The Beautiful Answer

When I came back to Texas in mid February, I wasn’t at all clear about what I needed to happen at that time. I just knew that I was ready to be on the road, ready to put Santa Fe and winter behind me for a while, eager yet dreading the gardening challenges that faced me at this Leon County barn home, and not the least bit excited about pulling it together for the spring Round Top Antiques Fair. I was restless and unsettled, and muddier in the head than I like. I sort of made myself a quiet promise at the outset that I wouldn’t be too hard on myself—that I would try to take day by day all of the work facing me. Maybe I couldn’t have known how badly I needed time for reflection—and as it turns out, time to heal from the healing that I thought I had been working on for the last 18 months.

It is Good Friday, the day after Maundy Thursday, the day before the Great Vigil of Easter. I haven’t darkened the door of a church since leaving Santa Fe on February 15th. I haven’t wanted to go to church, although I have not backed off from my spiritual quest. I have not stopped the daily reading, my own odd way of praying—who’s to say that praying needs rules—my awareness that there is so much that is so much greater than I. Early in this visit to Texas, as I dug in the garden, removing weeds, pruning and then spreading mulch in anticipation of a brutal summer when the garden will be left to its own, although I knew how beautiful this quiet place would become with a little rain, especially after a long period of unusual dryness and warm temperatures, my heart did not remember the beauty. It also didn’t remember how restorative a garden and the labor that gardens want can be.

I’ve made it through the hardest part of this leg of the journey. The antiques fair is behind me. I’m a little more comfortable that I did pretty much all I could do to make it a success. God willing, I will have another chance in the fall. Whatever else I do in the garden before heading to my home in northern New Mexico is adding blessing, both for the garden and for me. In the last week, late afternoons I’ve sat quietly in the shed that looks west, soaking in the washing of water in the fountain, watching the cardinals busy activity—reminding myself that as I much as I talk about them I still don’t have a picture from my own camera—listening to all of the birds that call this sanctuary home now and then, and I’ve delighted in the new blooms that emerge each day. Slowly, I’ve rearranged the stacks inside my house that grew out of my return from the antiques market, some things going in the mail, some being reabsorbed into this home, and some prepared for the trip back to New Mexico.

Very much on my mind are the things I’ve been reading while here, fiction and non, and I’m not surprised to realize that I haven’t been away from God at all, even though I have been away from church. It seems that my entire experience here has been one, relatively long prayer. I’ve read about families in conflict—even across generations—loss of loved ones, regeneration and rebirth. I’ve read two scholars' attempt to explain the last week of the life of Christ. I’ve read one man’s fictional account of a journey here on earth in the "physical" presence of God the Father and Mother, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And at the heart of all of this has been a simple message. The answer is love. And the answer is forgiveness. As painful and demanding and confusing and exasperating as love can be, it is the sweet answer to all that ails us. Regardless of where or how, or even if, we pray, it is the only balm to heal our souls. No amount of proving or asserting our rights can hold a measure to the act of forgiving and being forgiven. As I prepare for Easter on this important Friday, I’m holding on to this good news.

The Beautiful Answer—Normangee Texas (April 10, 2009)
R. Harold Hollis