My Tents of Meeting

Moses used to take the Tent and pitch it outside the camp... He called it the Tent of Meeting. Anyone who had to consult the Lord would go out to the Tent of Meeting... The Lord would speak with Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend... ~ From Exodus 33

These words leapt out at me from the first reading at Mass, a day or so after I started my retreat last week. They remained with me as I went for a walk, pondering the various Tents of Meeting that God and I have pitched, throughout my life. There's the tent God pitched for me on Denbigh Moor, back in the mid-1980s. God had to raise it: I wouldn't have imagined doing so; and indeed, didn't realise for years that what had taken place was an encounter with the Divine. Then there's an unforgettable Tent near Tesco on Green Street in East London, and a more recent one set up just past Primark on King Street. I often walk past it without really noticing it, but it is there, nonetheless, reminder of a startling, powerful encounter with Jesus on an otherwise ordinary day. As is the one in a church in South London. 

And I thought of Llannerchwen, our retreat centre in Wales, and its surrounding woods. Over the years it has all become one huge place of encounter, one vast, outspread Tent; though within it there are a few favourite places - a brook here, a piece of woodland there - mini tents, almost, each one playing its part at some point in my love story with God. 

As I walked, caught up in these thoughts, I passed a buddleia, raspberry pink against the surrounding greenery, and on and fluttering around it, one, two... no, several red admiral butterflies. And oh! - within a moment I was transported back to the final days of the Spiritual Exercises during my noviciate. During the Contemplation on the Love of God I had gone for walks with Jesus, and found a glade which was simply alive with butterflies. And I had rested there with Jesus, delighting in so much beatitude. Symbols of the Resurrection, my novice director called butterflies, and indeed, they were symbols of my own resurrection, and the grace and the growth within me. 

In that instant I knew that a Tent of Meeting is more than a place. It is a moment of encounter, forever contained within our memory. A moment, unexpected and unsought, lifted out of the everyday by an otherwise ordinary catalyst... something read or heard, maybe; or a bed of blue hyacinths, as happened for Janet Stuart... Or butterflies. A memory to be treasured; and sometimes, equally unexpectedly, brought back to life, as sheer, unanticipated gift.

And you; what and where are your Tents of Meeting, and the precious memories they evoke?

* Photo taken several years ago at Llannerchwen