And All Manner of Things Shall Be Well
I open the door and it feels like home. Like a grandmother’s house. Friar Martin grins at me from the counter as I take a chocolate chip cookie. And all I can hear is the buzzing insects and humming grasshoppers while thunder rolls in the distance. “The first time I met you, I could tell you were a young person I could connect with. And someone who needed a safe place,” Delcy told me that night. I become used to the silence so quickly that her words push against the stillness. Here, it is easier to settle the voices in my mind and simply be.
On the refrigerator door, a Wendell Berry poem hangs, I Come Into the Peace of Wild Things, “I come into the peace of wild things. Who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief…For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.” The words strike. I’ve spent so much time living with the past, in fear of the future. When I let that fear slip away, it feels like losing a part of myself. Berry tells me to live my life unafraid. To live here.
Here, everything is holy. In the silence, my thoughts slowed and present, I practice washing the dishes. The suds running over my hand, washing each dish clean. My home is here, in this moment. I wonder at the holiness of cleaning and drying a bowl. The mundane become a gift of God. His presence in this kitchen. He is HERE. If I am not present, I will miss him. Perhaps what this place is teaching me. The presence enough to be still and fully indwell each moment.
***
I walk the paths, dew drenched, grace falling in droplets from the swaying trees. Inch along the forgotten dock. Duck beneath branches until it opens on a lake.
Holzwege: trails that meander through the forest with no particular destination.
Lichtung: an unexpected opening in the forest where you can suddenly see the sky.
Heidegger’s words illustrating my journey. The waters are unimaginably still. I can see myself in the clearness, perhaps even see through me, the depths of me plunging to the lake bottom. A gust of wind blows through, and out of the corner of my eye, water bugs spread tiny ringlets along the hem of the gently ruffling lake. In these moments I remember that God is in all. His face shining from the water. Reaching out to me in the vines twisting across my path.
As I walk the labyrinth, repeating a prayer, I stop. A bumblebee clings to a clover blossom, hovering in the wind. I hold my breath and watch its antennae flick almost imperceptibly. Slowly, I let out my breath, wondering in the moment. I run my finger along the edge of this second, a glass ball of perfection. Holding it in the palm of my hand, as close as possible without it shattering around me. Tracing a meandering path, I am stopped again. A Monarch butterfly hangs from another clover, its wings held out to dry. I almost can’t believe it’s real until I do get too close, and the Monarch stumbles to the grass, stretching its wings. I study the furry thorax and brilliant wings lined with the cosmos-a string of stars in the night sky.
Sometimes it takes the big moments, like a Monarch blocking my path to once again uncloud my eyes to the God in the unexpected smile of a coworker and in the long walk to class. How do I so easily forget the God with us?
I’ve come so far in the 365 days since I last came to this retreat. Slowly, sometimes grasping along in the dark, sometimes brushing against God’s hand. Is it a spiritual practice to remind yourself of how far you’ve come? To sit in quiet thanks, looking back down the hill at my fast fading footprints. “You seem more joyful,” Susan told me, and I didn’t quite believe her until now.
***
Delcy welcomes me into her basement. She pulses with life and joy as she leads me through her treasure of paint and nature, cloth and paper. Tacked on the walls are the creations of those who came before. Their voices calling through the art, reminding me to play, to seek community and to find God in all of it. Grace can be hard to come by when you’re not looking for it. But when you are, it’s everywhere. Julian of Norwich echoes through the walls, “All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.”
I hold multitudes within me. Sitting in front of a sheet of paper, I drop paint and blow furiously, fireworking a spray of mermaid green across the page. It’s strange how you never know what you’re making when you start. Simply one drop at a time, it takes shape, color spreading across the the page expressing a subconscious I can’t access.
I repeat the words Susan prayed over me,
May Chavala be safe.
May Chavala be healthy and strong.
May Chavala be happy and peaceful.
May Chavala live with ease in the world. Amen.
I have never heard words like that. And I sit stunned. Live with ease. Live with ease. Transferring the words to paper, I write quickly and carefully. It belongs in the chorus of color. In the melee I have created.
“This is incredible,” I exclaimed with unrestrained joy.
“It is good,” Delcy responded. “It is good.”
***
The open window welcomes the voices of birds, some calls I have never heard. They call out to each other; unashamedly calling for the one who knows them. Each unmistakable voice pulses loudly into the heavy air, and another responds.
I can’t tell if there is a path ahead. Limbs hang low and weeds hem me in. I pause and look up. On the tree beside me, a blue rope hangs from a nail. And so I press on, trusting that the One who made and marked the trail knows better than I.