THE CONSOLATION OF GOD

I just returned from a walk on the path which leads halfway around Lake Sagatagan on the campus of St. John's. It's how I began my time here on Friday morning of last week and now that the retreat is over, I took the opportunity to end as I began - in silence.

Much has happened since I arrived here Thursday evening weary from a 15 hour commute on trains, planes and automobiles. The prayer times have been full, rich and moving. I've made new friends among the oblates gathered here for this special weekend. The teaching time stretched me to think about God's love for people of many cultures and whose expression of worship is different than my own. The solemnity and welcome of those making their final profession as an oblate of St. Benedict, signing their covenant on the altar, moved me beyond words. I was blessed.

Yet all was not what it seemed. Picture if you will a glass beaker from your days in biology or chemistry class. You fill it with a liquid and perhaps add something from a dropper. Next, you rotate your wrist to swirl the contents. Even when you stop moving, the contents continue to swirl. There's a disconnect between the outside and the inside of the beaker. We expect it to be so. It doesn't surprise us. It seems natural.

But that disconnect is not natural when it happens within us. Just below the structure of the retreat in which I looked like an ordinary, unremarkable participant, inside there was much swirling around. I was aware of the uneasy disconnect between what others saw of me on the outside... and what was inside. I even spoke of it briefly, to a new friend who listened to one of my rare moments of vulnerability. This was not a 'swirl' however that any person could fix, lessen or console. This swirling was between me and God. I knew it instinctively.

When the schedule of events came to an end, I prepared to do business with God alone sensing that He had brought me here for this purpose all along. And in my grief of biblical proportions... I cried out to Him long into the night and pre-dawn in groans without words. I don't know when sleep came -- only that I woke to light.

My sadness still with me, for at least now the swirling subsided. My tired eyes not quite able to do the study I planned for today, I ventured out onto the lake path once more, this time camera in hand. If I cannot read or pray, I thought to myself, I'll praise God in capturing images of His good creation. "Though God slay me, still I will trust in Him." Job 13:15. I walked a little farther than I intended... yet found no joy. I decided to go home by another way. The road around campus was just over a footpath and across a field. I knew sun and a breeze would greet me there.

Indeed sun and a breeze were there, but there was more. I didn't recognize it at first. Sadness dulls the spirit. But there were these three things:
1. Almost as soon as I reached the road, a puff of under-feathers [the kind a mother bird plucks to make a soft spot in her nest] floated by me, next to me really, at eye level -- seemingly until I acknowledged their presence. 2. A few minutes ahead another single feather, white and light grey, short and stubby, lay conspicuously in the shade of a pine tree on the edge of the road I was walking. After I passed it--my mind a million other places--I thought to myself: "I should have picked that up." 3. Then, as I came within sight of the retreat house, the feather in the photo above was in the middle of the path. This time, I stooped down and picked it up.

In Native American spirituality, the feather is a sign of spiritual power. The reverence of the Native American people for all of God's good creation includes a belief that because eagles soar in the heavens, close to God, they can bring God near. Feathers of all sorts are used especially in ceremonial clothing and on other sacred objects.

Though I only noticed the pinion feathers as they were suspended in the breeze of my walk... and though I only considered the small white and grey feather in the shade... by the time the above feather almost blocked my path -- I had to stop and give thanks to the One who is with me on this journey even when I don't have words to acknowledge the One who stoops down to heal the broken-hearted.

We love and serve a God who comes near in such times, not to change what is but who offers consolation and blessing to those who love Him. The feather, now on the window ledge in my little room has not removed my heavy heart. Yet I have confidence that as I continue to walk into what lies ahead (not avoiding it/not fighting it) God will meet me even in the darkest of nights and offer His consolation. Blessed be the Name of God.

JOY AND PEACE TO YOU AND THOSE YOU LOVE--BOTH FAR AND NEAR. THE CELTIC MONK