Buffeted by grace

The fierce wind battered the tent fabric around me. I sat in the corner keeping the tent from becoming a kite, half hoping that this would be the day I fly. I sat hunched, the collar of my trench coat meeting the brim of my hat. My eyes peered through the crack toward the tent floor, at crystal of frozen coffee where it had spilled scalding. I spent two hours of my experiment in solitude in this way.¹

Shortly into my experience of chill. I examined my thoughts, I found that my mind was wandering to attempts to put words to the descriptions of the wind, the cold, the frozen coffee. I pulled out my rosary and fingered the beads, the Jesus prayer bringing focus back to my mind.

Bonhoeffer says, “Do not ask ‘How shall I pass this on?’ but ‘What does it say to me?’ Then ponder the Word long in your heart until it has gone right into you and taken possession of you.”²

That quote from Soul Feast has stuck with me. Too often my initial response to my conversation with God is, How am I to relate this? How do I describe this? But the discipline of solitude begs silence, begs secrecy. “Without silence there is no solitude.”³ Even though I was greatly tempted to categorized, describe and catalogue my experience, I found once I was with people I had a reticence to speak at all. It is with some difficulty that a day removed from the experience of Solitude I now turn to description.

So there I sat with my rosary beads, “Lord Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.” The touch of the beads and the recollection of prayer tuned out for a moment the writer in my mind, the cold, and the clutter of thought. I finished making my way around the decades and returned to allow the distractions of my surroundings to speak to me.

The overwhelming image, as the wind howled and tent flapped and fluttered, was that of Elijah hidden in the cleft of the rock as God passed by.

The LORD said, "Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by."

Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper.⁴

“What if God was in the terrible wind?” I thought as my body leaned back into the wind and the billowing fabric embraced me. “What if this thin nylon is all that separated me from the real presence of God in the wind?” I imagined that the only reason I was inside the tent was that the fabric protected my body from being vaporized by his Holy Presence. “Wouldn’t it be better,” I thought, “to go out there and be vaporized just to see him face to face?” In the tent it certainly sounded and felt like a mountain shattering kind of wind was whipping me across Saginaw bay, but the Lord was not in the wind.

After two hours of wind and below freezing temperature⁵, I felt like giving in and giving up. I asked God what I should do. I looked longingly out the vents at the top of the tent, but not for long, the wind froze my face and blew me back. I heard him say in my heart, “Go in and enjoy my warmth.” I did not dare question whether it was my imagination or if it was truly his voice - I ran for the church.

Even before I could make myself a double English toffee latte, I was overwhelmed with a release. It was a climax. I entered into God hard after my fast from shelter. He was the warmth around me, he was the walls that kept the wind out. He was mine. If I had a fire place I would have perhaps calmed gently but instead I cried out to him and sucked the heat from my coffee even as I sucked life from His breast. I sat and listened. Silence is the essence of solitude.

In taking away shelter, I stood in solidarity with the homeless, going without another of the basic needs at the bottom of the Maslow Hierarchy. I wondered through chattering teeth what the man, a friend of a parishioner, who lives in a tent and works in the sugar factory, was doing this cold night. Has he found an affordable apartment yet? Is he freezing with me?

Simplicity strips away the romantic notions of the disciplined life. I imagined myself enjoying a few hours sitting in the middle of the tent with a cup of coffee surrounded by candles. The wind knocked over my coffee, I had to sit in the corner struggling against the wind, and the candles wouldn’t light. All the amenities stripped away, I found raw solitude. In simplicity I sat before the Lord, fully aware that I was dependent, uncomfortable and lost without him. Simplicity makes independence a dread thought.

Simplicity challenges me to the core. Do I give away the MacBook I bought for my studies? Should I have bought the new printer to go with it? Simplicity also demands that I not cast myself in a good light, so here I confess my extravagance, my printer is a color laser printer. I am not comfortable owning these hip and useful things.

Both solitude and simplicity are dear and painful to me. They stretch and buffet my soul. They answer the prayer I have prayed with John Donne, “Batter my heart, three person’d God.”

1 I thought I would see what would happen if I took away another element from the base of Maslow’s pyramid, so in my experiment I pitched a tent in the corner of the church yard furthest from all action. I didn’t stake it in so my body was all that kept if from flying away.

2 Thompson, Marjorie J. Soul Feast. Westminster John Knox Press. Pg. 26.

3 Foster, Richard J. Celebration of Discipline. Harper Collins. Pg. 98.

4 1 Kings 19:11-13 (NIV)

5 According to weather.com, the wind speed was 29 mph, and temp 28°F (wind-chill brought it to 14°F)