What I learned in the woods

A meditation on sameness, snowflakes & nothingness.

I went this weekend to a place in the woods called Pacem in Terris. One hour north of the city of Minneapolis. This is a place where you can spend time in solitude. Uninterrupted. For as long as you like. I thought just under 2 days would be about right for me this time.

When I arrived a man named Joe met me and took me into a small room to provide me with an orientation. He talked to me for about a half an hour. Preparing me for the journey.

He told me that I was about to go out into the desert the way that Jesus did to talk with his father. He told me that I was called there by god but that the rest is up to me. I needed, he said, to go into the cabin and write a letter to god. He told me to write & write and write until I either ran out of words or started repeating myself.

So I did. And I started out the letter by admitting that it must be strange to be writing to god since we have had no formal dialog to date.

After that there was a lot of well — nothingness. And wandering around my mind, the room, the woods. A basket was provided to me and it had bread, cheese, fruit and an amazing muffin in it. I ate and had instant coffee when I needed breaks from the wandering.

The magic of it all was that I was ok with the wandering and nothingness. I think that this is what I needed most to discover.

Joe also told me during my orientation that I am a special snowflake and that I am loved. If nothing else, he told me, I need to simply feel that love and take it with me.

I laughed when I dropped my keys into the holy water by the door — thinking it was a key holder and not realizing it was full of holy water. I laughed about that again hours later. I stared out the window watching the trees not thinking, then thinking, then not thinking again. I wrote a poem.

Poem:
What a wild life,
wild ride,
wild world,
we live in.

To love, to lose love.
To experience with every sense and one day cease to exist.

To see the sun rise and set, be unable to fathom the edges of this planet and know that we are floating in space.

Wildly in orbit.
Racing around the sun.
Always in motion but unable to perceive the speed, massiveness of it all.

Ultimately, I left the woods the same. The same as I was when I went in.
But came out knowing that I am not afraid of being in it. Being in the nothingness and everything that is contained in every moment. This is a blessing. This is freedom.