This poem's been haunting me:
"Heaven—Haven"
-A nun takes the veil-
I have desired to go
Where springs not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail
And a few lilies blow.
And I have asked to be
Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
And out of the swing of the sea.
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It's G. M. Hopkins.
It's written by a Catholic priest, in the voice of a Catholic nun. I've been reading a book called The Burdens of Sister Margaret, which is based around a collection of letters writted from a troubled Dutch cloister in the seventeenth century. It's been reminding me that despite all romanticism, there really is no place like the one Hopkins wrote about. There is no permanent retreat from our storms, or from ourselves.
Last week's meeting for worship was hard for me. As I said to friends, sometimes meeting feels like a long time-out: "sit there and think about what you've done!" That's what I was doing . . . trying to open my heart to worship and to being led, and instead being visited by the memories of my troubles and failures. All in a row, Friends rose to speak of the peace and escape they felt in meeting. They said it was a blessing to leave behind their daily cares for an hour. I wrinkled my brow and read Hopkins in my mind. Never are my daily cares more near to me than in worship.
And out of the swing of the sea.
Jeff and I read Jonah together a little while ago.
Then the men were even more afraid, and said to him, "What is this that you have done!" For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them so.
Then they said to him, "What shall we do to you, that the sea may quiet down for us?" For the sea was growing more and more tempestuous.
He said to them, "Pick me up and throw me into the sea; then the sea will quiet down for you; for I know it is because of me that this great storm has come upon you."
Nevertheless the men rowed hard to bring the ship back to land, but they could not, for the sea grew more and more stormy against them.
Then they cried out to the Lord, "Please, O Lord, we pray, do not let us perish on account of this man's life. Do not make us guilty of innocent blood; for you, O Lord, have done as it pleased you."
So they picked Jonah up and threw him into the sea; and the sea ceased from its raging
Am I fleeing the presence of the Lord? I'm certainly not trying to. But the storm rages in my worship. Or instead of my worship?
In his prayer Jonah says:
You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me; all your waves and your billows passed over me.
Have I been thrown overboard yet? Am I waiting for some fish to swallow me? I do know that to be "out of the swing of the sea" is not this Quaker's lot.
I don't think it is out of order that my daily cares are with me, on me, around me, in worship. My daily cares have nothing to do with schedules and budgets and to-do lists. I have easier ways to escape those than worship. My daily cares have to do with the state of my soul and the state of my faithfulness. I struggle not to let past mistakes derail present faithfulness, but these days I am tangled in the unavoidable messes of my not-so-distant past. I know that my best faithfulness right now is to dwell low and close to these issues. The shame and pain that I feel surrounding them are to be trampled down, but the issues themselves shouldn't be. It is hard to separate those two out. And I want a different task! I want a different ministry! I want a mission!
Instead I am asked to sit low and sort out my own soul. When I was younger I would sit in the barn and separate and sort a can of rusty old nails, and this feels much the same. Once taken apart and cleaned and categorized, the nails could be used again, for a bird house or a dog house or a stall, but as long as they sat in the can all tangled up with pennies and washers and bits of wire, they corroded. This job feels a lot like that, full of sharp points and tetnus and tediousness. Thing is, nobody asked me to sort out the nails. Probably no one would have noticed if the coffee can and the nails and the wire all rusted together into one big useless lump. And anyway, nails can be had for a few pennies a pound. This is different--these are the only nails I've got, and Someone needs them.
So right now I am carrying that rusty can around with me day and night, in meeting and out of meeting, into retreats and quiet places and storms and seas, all the same. I hope I'm making some progress.
