Article and poem I shared at the 9/7 Orientation

A Space for Silence & Prayer

Article by Judy Walsh-Mellett – September 2019 eNews

(Judy is a graduate of the program that I am now studying at Shalem.)

As a child walking in the woods,
I was not compelled
to ponderous thinking
or righting the world’s wrongs.

I simply walked
and paused breathless
if a deer or a rabbit
passed by.

Or gazed in awe
if I chanced to see
a Lady Slipper’s rare glory,
or delighted in the flush
on a blackbird’s wing.

I felt no need to plumb
the mysteries of life.

Or did I?

I wrote this poem some years ago while on silent retreat surrounded by forest. It occurred to me, after taking silent retreats in this wooded location for many years, that one of the reasons I felt so comfortable in that place was that it felt like the “home” of my childhood. It was easier for me to sink back into God’s presence surrounded by fields, trees, and wild water. God spoke to me here in a language I could easily understand.

Yet I have lived most of my adult life in the city. At times I feel that I arrived at silent retreat in the woods gasping for breath. It was not that I never prayed at home and in my daily life, but entering forest land while on retreat seemed to create a different depth for prayer so I sought it out whenever I could align the parts of my life to allow it.

As my children grew a bit older and my schedule opened, I determined that I could make monthly trips to this favorite retreat site—a quiet day here, a weekend retreat there, an occasional Ember Day. I took out my calendar and planned an opportunity each month for the coming year. This would be an excellent spiritual practice! The date of the first planned mini-retreat came and we woke to a blizzard; all of my kids would be home from school. It felt like a cosmic joke. The next month the night before my scheduled “day away,” one son developed a fever. More celestial laughter. The third date came and yet another situation beyond my control prevented me from going away for the retreat day. Some heavenly hilarity. There was something here for me to learn; some understanding that needed to seep more deeply into my heart.

I felt that God was inviting me to know and experience that I could rest in God’s presence as much at home in the city as I could away in the woods. This was an invitation to not wait for “retreat” to go deeper into prayer. Prayer could happen here and now wherever and however that was.

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