Mist

A couple weeks ago, here on the mountain, we woke up to mist. Sometimes thick like fog, sometimes wispy like gossamer, it curled around tree limbs and blanketed the forest. Things were not what they seemed: solid things, like our houses, looked ethereal; bright birds, like cardinals, became filmy spirits. Strangely, while the visual world blurred and dissipated, the auditory world sharpened and clarified. Standing out on my back deck under the pergola, I could hear distinctly the train in the valley and the bells from Holy Cross Abbey across the river.

 

Frank MacEowen, in The Mist-Filled Path, says, "The mist is an ancient initiator and sacred reminder in the Celtic traditions. In the old tales of Britain, just beyond the mist lies the realm of Avalon." Avalon of course is a holy place of wisdom and healing. Earlier in the book he notes that mist creates a numinous, threshold space. He writes, "Mist is a beautiful natural power. This old spirit is an ambassador of the in-between. Not entirely water, not entirely air, the mist is a unique dancing marriage of these two elements. ...when the mist descends upon us, the veil that ordinarily separates the unseen world from the visible world is drawn back, fostering a fluency of movement between the two worlds...."

 

What is that unseen world? I would argue that it is the world of soul, the inward world which harbors the Divine Guest, our connection with the sacred, with that energy of energies that permeates the universe, the One. It is everywhere. In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus says that this realm is "spread out upon the earth, and people do not see it."

 

But there are threshold places, mist-filled spaces, (which as Vivian noted at a community retreat, are called "thin places"), where people do see it. MacEowen says, "Thin places are potent doorways within our sacred world, which includes the natural world (and aspects of the human world) and also domains that permeate and lie beneath our world. It is where the ordinary and the non-ordinary come to rest in each other's arms. These places might be in-between places or particular in-between times, such as twilight...It is where the unseen and the seen share one ground." Or, as Rumi puts it, "the doorsill where two worlds touch."

 

I am grateful to be living in such a thin, mist-filled place and to have the work, as we do, of inviting and creating hospitality for others to spend time here too. Conversations with many over the years and recently confirm that people are drawn here, sensing that this is a special place, from the first days of people camping and gathering at the site of the Meditation Shelter, to Nan Merrill's deep feeling that this should be the home of Friends of Silence, to our most recent guest who walked all over the land and called it "paradise".

 

We may live in a mist-filled paradise, but discussions at community suppers and our various business meetings affirm that being and ministering here makes us very busy people. There is a lot to do so that we care for one another, have wood-stove warmed homes, offer our guests and one another organic, fresh vegetables and food, invite others into a serenely beautiful retreat house, and keep the bills paid, the water flowing and the lights on. Sometimes I wonder how long I can keep it up, and I know I'm not the only one with that question. In fact, some of us are meeting  to ponder what comes next for all of us together as we age, or sage, as the case may be.

 

Perhaps we yearn for that time called retirement, when presumably there is less to be done, but in the meantime, we have responsibilities. Yet I find that I remain profoundly grateful to be here, in this thin place, with my beloved community, with this sacred work to do; to prepare stew for community supper, and soup for the next retreat, to prune the raspberries with my friends, to build a fire for a retreat house guest, to stack logs for whoever needs it, sweep snow from the Meditation Shelter steps, to be able to wake in the morning to a mist-filled landscape, to walk out into the woods, to hear the monastery bells floating in the dancing air. This is what I do all day long. I may not be strolling through the fields with Mary Oliver exactly, but I am just as happy and grateful to ask myself, as she does, "Tell me, what else should I have done?...Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild (and, I would add, mist-filled) life?"

Lindsay McLaughlin