Waiting Room
Dear Friends
I decided today to start the treatment straightaway even though it means I won’t be able to celebrate Christmas at Bonnevaux. The doctors are optimistic of a good outcome. It will likely be an eight-week course. I am very blessed by the kindness of Anne and Tom, members of our very loving Houston community who have given me shelter in their home and extraordinary attention.
As I was sitting in the crowded waiting room this morning listening, with everyone, for their own unique name to be called, it became clear to me we were all keeping an appointment. We formed a field of suffering, like a battle-field indifferent to defeat or victory. But I also felt an oceanically tender compassion on which we are all supported, exceeding by far the pain, if only we can see it. An old man with a mucous cough sat in his wheelchair beside his middle-aged daughter, looking blankly forward. A young man with a woollen cap pulled low on his head, leant forward on his knees, his eyes closed. Each person carried a world of sorrow but a golden thread of hope wove itself around the cross each carried. This was the silent communion of illness that can form among us. There is also a communion of the revitalising life which is born of the awakened presence of the Kingdom of God and which every contemplative community knows because it belongs everywhere and can transform everything.
So, all things going well, I expect to be home before Easter. Thank you all for such warm and loving messages circulating my way through our waiting room of Advent.
With love
Laurence
19 December 2024
