Monthly Meditations

At a recent clergy conference I attended, I followed the suggestion to spend a morning in resting in the Lord. I spent as much of it as I could in silence -- I had no idea that I talk to myself as often as I do! And I took a long walk around a lake at the retreat center outside Canton, Mississippi where I was staying.

It’s a shallow lake, really just a big pond, where snapping turtles sun themselves on partially submerged logs, and where you hear the splash of an occasional fish. Little frogs congregate in the muddy shallows. Once in a while, the wind blows a ripple. All in all, it’s a peaceful place.

The morning of my walk, it was a bit squishy on the lake’s outskirts, so I was paying more attention to what was at my feet than to what was ahead of me. But a flutter of wings got my attention, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I gasped aloud. Standing in all its elegance at the water’s edge was an egret. Snowy white, with spindly dark legs, its long neck stretched in an S-shape as it lifted its sharp yellow beak away from the weeds where it had been feeding.

I wanted to get a closer look, and I didn’t want to disturb it, so I took several steps back from the lake, and began walking toward the egret as slowly as I could. Every once in a while, I’d stop to try to drink in the stark beauty of this graceful creature.

But there was a problem. Whenever the egret sensed my presence, it would fly – which was a sight to behold, drops of water dripping as it spread it wings. Each time it flew away from me, the harder it became for me to delight in it.

I wished I were Doctor Dolittle, or someone who speaks Egretese, or communicate in some way with this gorgeous, glorious creature. “All I want to do is enjoy you,” I wanted to tell it. “All I want to do is delight in you just being yourself.”

Have you ever wanted that? For the kitten to play with the yarn in your lap a little longer? For the deer to stare back at you instead of bolting away? For a newborn to stay a baby long enough for your body and soul to completely understand how much you love that mewling, helpless creature?

Julian of Norwich, a 14th century English mystic, reminds us that God wants to do the same sort of thing -- not keep us from growing, of course, but to simply delight in us. As a young woman, while everyone thought she was dying, indeed, the priest gave her last rites, Julian received what she came to call Revelations of Divine Love – that is after meditating on the visions she experienced that May day for 20 years. Her meditating taught her that, “We are God’s bliss, for God delights in us without end, and so, by God’s grace, will we delight in God.”

Yet, like the egret, we skitter away from God’s delight. Maybe we’re afraid. Afraid we’re not being productive, or that we’re inadequate, or that we have something to be ashamed of.

But we’re God’s creatures, and God delights in us just being ourselves, in that sort of “People can like you exactly as you are” Mister Rogers fashion.

Maybe if I’d been Julian of Norwich or Mister Rogers, the egret wouldn’t have skittered away from my delight. But no matter who we are, and no matter what makes us resist God, we are God’s creatures after all, and no matter how imperfect and broken and sinful, God delights in us – without end, just the way we are.