Rasa Revisited

Looking Back: A page from my Rasa Diary

Rasa, Ticino, Switzerland

Photo courtesy of Nick Yoon

In repentance and rest is your salvation,

in quietness and trust is your strength...."

Isaiah 30:15

For many days in February I had been reading from Genesis 26 –the story of how Isaac dug again the old wells of Abraham, his father-- and I had been thinking of its significance for me. The chapter is not new to me, but this time around, I felt as if I had come across it for the first time; I was like a thirsty traveler stopping at Rehoboth, the Well of Room Enough, to refill my water bags for the long journey ahead.

I know God has many things to say to me, but these days my heart feels like a stopped up well. Realization hits me: my heart needs to be cleared of clutter and debris. I need to re-dig some old wells that had been a source of spiritual nourishment to me in the past.

It is true. There have been many changes over the past months and years… and I need to pause long enough to listen.

I need to go back to my Valley of Gerar, “the valley of meditation” and dwell there for a while.


Indeed, life has been moving fast for me, especially since the year 2000. And if things are taking place one after the other, past events tend to get buried under or overshadowed by the more recent happenings.

Tucked underneath the layers of memories in my heart is one life-changing experience that took place in 1997: Rasa.

As I began thinking of re-digging my Rehoboth, the Well of Room Enough, and of going back to my Valley of Gerar, the memory of Rasa somehow found its way to the surface.


When my sister and I were young Papa would come home on payday nights with a new story book for us. He would read to us at bedtime, and I would often keep a favorite book under my pillow. We had a shelf for our special books, from which, on a rainy day, I would pick out one and spend hours reading through it one more time. How grateful I am that my parents raised us up on good books! The Tale of Peter Rabbit, Heidi, Black Beauty, Tom Sawyer, and Little Women, to name a few, were among my favorites.

I gently picked up the memory of Rasa like I would a favorite book on a rainy day, and leafed through its pages once again.


Rasa is a major chapter in my life story, a turning point in my life where God began to reveal to me the deeper things about His heart. It was a deep spiritual experience for me, but the memory of it had somehow been pushed aside.


Sitting in our front room and thinking of Isaac’s wells one February morning, this verse suddenly came to my mind:

“For God alone my soul waits in silence.”

The verse came as a surprise, and a delight. Like an old friend that unexpectedly arrived, it came softly knocking at my front door, a friend I had not seen for a long, long time.

The verse is from Psalm 62:1, and is the beginning line of my personal liturgy. The original words of my liturgy actually read as:

“My soul finds rest in God alone.”

It was in Rasa where I learned the importance of having a personal liturgy, but my liturgy, a source of refreshing for me in years gone by, had long been buried under layers of concerns. (In another blog entry I will share the importance of having a personal liturgy and how to write one.)

Suddenly, God retrieves that line from where it has been hidden, and speaks it to me again. I realize that He is giving me specific directions to go back to the rest of that Rasa chapter and learn new truths from it.

Rasa is a little village in the Ticino, a canton in the southern part of Switzerland near the Italian border. Located 900 meters above sea level in a sunny terrace of the Swiss Alps, this mountain village is tucked in the region with a fascinating name: Centovalli, literally “the valley of the hundred valleys.”

Rasa was built in the 18th century, but in the 1960s when most of its population had started moving out, its survival as a village was endangered. By God’s providence, at around the same time, the VBG - Vereinigte Bibelgruppen (UBG in English, or United Bible Groups), a Swiss-German-run interdenominational Christian movement, began buying some of the old houses to set up a retreat center in the village. And Campo Rasa was born.

Many of the abandoned buildings were in disrepair, but they were gradually restored. Careful and well-researched renovations were done to maintain the original condition and character of the 250-year old manors. To honor the historical structure of the houses also meant doing without too many modern conveniences.

Rasa, a cluster of stone houses, is a tranquil spot in the middle of a serene but powerful scenery. One finds few traces of the modern world here. The village is accessible only by cable car or by a two-hour uphill hike. No cars can ever reach it, so the surrounding landscape has remained unspoiled. Upon reaching it, one is immediately struck by the simplicity and unpretentious authenticity of the place.


For one month, in the summer of 1997, I had the rare privilege of being in this place, living in Casa Fonte, one of the houses owned by Campo Rasa. Casa Fonte is a palazzo (a large and impressive private residence) with meter-thick walls under original vaults and roofs made of centuries-old chestnut timber.

Twenty-three of us from different countries had enrolled at Campo Rasa’s Life Revision Retreat and everyday for one month, we sat together under the mentorship of Hans Burki. Hans was a 75-year old Swiss who taught us how to cultivate and integrate the spiritual disciplines of solitude, meditation and contemplation into our daily lives.


The Rasa chapter of my life holds many beautiful events. For me, the month I spent in this lovely Alpine village is one of those precious heaven-to-earth connections, where God spoke new things to my heart at a time I needed to hear them most.

I appreciate the opportunity that God has given me these days to re-dig this old well. Indeed, this well had been forgotten, and now I was being given the chance to revisit Rasa.


Before I left for Thailand in September 2007, I embarked on a major house cleaning project. I had planned on opening up all our cabinets and cupboards, going through every room and looking inside the drawers and filing cabinets, sorting out all the accumulated stuff, choosing which ones to keep, and which ones to discard or give away.

Hardly had I started when my husband and I received the invitation to come here.

Many will understand my reluctance to leave in the middle of what I had begun. A few years ago I told myself that the time had come for Ernie and me to start cleaning up our lives and begin seriously thinking of what we will leave behind when the time comes for us to board our flight departure for heaven.

It was time to de-accumulate, de-clutter, and to simplify our lives. To focus on the essentials, and on what has eternal value. We had to learn to choose which battles were worth fighting and which were mere distractions to our individual and family destiny. We needed to decide which things really mattered and were important, and which were merely urgent but unimportant.

At one point or another in our lives, we all have made decisions that ended up as costly mistakes. But rather than live a life of regret or treating it lightly, pretending it doesn't really matter, God has always graciously reminded me that there is no such thing as a hopeless situation for anyone who is willing to try again and move up to a higher, more meaningful level of existence.

My days in Rasa taught me that while the past cannot be undone, it can always be turned over into the hands of a powerful and loving Redeemer. He can help clear up the inner clutter of our lives, and drain out the poison from unhealed emotional wounds. The future holds so much hope.

The words of Isaiah 61:3-4 speak promise and deep comfort to my heart:

...and provide for those who grieve in Zion--
to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.

They will be called oaks of righteousness,
a planting of the LORD

for the display of his splendor.

They will rebuild the ancient ruins

and restore the places long devastated;

they will renew the ruined cities

that have been devastated for generations.

Related post: Isaac, Redigging Old Wells

Other posts about my Rasa experience:

A Still Small Voice

Water From Bethlehem's Well

Jacob's New Name

Learning to Rest in His Love