Every so often, as a child, I would go to a secret place to enjoy the sensation of being in the world but not of the world. Close to the center of our neighborhood were five or six pine trees–standing tall, huddled together, and easy to climb. High up in those trees, looking down upon the neighborhood, unseen yet seeing everything, I felt separate and apart, but not entirely alone. I was with that special part of me I would forget about while on the ground.
William Blake speaks of going to a place each day where the devil cannot find you. This season of the year, called Lent by the church, grants permission to step away from all the ways and means of daily life that squeeze us into something we are not. There are secret places, like the treehouse or the snow fort of our childhoods, where we can go and, for a time, not be found. There we discover anew, by having had the courage to go there, the presence of something higher, something beyond ourselves, something real and truly precious–a sweet reward by which it would be bittersweet, but okay, if all the rest of it were ashes.
This is not the reward received by those who seek the praise and attention of others–by making a show of giving alms to the poor and by appearing as long suffering for the many good things done on behalf of others. They have indeed received their reward. But by going to a hidden place apart, but by going to a room alone and shutting the door, there a presence, enveloping and comforting, and who sees in secret, rewards in secret.
I remember my first ever visit to the Boston Garden. A school fieldtrip brought me and my classmates to see the circus. There was a moment when all the lights were down, all was dark, and I felt hidden, unseen, just an awareness only, looking down from above, at the ring of activity far below and all aglow. But also aware of something higher, something beyond myself, a loving presence from which we come and to which we shall return, no matter what life brings–the good, the bad, the indifferent. Along with this awareness, also knowing and accepting that all things of this world have a beginning and an ending. Even if it takes trillions, trillions of years, all things, other than this sweet reward, will be as ashes.
The Rev. Bradford Clark is the rector at Ascension Memorial Church in Ipswich.