primary Shaker spiritual residential community.[6][8][9][10]

The Mount Lebanon Shaker Village was organized into Family groups living in clustered buildings sited around the property.[6][10] As of 2010, three main groups of buildings survive. The Church Family property is occupied by the Darrow School, a private residential high school.[11][12] The North Family property is occupied and being restored by the Shaker Museum, Mount Lebanon.[11][13] The South Family property was owned by the Shaker Village Work Group[11] (a camp for urban teenagers established in 1947 as the Shaker Village Work Camp and later renamed[14]) until it was purchased in 1975 for the Inayati Order, which established it as a new residential spiritual community—The Abode of the Message.[15][16]

In April 2022, the Inayati Order announced that they could no longer hold financial responsibility for the Abode, and expressed the hope "to sell to a compatible and aligned organization that would continue to hold the land as sacred."[17] In 2023, an agreement was reached between the Order and the Friends of South Family "to transfer sole membership in the Abode to [the] Friends."[5]

The Abode occupies approximately 320 acres (1.3 km²) of forest that spans the border between New York State and Massachusetts. Most of its shared community facilities are grouped within two areas, the Main Campus and the Mountain Conference Center.[4]

Main Campus

Meditation Hall on the Main Campus, a replica of a Shaker-style apple barn.

The Main Campus is a cluster of buildings at the south end of Darrow Road, most of which are the original South Family structures of the Mount Lebanon Shaker Village, demonstrating "preservation through use."[3] Many of the buildings are named for spiritual qualities that Sufis value, drawn from the 99 Names of God in Islam. Rezak was the South Family's main communal building and now contains the library and community dining room. Vakil houses the Abode Programs Office, and served as the Shaker chair-caning shop. Mughni is the former Shaker trustees building. Fatah (the 1867 Shaker women's workhouse) holds men's and women's dorms. Recently renovated, the Shaker Barn was built in 1850 as a horse barn, but now hosts offices and art studios. The Meditation Hall was built in 1975 by Abode community members, and is used as a sacred space used for public events. Three personal retreat huts are located in the Retreat Hut Field on the hill behind the Meditation Hall, and several retreat huts and cabins are situated beside a stream south of the Shaker Barn.[3][4][18]

Mountain Camp

Main Tent, at the Mountain Conference Center.

The Mountain Camp hosts large group events for the Abode and The Inayati Order as well as being available as a woodland conference center.[3] The Mountain Camp comprises dining pavilions and meeting spaces, along with shared bathroom and shower facilities for those staying on the mountain overnight. Meals are prepared in the distinctive octagonal Kitchen building. Housing on the mountain is provided by two shared cabins that hold a total of twenty two-person rooms, sixteen private huts that are simple, rustic retreat huts without electricity, and extensive space for tenting along the mountain's walking paths.

Newspapers and magazines

• Jackman, Kule; Jackman, Barkat (April 1982). "The Abode of the Message". Communities: Journal of Cooperative Living. Louisa, VA: Communities Publications Cooperative (53): 27–28. ISSN 0199-9346. OCLC 3130385. Archived from the original on June 28, 2006. Retrieved August 9, 2010. — Issue entitled "Spiritual Communities." Magazine is now published by the Fellowship for Intentional Community.
• Kuller, Doris (March 28, 1977). "Ten journeys for the spirit". New York magazine. Boulder, CO. 10 (13): 56–57. ISSN 0362-4331. — Reviews of several spiritual retreat centers in the NYC area, including the Abode.

• Tulloch, Tim (February 3, 2009). "Abode of the Message hires a master planner". Country Life section in The Independent. Hillsdale, NY. pp. 1, 24. OCLC 25235262. Retrieved August 9, 2010. (also archived, 4 February 2009) — Extensive reporting about the Abode, its history, and activities.
• Tulloch, Tim (February 4, 2010). "Abode plans to grow... carefully". The Columbia Paper. New Lebanon, NY. p. 11. Archived from the original on December 15, 2010. Retrieved August 9, 2010. Volume 1, number 43. — A Master Plan was created for the Abode by Dennis Wedlick Architects LLC. Article reviews its contents in the context of the site's history.
• Virtanen, Michael (July 24, 2008). "Religious retreats: Head to the Catskills". Associated Press at Yahoo! News. Archived from the original on August 21, 2008. Retrieved August 9, 2010. — Reviews of several spiritual retreat centers in the downstate NY area, including the Abode.

Books

• Becksvoort, Christian; Sheldon, John (2000). The Shaker Legacy: Perspectives on an Enduring Furniture Style. Newtown, CT: Taunton Press. pp. 54–55. ISBN 978-1-56158-357-7. OCLC 38925149. — Describes some history of the South Family lands ownership by the Shakers, then the Shaker Village Work Camp, then the Sufi Order International.
• Fellowship for Intentional Community, ed. (1995). "Abode of the Message". Communities Directory: A Guide to Cooperative Living. Langley, WA: Fellowship for Intentional Community. p. 212. ISBN 978-0-9602714-3-6. OCLC 32418632. — The page number and the book's name differ slightly in other editions (1990 edition, ISBN 978-0-9602714-0-5; 1996 ed., ISBN 978-0-9602714-4-3; 2000 ed., ISBN 978-0-9602714-8-1; 2005 ed., ISBN 978-0-9718264-2-7; 2007 ed., ISBN 978-0-9718264-3-4; 2010 ed., ISBN 978-0-9718264-5-8)
• Gutek, Gerald Lee (1998). Visiting Utopian Communities: A Guide to the Shakers, Moravians, and Others. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press. pp. 43–48. ISBN 978-1-57003-210-3. OCLC 36343343. — Extended history of the Mount Lebanon Shaker Village, including the South Family site.
• Melton, J. Gordon; Clark, Jerome; Kelly, Aidan A. (1990). New Age Encyclopedia: A Guide to the Beliefs, Concepts, Terms, People, and Organizations... Detroit, MI: Gale Research. pp. 1, 127, 142. ISBN 978-0-8103-7159-0. OCLC 20022610.
• Miller, Timothy (1999). The 60s Communes: Hippies and Beyond. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. pp. 115–116. ISBN 978-0-8156-0601-7. OCLC 41662601. — Describes the origins of the Abode as a spiritual commune.
• Opdahl, Robert C.; Woodruff Opdahl, Viola E. (2004). A Shaker Musical Legacy. Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England. pp. xvii–xviii. ISBN 978-1-58465-360-8. OCLC 56550805. — Describes the purchase of the South Family property in 1947 by Jerry and Sybil Count, who established the Shaker Village Work Camp, later renamed the Shaker Village Work Group in 1967, and finally the Shaker Village Educational Work Foundation.
• Stein, Stephen J. (1994). The Shaker Experience in America: A History of the United Society of Believers. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-05933-5. OCLC 185691696. — An extensive history of the Shakers.
• Sutton, Robert P. (2003). Communal Utopias and the American Experience: Religious Communities, 1732-2000. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers. pp. 161–163. ISBN 978-0-275-97554-8. OCLC 50725639. — Some detailed history of the Abode.
• Sutton, Robert P. (2005). Modern American Communes: A Dictionary. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. pp. 3–4. ISBN 978-0-313-32181-8. OCLC 56894538. — An abbreviated version of Sutton 2003.
• Webb, Gisela (1995). "Sufism in America". In Miller, Timothy (ed.). America's Alternative Religions. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. p. 254. ISBN 978-0-7914-2398-1. OCLC 30476551. — A short history of the Sufi Order International, with a few paragraphs about the Abode.

• Official website for the Abode of the Message