Olivia, a fellow prayer group member, has returned from visiting friends in Hawaii. While there, she went swimming with dolphins and told of the connection she felt with them that went beyond words.
The second time out, she saw a pod of 20 dolphins, below her in the clear blue water. They began to leap out of the bay with exuberance, playing on the surface and under.
“They are trying to remind us of our natural place in the world,” she says. “When I closed my eyes, I began to see their luminous forms in my inner vision.”
We agreed, Olivia and I and other group members, on this experience as an indicator of contact with the spirit at work in our world. While swimming near the dolphins she felt herself in touch with mystery. Through a kind of “architecture of light” (her words) she renewed her feeling of a deeper meaning that goes beyond appearances.
Another image of spirit has stayed with me for decades. A friend told me what it was like to land on an aircraft carrier in World War II. As a Navy pilot, he managed to touch down safely dozens of times, first in training, then in actual warfare. But it was never easy or assured.
Navigating toward the floating landing field, he would first spot the alarmingly small ship far below as it rose and fell on the vast sea. In those days, carriers were much smaller than they have since become. The pilot’s task was to have his plane hit the deck in precisely the place where the plane’s tail hook could catch the chain that would stop it. A few feet off, and the plane would go overboard, possibly killing the pilot.
My friend would often compare this exercise in courage to his experience of the spiritual life. In both arenas he would be tested by the need to trust. Trusting in God meant for him facing the unknown with courage as he placed his wellbeing in the divine hands.
Many people go through ups and downs in their pursuit of God. For the popular saint, Therese of Lisieux, it was mostly downs as she devoted herself to the spiritual life within a French Carmelite convent in the 1890s. As those in my book group discovered recently, the nickname “Little Flower” gives the wrong impression of this saint. Far from delicate, she was a young woman who was strong enough to go through agonizing experiences of both body and soul.
Writing about this saint’s trials in Easter of 1896, Kathryn Harrison says: “Thérèse was abruptly plunged into what she called ‘the thickest darkness.’ The faith that she had always taken for granted―‘living,’ ‘clear,’ uninterrupted by doubt―vanished, leaving her in a despair so profound it defied articulation. Once, she had found words inadequate to the ‘secrets of heaven’; now she discovered they were useless when trying to describe what seemed a visit to hell.”
In conversation about Thérèse, I foolishly lamented my own superficiality that prevents me from experiencing such highs and lows. In response my friend Emerson, advanced both in years and in wisdom, replied: “And you don’t need them.” This perceptive remark came to me as a bolt of lightening, bringing me back from silly fantasy to reality. In Emerson’s view, I was already receiving what I needed for my spiritual life.
Instead of regretting what I don’t have by way of spiritual gifts, I turn with admiration toward those friends whose courage in facing life-threatening disease inspires me. Each day two of them face the prospect of death possibly coming in the near future, doing so with greater pluck than I could imagine myself summoning up.
A Lenten prayer service last week also upped my morale. The dignity and reverence that marked this simple liturgy in my parish church made it a gift to our community of faith. Reading from the Bible, singing hymns, offering prayers for the needs of the church and the world, and gathering afterward over food and drink, all made for an experience of soul.
So did the talk from the visiting speaker, a layman filled with insight along with skill at words, often humorous and graceful.
These, then, are some of the themes that I have unpacked from experiences flowing in the last week in March. No one of them perhaps carries great weight but to me they offer signals for the life of the spirit.
Richard Griffin