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I guess the appropriate response is to increase the amount of time I spend in prayer and Bible reading. Neither should be difficult since I rarely do either except in church. A couple years ago I tried doing the daily offices in the Book of Common Prayer, but I gave up. They're just too boring. Reading the gospels is boring, too, because I already know them from hearing them read every Sunday at Eucharist. In response to my experience of your healing my depression in college, I've attended Eucharist during the week, too, where they're read also. After so much exposure, I can't read them fresh. I remember what comes next, often word for word.

Furthermore, I don’t attend church for prayer or Bible. I attend for Eucharist, where I become aware of your presence during the consecration and reception and afterward, as I kneel silent and attentive to you while others receive. That’s why I always sit up front: to have a long period of contemplation after communion—a long time to remain intensely aware of your presence.

So I need guidance. I feel I don't know how to pray outside church, without the prayer book. I know there are spiritual directors somewhere, but I don't know how to find one, and anyway I mistrust religious people. They're too pious. They find me too autonomous. They expect obedience to some external authority, beginning with themselves.

Maybe you could be my director? I ask seriously. I don't know where else to turn, and I'm really in need. I'll set aside daily time for silent prayer and try to listen for you. Even if I've not been called, spending more time trying to attend to your presence should be worthwhile.

Thinking of prayer reminds me to thank you for your blessings over the years. A couple weeks ago I attended a conference at the church camp up in the mountains. The conference was a bore and I left early, but while I was there I spent time revisiting the two summers I was a camper there when I was fourteen and fifteen. I sat in the outdoor chapel, and memories flooded back. The most poignant was of the first summer when Sharon and I got into rivalry over an older man. I think he was sixteen. One evening I left the other campers and sat in that very chapel, listening to the distant shouts and laughter and singing. There I thought about Sharon and me. She was a wimp with a shrill voice who was poorly coordinated. I knew I could beat her out and win our young man's heart.



You showed me what that would entail: jealous rivalry, meanness, and manipulating him sexually to win. This would not be the only time. There would be more men, more rivalries. I could choose to become this vixen or to step aside and let Sharon win. I chose to step aside. I've continued to make that choice. I've chosen not to compete with other women sexually and not to manipulate men. As a result I've been blessed with wonderful friends, male and female. Men have trusted me, and their trust healed some who'd been damaged in their relationships with the vixens of this world. Thank you for the gifts you have poured upon me.



29 June 1993

Dearest Revealer,

Once before, when I was eight or ten, I had an experience similar to the one I had with you yesterday among the mountain laurel. They are worth recording. The earlier experience took place under a huge poplar tree in our front yard one hot day in midsummer. All of a sudden I saw that everything is one, that the diversity we see around us is an illusion. Or maybe it's not an illusion, but only one way of seeing. There's another way of seeing, and from that other perspective, everything's united.

Today's physicists say something similar. In quantum mechanics everything's connected, even things separated by great distances. Electrons "know" what their sister electrons are doing. It's weird. Moreover cosmologists think the four basic laws of physics were once a single law. The laws diverged by something called "symmetry breaking" as the universe cooled. The diversity we observe rests on that broken symmetry. Once, everything was one.

Is everything still one?

Everything was one in the rain and fog among the laurel blooms. It was as if the rain and the blossoms were all part of a single system rather than separate entities. The fog seemed to hold it all together, like the ether that was (falsely) said to pervade all space or Newton's absolute space, which turned out not to be absolute. Yet not like those. Those were intellectual constructs built to solve scientific puzzles. Mine was an experience. It was more like a perception than an idea, although, again, a camera would not have detected what I saw. Hard to describe.

I apologize for being so reluctant to go yesterday. There was such a storm! Lightning walks this mountain, and when it does, I don't. The whole incident was such an odd adventure. You were right there, urging me to go. I understood you had something to show me. You took my hand, encouraging me to rush out just as I was, right into the storm.

I stayed in my safe little mountain cabin until I had put on my rain suit and hiking boots. By then the storm had abated. You were so impatient while I dressed! Then you led me across the lawn, into the woods, and half way up the peak into the grove of mountain laurels. Standing there looking south through the grove into the wind and rain, I experienced everything as one. It was beautiful. Is reality truly like this, or is this just one way of perceiving? And why among mountain laurel blooming in a storm? Wouldn't a quietly blossoming day have done as well?

It was so lovely. Something about the quality of light through fog is fantastic, even without accompanying visions. Thank you.

I wonder why you thought it important.



11 August 1993

Dear and Blessed Spirit,

Incredible! I saw you on the lawn. I couldn't wait to write.

by Patricia A. Williams

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