July 6

I’m finally back at my desk.  I returned Sunday from the most amazing retreat of my life, still in some sort of shock through Monday.  Then Tuesday and Wednesday i began the gradual descent/ascent (depends how you look at it) back into daily community life.  The “ascent” idea came from comparing the process to divers returning to the surface: you have to come up slowly or you get the “bends.”  

What made it so amazing?  I think I stumbled onto union with God, my heart’s deepest desire.  I took no devices, and very little reading. (I do wish I had pictures to share with you, but then I wouldn’t have had this retreat.)  I began each day at 4:30 on the beach watching the dawn, followed by a walk through the neighborhood of river and osprey nests.  After breakfast it was back outside until the sun drove me in for a few hours.  Then to the chapel for prayer before the Sacrament, then lunch.  Then a nap, then back outside in the shade until returning to the chapel before dinner.  Then a walk, a little reading, bed.  I need sunrise more than sunset, so I went to bed before dark.

This is not new; it’s pretty much what I do on long retreat.  But I’ve changed over the past year, I think.  I was more present, there was less junk in my head to clear out.  There were no problems to mull over, no big issues to discern (well, there was one, but it became clear on the first day!).  Just being with God in creation.  And finally, the last morning, I saw it.  

It’s all one.  We’re all one.  Nothing is lost, nothing can be lost.  I am a grain of sand in the ocean of God, and that is more than enough.  Wholeness and brokenness are false oppositions.  It’s all one.  Everything is here.  I have a preference for some shapes over others, but that is just a human thing.  God sees it all.  

I have searched for this moment for decades.  I’ve read of it, but didn’t expect to see it this side of death.  I knew the words, I had the insight earlier in the week, but it was still “I” realizing it.  And perhaps that’s the point: all week I let go of “me” as much as I could, turning off the ego mind and noticing the rocks and shells and crabs and skunks and birds and woodchucks and waves and wind.  “I” can’t get there, but something - soul, Self, I don’t know - that something is already there, waiting for “I” to let go.

Now I’m surfacing, or coming down from the mountain.  “I” am returning to the dense air of the flatlands, where other people, other parts of God’s creation, live.  And i’m letting this experience work on me.  It should be an interesting year.