Surrendering To The Flow

It is not something that I constantly dwell on but, like other memories, it is something that floats to the surface occasionally.

I had flown to Canada on a ten-day trip to visit an old friend that had moved there. He had moved to Canada and purchased a derelict farm. On the farm, where he and his family resided, he had built a small off-grid cabin for guests seeking solitude. That little off-grid cabin would be my home for those ten days. 

I visited with my friend during the day and took my meals at table with his family. Large parts of each day were spent alone in solitude and prayer. Even the daytime adventures of hiking miles to out of the way places with my friend were largely quiet, punctuated at times with intimate conversation.

The dream startled me awake in the wee hours that morning in September of 2005. I lit the kerosene lantern and pondered on the dream until breakfast time.

I dreamed that I was walking through a vast forest.

I came upon a small trickle of a stream, stepped into it, and began following it.

The stream became gradually deeper and wider. I kept following it. It grew ankle deep … knee deep … waist deep. Still I slowly waded and followed the stream. It continued to grow wider and deeper. 

The debarked remains of trees stood above the surface of the water that was now no longer clear but had grown dark colored. Chest deep. Chin deep. I kept walking deeper - despite the fear factor that had begun to envelop me.

I could no longer feel the bottom with my feet and began to swim … not toward the shore but farther into deeper water until I could swim no more and began treading to stay afloat. I began to sink beneath the surface of the dark water when my own strength began to fail me. Beneath the surface was a strange blend of darkness and light. It became obvious to me that I was not drowning but remained very much alive. There, in something of a state of suspension beneath the surface of the water, I felt a sense of incomprehensible peace that I had never known.

I was, in September of 2005, on the cusp of some significant life changes. I knew where I had come from. I knew my past. I was, in truth, only beginning to understand my “present” as it was at the time. I honestly had no clue, as much as I searched for clues, of what my future looked like. The only thing that I knew for certain was that I had to keep following the little trickle of a stream that I had discovered in the writings of a few monks and other Catholic writers while we lived in New Jersey.

It was easy to follow that little stream while living in an area where there was a strong Catholic influence. 

Following the stream had grown more difficult once we made the move to our current residential location here in heart of what is commonly referred to as the Bible Belt – this land where my understanding of Christianity had been groomed in the Protestant tradition, a land where, at best, only about ten-percent of the Christian population professes to be Catholic and much less than this percentage are faithfully practicing Catholics, a land where a great many other Christian people still view Catholic Christians with suspicion.

It is here, in this land, that the tiny trickle of a stream that I discovered in the religious section of a public library in New Jersey became the vast and deep water where I could no longer resist, yielded my will, and submerged.

I cannot describe to another person what incomprehensible peace feels like. Words are incapable of expressing the measures of it that I experience – measures that, more often than not, concur with receiving the Eucharist at Mass and with slowly and softly praying the Rosary. Nor can I say that I have experienced the fullness of this incomprehensible peace. That, I believe, is waiting just beyond the transparent veil that protects created human beings from seeing the pure holiness of God and dying on the spot.

There is a thin common thread woven through this little testimony – a thread that attaches all of us together as sincere followers of Christ. The thread is strong enough to hold us all together despite our differences of opinion. It is also weak enough that any of us can easily break it to disassociate ourselves from other followers of Christ.

The common thread is that we are all called to surrender our will to Christ who desires to show us his will and then lead us into his will for our lives. His will for us as individual followers can, and often does, surprise us.

Pray for one another.