I went to my church’s Men’s Retreat this weekend. The Aldersgate Retreat center is run by the United Methodist Church in Villisca, Iowa. The advantage of it is that they provide food and shelter for up to 64 people and it is only a little over an hour away. That allows us to spend Saturday night and still attend church of Sunday.

Although the theme was a good one, it was pointed out that if you had come to the retreat with your own agenda, feel free to do so. My agenda was pretty straightforward: Be Still and Know that He is God. All I wanted to do is find a place that was far away from anyone to pray, meditate and sing. Little did I know what the weather had in store for all of us.

I was glad to hear a brief lesson on meditation Saturday morning. Joel requested that everyone to try and sit still for 20 minutes and just listen. It amazes me how hard this is to do. Thanks to the declared two hours of silence in our cabin, this was easier for most folks. It certainly helped me when I got back from my outside adventure.

Now I had gone out Friday night to pray. The wind was blowing pretty hard, but the wind chill was still a little above zero. The main focus of my prayer was to stop seeing myself as the underdog in my day to day life. It was intense and the noise of the wind kept others from hearing my shouting.

All in all, very good time spent.

However, come Saturday, the tempature dropped to the single digits. This would have been fine except for the increased winds from last night. We now had windchills in the thirty and forty below zero region. Most people with some sense of sanity look at this and ponder their options:

Option 1: Stay inside, enjoy all manner of coffees and hot teas.
Option 2: Venture out as far as my car and sit in my car.
Option 3: Venture outside and freeze the remaining braincell into silence.

I think it’s safe to say that Option 1 is the sane and normal choice of most people.

There were a few folks that chose Option 2 due to the number of folks that chose Option 1. The cabins was a bit crowded with 32 guys trying to find ‘personal space’ in the cabin. I know this because I was one of maybe three or four that chose Option 3; I saw the Option 2 guys running to their cars.

Ready to tackle the frozen wasteland around our cabin, I hiked off about a tenth of a mile until I found the creek that runs on the southern edge of the campground. The advantage of the creek is its deep banks. Once I got there, I could get out of the wind. Although climbing down was a bit scary, I got down with no trouble.

Once there, I unpacked the tote bag I was carrying and proceeded to mummify myself in bath towels. I have to admit that the Hitchhiker’s Guide is correct, don’t leave home without a towel. I then sat in the tote bag containing note pads. The tote bag was waterproof and the notepads were between my behind and the ten below zero soil. You really think someone is going to write notes with an a regular inkpen in forty below zero wind chills? If so, you have more spirituality or fewer brain cells than I do. After reading Thomas’s latest, I am more apt to believe the latter.

Once I realized that I actually brought enough clothes and layers to stay warm and that I was shielded from all the wind by a river bank, I relaxed and just listened:

A bald eagle cried as he soared over the trees. I heard some deer run in the woods behind me. It turned out to be three deer, a buck, a doe, and a younger one. I didn’t see the rack of the buck, but he was larger than any deer I had seen back east.

I heard the wind howl at me in vain. I even heard another person in search of solitude. I later found out that he was many hundreds of yards away.

In between these wonderful things was a silence. I sat still to listen to God. Like Elijah, I have discovered that He seems to prefer talking in whispers. I was hoping to hear, “Why do you kick so hard against the goads?” or “The fight is not over and I will harden your forehead like flint.” or “I love you.” or “Good job, take a rest.” or “You are on the right track.” or “You are on the wrong track.” or a host of other things my heart wanted to hear.

Instead, I heard, “Come closer.”

I do not know if the wind died, but I did not hear it after that. I shuffled my feet a bit as my ankles got cold. I started to sing songs I knew because I hoped that it would bring me closer. I started to pray to let go of so many things. I stared at the frozen creek and thought about the water under the surface.

Nothing.

I took a deep breath and sang a different song. One that I had sung only once before and had not sung since. I sang it before on the trip back from Des Moines. Leaders from my church met with leaders of a church there and although we had a good time, it was obvious that this other church was dissolving. One of the founding members wept aloud as he realized that it was slipping away. I promised to write, he never wrote back.

And so I sang for God to grant me peace because I am troubled.
I sang for God to show me grace because I have sinned.
I sang for God to give me joy because I am so sad.
I sang for God to show me hope because so much has been lost.
I sang for God to show me love because I am in pain.

And I openly wept – just me and my God. In the midst of the storm, He held me close.

Because of the connection with Des Moines, I knew that it had nothing to do with my present circumstances. It really didn’t have much to do with my church. It was the destruction of so many lives of people I knew. It was the bitterness of injustice. It was suvivor’s guilt – why had I landed in a safe place when there was (and continues to be) no visible safe place for my friends? Why are so many that were responsible immune to hardship or discipline? Why are evil men prospering by doing the same things all over again? When will it finally come to an end and justice prevail?

And just like that, a big knot in my back untangled and the lines of my forehead relaxed. The wind returned and my ankles felt cold again, but the numbness had spread to my toes. It was time to go, but I was not upset. I had finally been able to put into words what I have been feeling for so many years.

As I walked back to the cabin, I pondered the sayings in Proverbs 16 and took heart:

The LORD works out everything for his own ends-

even the wicked for a day of disaster.