An innocuous chair sits within the woods of central Maryland. It is massive, thick, and outdated. It’s set as an alternative, wood legs sunk into the mud, grass and rocks, overlooking a flowing fountain. There isn’t any telling what number of dwelling creatures have settled in its wood body over time: squirrels cracking nuts, birds scouting nesting websites, people pausing for a second of reflection.
I took the final class not too way back on a retreat—a day of silence and solitude—in the identical forest. I picked my approach slowly, fastidiously, meditatively alongside the path, heading out into the tough winter, forsaking the smoldering fires that warmed the cabins of the outdated retreat middle.
The panorama was brown, nonetheless and useless. Tall and barren tall bushes; Colorless leaves crunch underfoot. After which this chair sat there peacefully.
I approached reverently, shocked to see this straightforward piece of furnishings caught within the woods. Somebody put it on the market, somebody who knew nothing about me or my ideas however who cared about so many individuals like me who went via the identical factor.
I used to be finding out standing subsequent to that chair. A poem got here to thoughts, a couple of stanzas spilling over one another, jumbled however significant. The poem was “Typically” and the poet David White writes about strolling fastidiously via a forest and stepping over dry leaves in silence and stillness and eventually coming “to a spot whose solely job is to harm you.”
Whose solely job is to harm you.
I felt as if I had stepped into the poem, as if I had crossed some hidden threshold between my very own and the poet’s life, and I may see behind the veil that he used to create his poetry.
I walked in silence; The leaves have been dry. I stood alone in a forest that was unusual to me. And I knew what got here after the poem; I recite it on a regular basis. As a result of the place, White claims, is troubled by “questions which have waited patiently for you, questions that don’t have any proper to go away.”
I do not take into consideration this second a lot as a result of I had some nice religious breakthrough or deep encounter with God whereas sitting in that chair – though I actually sat and prayed for a very long time and God whispered into my being. Quite, I take into consideration the sacred context with which I arrived at that second and the way the phrases—although they have been jumbled—got here abruptly and decisively into my thoughts, spilling out into the actual and tangible world round me.
I’m wondering how a easy chair in a quite unremarkable nook of the Maryland wilderness abruptly took on an aura of sacred depth. Due to a easy poem I’ve learn on numerous events, my stroll within the forest has turn out to be transcendent; I used to be extra ready to face God. The easy act of being there was sufficient.
What energy of phrases! The power to remodel an bizarre second right into a holy encounter – what the Ignatian custom has at all times emphasised? Via poetry, prayer texts, chants, and prose, the Spirit strikes and works right here, on this place, getting ready us to come across extra deeply the identical Spirit at work elsewhere—locations we have now but to seek out however which we all know intimately. I can After we do, locations the place we can be extra able to sink into the dwelling God.
Comfortable Nationwide Poetry Month.
Picture by Abdul Aziz Garbadin on Unsplash.
