WHAT WELCOMES US TO QUIET AND FRUITFULLNESS?

When Pr. Luisa and I were on sabbatical in the last part of 2018, we had the privilege to spend three weeks at the La Muse Artist Retreat in Labastide Esparbairenque, a small village (83 people) in the mountains in the south of France.

Many mornings, I would walk about a quarter mile up a hill to an old church, with a churchyard and cemetery.  I would sit in the churchyard, meditate, listen and write.  We later found out that the church had one Mass per year!  As I entered the churchyard, I first passed through a bower of cypress trees. I could see the trees as I walked up the path, and I came to feel that they were welcoming me to that quiet, and fruitful space.  My mind, my spirit and my body felt their welcome, and their invitation to not worry, but trust. Some days, it felt like a lovely serenade.

Most of the time, I was alone for the hours that I spent there.  A few times, Lupi, the mayor’s dog came to visit, and a couple of times, the mayor—a man in his seventies—came with Lupi and his other dog.  The mayor would greet me heartily with a “Bon Jour!”; I would respond in kind, and soon say to him “I don’t really speak much French.”  That was his signal to keep talking in French!  The few things I did understand was that he always inquired about how I was, and wished me well.  And one day, he told me about the wrought iron cross in the churchyard—what I understood was that there was a priest of the parish buried under there.  I heard the word “ans”—years—but missed the number that came before it.

So I added the priest to the “great cloud of witnesses” who were with me at the lovely garden where I prayed, listened and wrote.  The young man whose gravestone said he “died for his homeland” 101 years before.  The women who had lived well into their nineties, and the children who had died so young.  And so many people who passed over that hill, for so many years.  Though I was almost always alone, I was part of a beloved community, stretching way back, and stretching forward.

I asked the host of the retreat center how old the church was.  She said she wasn’t sure, but that the trees were 900 years old!  How many people, dogs, wild boars, deer and winged creatures had passed through those arboreal arches and found peace there?  How many still linger in that sacred space?

I wonder how many times we have been welcomed by the trees around our spaces, and we didn’t realize it, or stop to wonder at their music.  I’m looking out the window at home at the neighbors tree, which is surrounded by a tree house built many years ago.  It is covered in a cloak of beautiful fresh snow. When we first moved here almost ten years ago, we would see the two children and their friends playing there.  They are now older teens, and so the lure of that special space has faded for them.  But it’s not hard to imagine them dancing and laughing up there, their happy minds, bodies and spirits welcomed by this beautiful tree I’ve so often overlooked.

Be beauty.  Be justice.  Be welcomed by the patient, loving trees.

Patrick