Remembering

Today I returned from a Lenten preparation retreat at the St. Francis Springs Prayer Center. Nearly 100 people came yesterday to ready themselves for the beginning of Lent during the retreat proper, and they came from all over. I won't attempt to recount what was said in the individual sessions, because it wouldn't have the same impact second hand. But it was after most of the retreatants had left that the real retreat began for me.

It began with a walk around the surrounding property, an apt metaphor perhaps for the Lenten journey ahead. Yesterday was beautiful, with a bright blue sky and lengthening shadows as I set out just after four. The weather was chilly, but not really cold as I walked out the gravel road toward the entrance. A car full of departing retreatants stopped to ask if I needed a ride, thinking I was hoofing it home. No thank you, I said, I'm just out for a walk.

I turned right to follow the trail that runs along the edge of the woods and past the little pond that holds the water supply for fire suppression at the Center. After a quarter mile or so, I turned right again onto an old road that goes past a storage building toward an old farm field.

Fifty yards up the road, I looked up the corridor of the road and out into the field. From the dark cool shade of the road I was on, I could see the field was covered in old corn stubble and tall dead grass washed in golden late afternoon light. And as I looked, a young buck walked into view, browsing, looking, browsing more, looking more. He was followed by three does.

I was downwind and in the shade, wearing gray and black, so I figured I might have a chance of getting close, so I stalked as best I could up through the dry crackly grass and leaves, along the edge of the woods that partially obscured me from the view of the deer. But the last doe sensed something she didn't like, and stared at me for what seemed like ten minutes without moving a muscle. In the end she just didn't like the looks of me, flipped up her flag and she and her friends trotted off.

Continuing down the road, I entered the field, which could not be more than a couple of acres surrounded by Virginia pines and brush. My friend Don Lahey wants to plant a vineyard there someday. I couldn't help thinking it would be a great place to plant a garden to supply fresh food and herbs for the Center. Or maybe just for the deer.

Re-entering the woods, I walked a short distance further to what has become a favorite spot of mine, a rock outcropping the size of a small bus that I have decided to call Petrus. You can easily climb its flanks and sit comfortably with a birds-eye view down the ridge to the creek, surrounded by open woods. It reminds me of sitting in a deer stand, listening to the woodland sounds and peering intently around for signs of wildlife. When things get that quiet in the woods, you can clearly hear the flapping of a small bird's wings twenty or thirty yards away. Fr. Louie chose well this piece of land. St. Francis would approve.

Decamping from Petrus and continuing down the trail, I crossed the little creek that runs parallel to the building and walked downstream. Twice I stopped to admire places where the creek tumbled over a huge rock, and thinking about the trout that would be hiding in the pool below if it were a mountain creek.

Finally I arrived at the place I now realize was my destination all along. Below the chapel and across the creek from it, there is a clearing surrounded by logs stood on their ends to form seats. I guess they've been there since the Springs opened four years ago, and now they're pretty rotten. They look as if they'd fall apart if you tried to sit on them. But off to one side is a little bench that makes a fine place to sit.

I like this place because opposite the chapel is a simple cross at least ten feet high. Big enough, in fact, for a real crucifixion. And so it can be a powerful place to consider, to try truly imagine what it means to die on a cross. Pierced yet not so wounded as to die from the wounds. Positioned just so as to be hanging, and not able to breathe without pulling yourself up by those very wounds. Weakening and finding it harder and harder to draw breath, Each breath an agony and a struggle. Abandoned by friends, scorned and ridiculed.

In his homily today, Fr. Louie said that traditionally we think of prayer, fasting, and works of charity (almsgiving) as the spiritual exercises of Lent. He suggested a fourth -- remembering. Remembering exactly what Jesus did for us on that cross, what he suffered, what he gave up, and how he surrendered utterly to his Father's will. And he did it for us -- not some universal "we the people" kind of "us", but for you, personally and individually, and for me. That is our journey this Lent, to remember.