The
young Brother and I work well
together. His professed name is Brother Saint
Winifred of Gwytherin in Denbigshire. We
can’t imagine such a mouthful when we cheer him on in a softball game, so we
have come to call him Kickstart. The
nickname relates to his hitting the road to join a motorcycle gang after
getting his doctorate in Late Antiquity.
Seven years in a library will do that to a man.
I don’t at all like outdoor chores after the first frost. It’s damned cold out there
and at seventy years of age my arthritis always flares up. I mentioned it to Kickstart but he wasn’t listening. He worked beside me in a
light jacket while I bundled up in a ratty old down coat stretched tightly over
two sweat shirts.
I lay here tonight in
my cot and can testify the extra layers
were not enough. My hands ache and my hips feel like I slipped on the ice and fell. But the wind
howling outside our dormitory can’t get to me beneath the bed covers and
three old work robes piled on top. I am as comfortable as I’ll be through this
long night.
When I think of my conversation with Kick earlier today, my spirits drop and I’m sorry I was not of more help
to him
in his agony. His four years here as a
contemplative have somewhat closed his eyes to reality. It happens.
“Jesse," he said, as we fit rocks under
the main beam of the porch deck, "I
think we’re all doomed up here."
“You
mean like we’re going to be hit by a Protestant comet?” I asked.
“You
know what I mean,” he said.
“I
do know what you mean, but I have no answer.”
"They're
going to throw us out. I know it,"
he said.
I
didn't tell Kick, but that's exactly what
I worry about.
“Where
are you going to live, Jesse?” he asked.
I
shoved a stone in farther beneath the beam.
“Maybe I’ll apply for assistance
or maybe I’ll get a job in a store. Rent a
room down in the village … I don’t’ know. After all, I don’t have as far to go down the road as you, Kick. You have an entire life ahead of you.”
“My life is here on this mountain,"
he said. "I’m staying.”
“Well,
you can’t," I told him.
“In
the woods,” he said. “I’ll stay in the woods.”
I
sneered. “A real Desert Father, huh?”
“Jesse,”
he said , “everything I learned about my life and myself and God is here on
this mountain.”
“God
isn't only on this mountain,” I said.
“What
I know of him is,” he said.
“Yes,
but maybe it’s time to know him in a different way,” I said.
“God
is unchangeable, Jesse.”
“OK,
but not in your head He isn’t. Our
vision of him changes as we grow.”
I have a tendency to be dismissive of anyone's
faith that doesn't agree with my mental conception of God and how He
operates. That’s nearly the same as
defining Him. And given my capacity to make mistakes, allowing me to play God is
probably a bad idea. If I were God, for
example, the creation of the world would still be a great plan that I'd look
into when I found the time on my busy schedule.
Let There Be Light might get done, but not much else. Mountains and oceans and elephants would
still be drifting around the universe waiting to be attached to something.
Order
and precision are what you’d expect from God.
From me you’d get chaos. I once
dreamed of a complicated theory I had proposed and written in careful and full
detail on a sheaf of papers. A wind came from I don’t know where and blew the
pages off the desk, scattering them across the floor. Like a mad scientist I fell to my knees in a
panic to gather up the papers, but they no longer made any sense. I realized I was dreaming, but could see the essence of a truly great idea and I did not want to
lose it.
I struggled up from my sleep and wrote a note on the pad I kept next to
my cot. In the morning when I awoke, a
minute or two passed before I remembered the dream. I quickly grabbed the pad and read, “defrost
the refrigerator.”
The wind is picking up outside. I love the sound of it. Hearing it whistle
through the old shutters and moan around the eaves has always been like music
to me. Such an appreciation comes from
the heart, not the mind. And now I think
that Kickstart was more right than wrong.
I have for too long been overly interested
in my mind and my soul, more than my heart. But my mind is getting rusty and my
soul will never be more than what it is.
My heart is full of life, or could be.
It’s the part of me that feels someone else’s agony.
And the part of me that longs for God, rather than tries to understand
or obey him. With a lot of work. that
heart is the only part of me that stands a chance of leaving this world in
better condition than when it got here.
On
the other hand, I can easily make my experience of God a head trip, purely and
conveniently a construction in my mind. Entire churches have done so. I forget He is in his creation,
not just in our minds, He is here on the mountian in
the streams and boulders and pine trees
for Kickstart. And for me He is in my
body, my heart, everything and everyone around me and even in my desires. When I long for Grandma’s special gravy and
biscuits from sixty years ago on a Sunday afternoon, God is somehow in
that. I can’t tell you how. I only know this to be true: after years of
trying to meditate on His sacred
mysteries, I more often see visions of
chicken and dumplings. It must be what He wants me to see. You
would never hear such nonsense from a theological council of any reputable church because
it doesn’t make logical sense ... to the mind.
Maybe it doesn’t need to. A church listens to logic. The people listen to their hearts.
God
warned us a long time ago He wasn’t going to wait around for mankind to catch
up with Him as He continued to reveal himself.
Jesus told Nicodemus. “Do not be astonished that I said to you, “You
must be born from above. The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound
of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.”
So here’s what I’ve been
laying here thinking on this frigid night when my mind can’t even conjure up a
vision of Grandma’s chicken dinner.
Here’s my latest heresy.
If God were a short order
cook, we’d never be hungry.
If God were an accountant,
everyone would get what they deserved.
If God were a doctor, everyone
would enjoy excellent health.
If God were a teacher, we’d
all be worried about Report Cards. But
from what I’ve seen in the world, not many are worried about their Report
Cards.
If God were a policeman
everyone would be in a lot of trouble and if God were a judge everyone would be
damned.
But God is none of
those. He is bigger than the familiar. He’s
larger than life. So I’m thinking He
must be a cowboy. When you consider it,
He almost has to be. He’s extremely courteous and won’t push himself forward
unless invited. He’s always mending
fences. I see Him out on the range under a huge sky full of stars waiting for
his doggies to bed down while he sings them to sleep. And only a cowboy would say, “There, there,
little darlin’” when with tears in our eyes we get down on our knees to
pray. Or more often to complain
You
know, I've lived for 35 years up here on
the mountain the Indians called Onteora, The Land In The Sky. So it appeared to them as they gazed up from
the valley below. Tonight it may still
be pleasant down there. But up here on
the peak ... in cowboy land ... a white mantle of snow covers the blue-green
hemlocks. The moon has risen and the
bare maples glisten black in the cold damp air. Clouds scraped by
the mountain top from the bottom of the sky drift away like ships leaving without us. Tonight my brothers
and I lie shivering on our cots while sleet and snow pelt the windows, and the wind has its way with our creaking old
house.
The
spirit blows where it chooses and you don’t know where it’s been or where it’s
going.
But I know one thing. He is taking care of us as we bed down. And when the wind howls past the eaves and
moans down through the holes in the roof, I know that God is singing us to
sleep.
David Griffin Copyright 2014
The
Windswept Press
Murrells Inlet, South Carolina
www.windsweptpress.com
