A Message from the President
In Exile
August 31, 2008
My dear friends:
In our chosen place of safety, we patiently await Hurricane Gustav. We are “In Exile” once again in three years. For me, it is in the Abbey of Saint Benedict. For you, it might be with family members or with dear friends or at a hotel or some other place of refuge. We all wait patiently.
In the meantime, we prepare for all contingencies. Each of us, depending on our responsibilities, plans for the aftermath of the storm. Hopefully, after all the fury we will be able to continue our living with little change. But, we will gather together to find ways to help one another if the storm challenges our very way of existence.
The Cabinet members of the College are ready to plan for every contingency: from having a few days of closure to a more extreme contingency. It all depends on the weather and our ability to cope with it. The Cabinet members will have conference calls beginning this Tuesday morning. Depending on the circumstances, we will discuss and approve courses of action to meet the needs of students, faculty and staff for as long as it takes us to bring some order in what may be disorder for all. We hope to communicate frequently so that all will be kept well informed. We will use the Our Lady of Holy Cross College Blog and other means of communication.
These days of waiting may help us to reflect on many things. In his book, The Reasons of the Heart, John S. Dunne writes about the relationship to God in times of affliction. His words may help us to reflect on our experience after Katrina, Rita and Gustav.
Once during his adventures in the desert, when he was bathing in a spring among the rocks, T. E. Lawrence saw approaching him “a grey-bearded, ragged man, with a hewn face of great power and weariness.” The old man came up to the spring and, after looking at Lawrence for moment, closed his eyes and groaned. “The love is from God and of God and towards God.” (Robert Frost)
The old man was a devastated human being, “moaning strange things, not knowing day and night, not troubling himself for food or work or shelter.” Yet he had the “hewn face of great power and weariness” and he uttered that great sentence about the to-and-fro between man and God. There is a common notion of God according to which whatever happens is the “will of God,” and whatever happens beyond human control, such as a flood or a storm or an earthquake, is an “act of God,” and an afflicted person like this old man is a “child of God.” That God is a God of calamities. The old man himself, though, speaking from within affliction, sees God differently; sees a love coming from God into man and going back from man to God. His experience, if we can suppose that he experienced the love of which he spoke, places him among God’s friends.
We have a choice, if we wish to know God, between learning from the friends of God and learning from the common notion. I would choose to learn from the friends of God. The common notion is a way of interpreting whatever happens, but it does not seem to arise out of any actual communication between God and man. The friends of God, on the contrary, walk and speak with God, experience a love that is “from God and of God and towards God.” The to-and-fro with God in which they live seems to be the only real knowing of God that man has reached. To actually know god ourselves we will have to enter ourselves into the to-and-fro. Maybe from that vantage point we may be able to see the common notion in a new light. It has to do with experiences: floods, storms, earthquakes, afflictions, and in fact everything that happens whatsoever. If we trace the journey of the friends of God, if we follow them to and from God, we may find ourselves following the to-and-fro with God through the region of all these other experiences following, for instance, the love the old man speaks of through the region of the affliction he suffers.
Maybe it is the setting here in a monastery or maybe it is reflection on Katrina that is getting to me, but I know I share the questions about these calamities and our relationship to God in these days ahead. We will walk together and will learn together to be in a to-and-fro motion with God and one another.
Peace be with you and yours during these days of exodus.
Yours,
Father Anthony De Conciliis, csc
President
