."I belonged...within something greater than my own life, to Life itself! To God, if you want to put it that way."

(Eugene O'Neill, Long Day's Journey Into Night)

 

"On this earth the experience of great beauty always remains mysteriously linked with the experience of great loneliness. This reminds me again that there still is a beauty I have not seen yet: the beauty that does not create loneliness but unity." (Henri Nouwen)

 

Slowly, reluctantly, we're putting away the things of summer, and getting ready for another unexpected

shortening of our time on the Island. My Mom is ill, in the hospital, and all of the factors of love and separation and concern and care arise, inviting the soul to an anxious state.  My sisters and nieces are doing a remarkable job of care-taking and double-checking and correcting the doctor and her staff, while loving my Mom and teaching the next generation, in Grace and my nephew Michael, what this God-thing is really all about. For right here and now, it is about returning to just this moment, pausing with love, and in that pause, returning to a sense of peace.

 

We find ourselves saying the same thing every year as we pack to leave: time has flown by; seems we just got here; all those plans we had at the beginning are now a memory.  I wondered if my Mom was thinking the same thoughts. The events of our lives become the microcosm, a gift or hint if we are paying attention, of the larger event of living and leaving.

 

This past weekend, we took advantage of the end-of-season special at the Tsa-Kwa-Luten Lodge on Quadra Island. Our room faced Vancouver Island, with views of the mountains and boat traffic on the sparkling waters of the Strait, and the town of Campbell River a short distance across the channel.  After a visit to the First Nation Museum, and a brief walk along the water to the lighthouse, we settled in to watch the colors of day change and shift to the twinkling lights both in the night sky, and along the banks and hills on the opposite shore, homes lit up by people we would never meet or see, but who added warmth and wonder to our evening.

 

The next day, we drove to the other side of Quadra and walked a beautiful peninsula facing Cortes Island - place of the wonderful time with Brother David last year - and the multiple islands between us and the coastal mountains of the mainland. In the far-off distance, behind the layers of tree tops and island outlines, was a snow-capped peak that was likely visible only on clear days. It predominated the skyline. Mikie found a log of driftwood that had his name on it, and promptly laid down, saying the only other walking he would do was back to the car.

 

But I wanted to get to the end of the trail, to the tip of the peninsula, through the canopy of forest and along the drift-wood littered shore. It was the best of the Pacific Northwest Island experience: the quiet of the day, the peace in this outdoor shrine, the primal wilderness of uninhabited islands that dotted the waterscape, the hum of the Cortes Island ferry, the murmur of its wake; the expansiveness of the vista. I found myself repeating with each step the lesson of the morning's reading: "I belong within Something greater; I belong within Something greater."

 

And suddenly my Mom's experience, what my sisters and nieces and brother were doing for her, what all of us do for each other every day, from turning on a light at night that someone else might see to giving or receiving a simple smile, to offering a cup of coffee to a friend: everything fit into that mysterious Something greater, whether we know it or not. Brother David talks about the individual bucket being placed into the ocean in explaining our submersion from individuals into the Divine. We belong, as much to each other as to any Other.

 

When we got home, I looked at a map and discovered that the snow-capped mountain I was seeing on that walk was Mount Alice - my mother's name. Who can explain these minor miracles, except to say that All Is Well?  There are moments when it all seems so vast; there are moments when it all seems so intimate. But in these moments, we return to O'Neill's "veil of things as they seem, drawn back by an unseen hand. For a second you see, and seeing the secret, you ARE the secret."

 

It is in those moments we are recharged to face what comes next. Except for the Saints and mystics, most of us don't stay in that place. Perhaps we recognize it more quickly when it comes again, though, or see it in others, even when they don't.  We are called to hold that place for those most in need when they are ill or hurting. We see the Secret within them, and hold up a mirror to their own great beauty, creating unity out of loneliness.

 

Einstein asked once "If you are not a holy questioner, who are you?" These islands, these moments in space and time, don't give answers.  But they lead into the questions that create awe and wonder and ultimately, silence. We don't know what the year will bring, how much longer we'll be able to come up here, or how things will change, only that they will. We move within Something greater, in a world filled with water chickens and grace, mountains and love, and holy questions.

YAY GOD