WINTER 2002
ear Salem Quarter Friends,
I write these musings while on a silent retreat in rural Virginia. I have found that I very much need these periods of intentional and focused silence to unwind, detox, let go, listen, and wait. I always leave these retreats feeling that I have, in some way, been recreated by the divine hand. Thank God my life situation allows me to get away. Someone recently told me that my going on retreat was “very holy.” Not at all; it is, in part, my inability to remain faithful in the midst of life’s routine activities and my failure to carve out sufficient times for prayer and holy listening each day which necessitate these periodic retreats.
My favorite retreat site is a monastery on a thousand acres along the Shenandoah River. This is where I am now. Each time I visit I can feel myself start to fall into the right place just driving down the long road through the rolling grounds to the retreat house. It would be more convenient if my sacred space were my place at the kitchen table or behind the wheel of my car, places which are indeed holy for me at times, but which can also be places of anxiety and tedious ordinariness. Perhaps some day each mundane task, each mediocre moment, each passing encounter will be a prayer, a God moment. Perhaps some day I will be grounded enough that these retreats will not be necessary.
When I arrived yesterday afternoon, the sky was a gorgeous cloudless blue. I took a walk at my favorite time of day—I call it “tolsh,” the time-of-long- shadows—and everything seemed to speak of God. The hills, the rocky outcroppings, the lush pastureland, the ancient trees, the fields of soybeans—for me, everything incarnated God’s love and radiance and hope.
This morning I took a walk along the same road. The sky was dull and overcast, with not a hint of shadow anywhere. Neither was there any breeze; all was motionless and gray. Colors were muted and heavy, blending into one another, so that I had to look hard to see a red cardinal in the midst of the green. What struck me most during this walk was a very ordinary pokeweed. It struck me because of its unassuming mediocrity. You see, the day before that same plant had dazzled me with its brilliant colors and otherworldly beauty. The contrast between the pokeweed this morning and yesterday was astonishing. Yesterday, the purple berries, moist from prior rain, had shimmered like glass beads. The purple-red stems and verdant leaves had glistened like enameled Fabergé creations. The sun had cast a long, winnowy shadow of the pokeweed many yards across the pastureland. The whole scene had led me to wonder and praise. That magical pokeweed had clearly been the highlight of yesterday’s walk.
Yesterday I had stood in amazement looking at the plant for a long time, taking in its uncanny beauty. This morning I stared at the same plant considerably longer. This banal pokeweed, I thought, was like me in my routine plodding, like life’s often unassuming ordinariness and mediocrity. There was nothing special about the plant, nothing to attract attention, nothing “holy” about it—yet this is what called me home, what called me back to myself and to God. The plant looked like any of thousands of pokeweed plants, and not even an especially attractive specimen, yet it was the very same plant as the fabulous creation of the day before. In the light, it had eloquently mirrored God for me, and I was given a blessed incarnational moment. Out of the light, it was a common weed.
I pray that I will have the grace to see all people, indeed all creation, in the Light of God's love, so that all things are holy and all speaks of God. What might my daily routine look like suffused in that Light? What might my family, communities, and coworkers look like in that Light? How about the difficult Friend, or the impatient driver, or the rude salesperson? Do I dare see myself in that Light? And I pray that once I return from this retreat to my usual surroundings, I will, with greater frequency, see the holy in my place at the kitchen table and behind the wheel of my car.
Joy and everlasting peace,
MichaelRETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS
Last modified:
Wednesday, February 18, 2004 at 08:19 AM
