It had seemed like a long week for no particular reason. The days had no extras—like weddings or funerals—no one in code blue, no families in distress, no turmoil in the church house: all had been quiet on every front.
And that’s when I am the most vulnerable to the slow burn, simmering over there in one of those dark corners of my soul, until, suddenly, something ignites it, and I’m running around like a crazy fool in a full-blown panic, trying to figure out where that fire started.
It begins by not paying attention to the care of the soul, not tending to its rest and nourishment, being too busy to let God rest me in his green pastures.
It proceeds by ignoring that trash over there in that corner, the stuff which, if left alone, dries into a crumbly, crisp, clump, until at the right moment, a lighted match falls on it, and flames flash in a split second.
It’s not the frontal attack that assaults me; no battering ram at the gate of my castle is necessary; it’s the little foxes sneaking over the ramparts and scurrying around and over the walls, circling back and forth, and over and under, like so many squirrels scuttering up and down a tree, annoying me until they’ve made themselves unbearable.
That’s when I know it’s time to escape, and for me, that’s usually a trip to the monastery, where within the confines of its walls, I find a refreshing freedom and a renewed peace.
I notify one of the Brothers there, a friend, “I need some Gethsemani time,” I say. And when I arrive, he listens, and I am encouraged. Then, my soul is soothed by the monks’ prayers in their daily offices. And the monastery’s silence speaks to me in low, earthen tones.
But this time, it’s the wild geese that exhort me.
Their abruptness strikes me as irreverent, disturbing my thoughts of holier things. These geese don’t heed the call for silence: they ignore the Rule of St. Benedict. Honking their way south, they are oblivious to the liturgy of the hours.
But today, they serve God as my teachers.
I can hear them just the same as they fly over my back yard. I don’t need to travel to the Abbey to see wild geese flying overhead. But this day, there within the monastery walls, they speak. As the saying goes, “The teacher arrives when the student is ready.” There they are. And here I am. They V-shape their way into the horizon, and their lesson is done.
I know why they are traveling overhead, even if they don’t. They are traveling back to a place where the insect population is more abundant during this season, before the winter cold sets into the landscape.
They are obedient to the call they don’t hear but only instinctively or intuitively know, in the depths of whatever makes a bird a bird. And in their very flying, in their going south and in their coming back north, in their obedience to what is, not what can be analyzed and parsed, they attest to the power of something greater: the freedom to be who they are created to be; the courage to rise and soar; the power to point the way upward and onward. Not floundering in despair, not flailing in timidity, they fly, intent on finishing their journey.
I smile as the flock honks on their happy way, wild geese they are, oblivious to me and my thoughts. But they seem to be winking, from way up there, reminding me that sometimes it’s in the loneliness, the solitude, the restrictions of life’s walls, that we can hear the wild geese call.