I had been there for what seemed like hours. Eyes closed, sitting still, waiting on something to happen. Waiting for God to appear. Waiting for anything. I was several days into an eight-day silent retreat, and it felt like God was doing the same thing I was doing: being silent.
A friend of mine, a nun, had pressured me into going. I hadn’t wanted to; I had been feeling disillusioned with God lately, and a retreat seemed like a disappointment waiting to happen. I told her I didn’t have the money to pay for it, and I shouldn’t take the time off from work anyway, but she persisted. She called me the next day to say she’d found me a “scholarship.”
You can only say “no” to a nun for so long.
The retreat center was on a hundred or so acres of land in rural Central America. It was breathtakingly beautiful. I’d been working in the region for several years at this point, with some of the poorest people in the hemisphere, and the brokenness and injustices I was immersed in daily made me question the loving God I had heard about in Sunday school. If he was so loving, why didn’t he do something about this? Spending eight days in silence with this God didn’t sound so appealing.
That morning the retreat director asked us to meditate on the second chapter in the book of Hosea, where God addresses his people though the prophet:
Therefore, I will allure her, bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her. … And she will sing there as in the days of her youth. … In that day, declares the Lord, “you will call me ‘my husband’ and you will never again call me, ‘my master.’” (14 – 16)
I went out to the far reaches of the property, as I’d been doing all week, and sat down among the trees. Time passed, and nothing happened. I grew restless. Another dry prayer session, I thought. Then a light sprinkle began to fall. “Just great,” I muttered inwardly. I had been sitting there for well over an hour, not feeling anything, and now it was raining. I almost stood to leave, but something in me resisted. I stayed still and returned to the passage.
“I will allure her… speak tenderly to her… she will sing there as in the days of her youth… you will call me ‘my husband’ and never again ‘my master.’”
The rain kept falling, steadily but softly. I stayed there until it no longer felt like an annoyance but like kisses from God, as he spoke tenderly to me, reminding me of his immense love. And I let myself receive it.
I’ve always felt particularly close to God when I’m in nature. A slight breeze blowing across my face. A beautiful, early spring flower announcing that winter is over and new life is bursting forth. A powerful thunderstorm with lightning brightening the night sky and thunder crashing down. I feel God close by in these moments.
St. Francis of Assisi is famous for experiencing God in the natural world, and this Saturday, October 4, is his feast day. In a society that is more than ever disconnected from nature, addicted to technology and always in a hurry, St. Francis is someone to whom we should give more attention.
Francis wrote poetically about his intimate relationship with creation. In his writings he thanked God for “Sister Moon,” “Brother Wind” and “Mother Earth.” Legend says that he could communicate with animals. During his final hours, as he was nearing death, he asked to be laid naked on the ground, to be close to the raw earth in his last moments.
Francis clearly knew something that our modern society seems to have forgotten. We’ve strayed far from living in communion with our Mother Earth, and the planet is suffering because of it. Pope Francis told us in “Laudato Si’” that, “[The Earth] now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. … This is why the earth herself, burdened and laid waste, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor; she ‘groans in travail’” (Rom 8:22).
So maybe, in honor of his feast day, we could pause, try to connect with the earth, and work to protect her.
Many Catholics and others across the country are doing just that. Throughout this year’s Season of Creation, people have been participating in hundreds of pilgrimages across the country in an extraordinary effort to encounter God in creation and to pray to renew our relationships with God, the Earth and one another. In almost all 50 states, people are gathering to be Pilgrims of Hope for Creation: praying, walking and laboring to repair our broken relationship with our Mother Earth.
Just as years ago I sat still in the silence of my retreat, waiting for God to speak, only to discover his love in the soft raindrops, today we must all rediscover God’s love in the rhythms of creation. In our hurried, distracted age, perhaps what we need most is to be still again, to listen and to let creation remind us of God’s tender presence. Maybe then we will begin to treat the Earth like the mother she is and encounter God’s love for us there anew.
