Unfinished business

I don't like to leave anything undone once I've embarked on it. Not a project, not a chore, not a paper. Not a puzzle. I knew when I started the puppy puzzle on my retreat that I would not finish it, but I started it anyway. Thanks to an assist from Anne, a schoolmate from Yale who is doing an internship at Holy Cross, we actually completed the border this morning, so at least it looked like it was well in progress when I left it. Maybe someone else will pick up where we left off and finish those puppies. They're all similar in color - 5 or 6 golden retrievers and yellow labs, shih tzus and westies, a couple of black labs. It's going to be slow going, but someone is sure to get the job done.

It seems to me there is a spiritual principle there. I know that if I should ever become a parish priest, setting frameworks and letting others carry out the ministry will go with the territory. In leadership development we call that "empowering others to act." But there's something even more basic here. Even now, at this point in my life as a student and a wife and mother and friend and sibling, others can pick up where I leave off. Tim and Lela can take care of everything at home while I'm in New Haven. St. James and St. Peter's are doing just fine without me. Friends can sustain our friendship without my being the instigator of activity. And it all will be just as good if not better than if I had stuck around and kept control of things. That's the great illusion in life, that we have control. For some of us, it's a bit more of a challenge to shatter that myth than it is for others. I'm one of the tough ones.

So, Anne, the puzzle is all yours. I hope you recruit someone to take over when you leave on Sunday. I also hope someone takes a picture of the finished product, but if not, I'm sure it will be beautiful. I can rest easy. Amazing what a puzzle can teach a person.

Retreat time

He said to them, 'Come away to a deserted place

all by yourselves and rest a while.'

Mark 6:31

And so I have. After missing the Berkeley junior class retreat last month, I promised to make it up by coming on an individual retreat during spring break. Much as I missed the fellowship and bonding that took place among the group, there is something very refreshing about being away by oneself. There are surely other people on retreat here at Holy Cross Monastery in West Park, NY, but there is still plenty of privacy and quiet. From my room, I can look out on the Hudson River flowing by and watch a flock of wild turkeys foraging around on the ground at the edge of the woods. It's a deliciously peaceful setting.

This is a deeply spiritual place. One senses this in the commitment of the brothers to their life in community, their welcoming of pilgrims to share this space, and the praying of the Office four times daily in addition to morning Eucharist. It creates a rhythm to the day that is very hard to find outside of a monastic community. I may pause for morning or evening prayer or compline on my own, but that is certainly a hit-or-miss proposition, and I certainly rarely 'hit' a set hour! There is a sign over the entryway here that says "Crux est medicina mundi" - the cross is medicine for the world. To come here, especially during this season of Lent, and meditate on the road that leads to Jerusalem, is, indeed, restorative medicine.

How is it that we missed Jesus' call to come away, to refresh ourselves, to pray? Each of the synoptic gospels tells us that this was common for Jesus. Luke implies that he did it regularly (5:16). How did I get so busy and so important that I can't do the same? It's not as if the world will stop spinning without me! In truth, I am a rather solitary figure anyway, so physically picking myself up and going to a retreat center is not always necessary for me to find some quiet space, but it is still important to do so from time to time.

There are plenty of things I should be doing these days. I have an endless amount of Hebrew I could be studying. There's all the reading that will begin to stack up again next week when classes resume. I could be thinking about my exegesis paper for Old Testament. But I'm not doing any of those things. I am reading one book for school, Knowledge in the Blood by Jonathan Jansen. It's about post-Apartheid South Africa and is assigned for my Ministry and the Disinherited class. It's the kind of book I read for enjoyment anyway, so I thought that would be okay to get started on. I'm going to save the book Tim lent me - The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food and Love by Kristin Kimball - for after this term ends. I've also been working on a jigsaw puzzle in the common area. I was so excited to find an unopened, 1,000 piece picture of puppies! Puzzle putting together is a long and honored tradition in my family, and I am finding it amazingly contemplative as an exercise here.

My usual retreat spot is the Jesuit Center in Wernersville, PA. It was a novitiate built by a wealthy couple in the late 1920's, and it's another of those spirit-filled places where one can actually sense the supportive prayers of all who have walked those halls and the priests who have retired there. I haven't been there in a while. The last retreat I had scheduled fell on the day that we buried my son. I haven't thought much about going back, but perhaps I should, just to finally keep that time away. Maybe I could spend it just praying and journaling about Seth. Or maybe I can just go away to a quiet place again and rest a while. It's good medicine for the soul.

Another midterm. Already?

YDS does love its breaks. A reading week in February, now two weeks for spring break. Another reading week (or at least half of one) at the end of April. Add in a couple of snow days, MLK day, Good Friday and you can imagine how difficult it is to gain any kind of momentum. Not that I'm complaining, mind you, because lack of momentum means lots of catching up to do from time to time. So this is not so much spring break as it is a break from classes but not from studying.

It didn't help, of course, that I had a concussion, have been worried about Boudreau and his knee surgery and recovery (which is going slowly, by the way), faced the second anniversary of Seth's death and the impending death of my dear friend and mentor Edward Kryder. Throw in some other family-related stuff, and it's a recipe for heading back into the old groundhog hole. But you know the old joke about the kid who wanted a pony for Christmas who rushed out to the barn on Christmas morning only to find a huge pile of manure, so he grabbed a shovel and started digging, saying, "There must be a pony in here somewhere." There is, indeed, a pony, as there always is.

More often than not, the spirit of God manifests itself not in thunderbolts (although that would make life much simpler) but in the small things that let us know that we are loved and valued and that we matter. I know that I am surrounded by people who love me and whose love carries me through those times when I can't seem to find that pony. All the breaks have given me time to steady myself through emotional days and to rest when my poor head just wanted a nap. Even Boudreau's convalescence has been an opportunity to slow down when I'm at home, tending to him and keeping him quiet which helps me to quiet myself.

And Edward? Even his steady decline and entry into hospice is another teachable moment for the man whose entire life has been about teaching. He was a pastor for three decades in Buffalo, helped with the revision of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, served on the liturgical commission of the ECUSA, and taught pastoral theology and patristics to a lucky generation of seminarians at Virginia Theological Seminary. I met him during his retirement, and we quickly became fast friends, just as he seems to do with everyone. And now he seems to take joy in planning his funeral, preparing to enter into the nearer presence of our Lord, and through my sadness, I am learning what lived faith really is. Even when his dear wife, Sally, suffered a serious fall last week, he remained stalwart while all I could think of was that the two of them ought to be able to live these last weeks or months or whatever time he has left together, not with her in the hospital or rehab. He is unfazed. All will be well. God will handle it. When I took him the Eucharist last Sunday and read the Gospel passage from Matthew 6 that says:

Therefore do not worry about your life...

and can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your life...

so do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring troubles of its own...

he said in voice strong and firm, "I'm not worried." Hmmm. Maybe sometimes God does speak in thunderbolts.