Living Happiness

Many people have asked me over the years how I made the decision to move to Greece. And as I answer their questions and they discover that I neither knew no one in Greece–nor was I Greek myself when I chose to do so–I am also usually asked the next question: “God, how were you brave enough to do that?!”

The funny thing about moves like this is that, at the time that you choose to make them, the decision seems like the most natural one in the world. And even though you know you are making a leap of faith, you’ve usually been practicing with baby leaps for a good while. This is what was true for me anyway.

My act of faith sky-diving, as one friend called it, didn’t start ostentatiously with all kinds of bells and fireworks. In fact, it started much more quietly. In the darkness. And with a step so mundane, you would never have guessed it would have set me on the path to a new destiny.

Let me tell you how it all began … .

Labor Day Weekend 2005
It was 5:00 in the morning and graveyard quiet. The night animals had gone to bed, and the morning birds had not yet woken. I stepped out of my cottage into darkness, onto an unfamiliar path and, flashlight at my shoulder, took my first nervous steps.

I was scared. Not because I was scared of the dark so much as I was scared to death of snakes. Yet here I was in the heart of the South Carolina Low Country, at the tail end of summer, marching outdoors at the hour of morning where cold-blooded snakes like to warm themselves on the still-warm concrete.

As I slowly walked through the blackness (because it was black, truly black, not a single natural or man-made light around for miles), I prayed to dear God to please not let me see a snake. In fact, it was less prayer than it was mantra: Please don’t let me see a snake, please don’t let me see a snake, please don’t let me see a snake, I repeated as I walked with great trepidation down this Low Country path to a warmly lit dining hall and the breakfast that awaited me at the end.

This weekend was part of a promise made to myself at the beginning of the year to go somewhere where I could hear the still, small voice in my soul that wasn’t to be heard amidst the thunder, the fire, or the earthquakes that marked my life at the time. My promise had brought me here … to Mepkin Abbey, South Carolina–a Trappist monastery–for a weekend of silent retreat.

But now as I walked through the inky, pre-dawn blackness to the refectory and breakfast, I still wasn’t altogether over the jittery nerves that had plagued me since I’d arrived here just a few hours earlier.

From the moment my car had pulled into the graveled drive, I had been gripped by an incomprehensible, soul-quaking fear. A fear so strong that before I’d even made it more than a quarter of a mile into the Abbey’s gates, I had seriously considered turning the car around and just driving back the same way I’d come–which was 6 hours away!

This feeling of soul fear, along with my anxiety about the snakes, was still with me now as I made my way along the path toward breakfast.

Later that morning, I sat in my cottage bedroom looking out of the window, trying to listen to whatever I could hear amidst all this silence and not sure I was really hearing anything. But then my thoughts turned to my morning walk, and I had my epiphany.

I saw myself walking the darkened path earlier that morning, everything totally dark except for the small amount of light my flashlight had given off. I had been unnerved by the short range of its beam, wishing that it could have illuminated just a few more feet in front of me so as to ensure that there were no snakes, but it hadn’t, and I’d had to go foot by foot down that path, a bit at a time, before I’d finally made it to the refectory.

When this memory came to me, I realized that this image was my life. Mired in a job I hated, confused about what to do next, feeling the call of purpose in my life, and desperately trying to discern my vocation — literally my “calling” from the Latin vocare – my world seemed very black indeed.

But as I sat in my chair at the window, amazed by this realization, clarity finally came to me in a voice or a whisper or a knowing, “Trust the light (of wisdom and Scripture). Trust the path you’re on. Trust the community of people all around you, and they will lead you where you’re going. Your vocation will be waiting for you at the end.”

I knew then that I was being asked to have faith, to believe that even if I could only see a few feet in front of me at a time, I could be confident that what I wanted most earnestly would eventually be found.

Note — This post is the first of three that chart my journey from one life and into another.  For the rest of the story, you will want to read these posts:

• The Next Steps in the Journey (Part 2/3)
• When Walking Becomes Flying (Part 3/3)

Namaste.
Peace be with you.

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