GENESIS

I have been too depressed to go to the Liturgy of the Hours, and I could kick myself. I only have a few weeks left at St. John’s; why, when the liturgy has meant so much to me over the last nine months, am I shutting down inside, unable to embrace it in my last days here?

I force myself to go to vespers but feel so dead inside that not even the poetry of the psalms can penetrate my despair. A few words seem to spark—“You are close to all who call you, who call on you from their hearts”—but the flame I know is in them soon dies down. Still, I’m glad to be here, where I belong. Then the reading comes; the first words of Genesis, words I read aloud in this church over a month ago, at the Easter Vigil: “In the beginning, God.” I am shocked to recall how full of life I was that night, shocked to now find myself taken back, against my will, to the garden of creation.

The words are like the cool voice of rain after heat lightning. I resolve to walk tomorrow through the wetlands and prairie grass restoration areas, and the oak savannah. The monks are engaged in establishing a native habitat arboretum on their land, and I need to drink it in, to say good-bye. Spring has been slow in coming, but now the new pine cones, aglow with pollen, push aside their blood-red cauls. Now the oak buds’ embryonic, waxy fingers begin to open in the sun.