Wondering About Angels, on a Retreat
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Wondering About Angels, on a Retreat
It is the shutting of the door which makes the whole difference between a true Retreat and a worried religious weekend. . . . A complete barrier deliberately set up, with you on one side alone with God and everything else without exception on the other side.
—Evelyn Underhill
What is it about angels? I wonder, on retreat. And I begin to hear a wordless reply. They block and close the door I cannot shut myself. As soon as I consent, they gather gently, Hold me in clear, desiring, gentle light All the light I ever wanted. All there is. Rest here, the wordless voices whisper: Stay, they say. Whatever it was that was pulling me away They have covered with healing wings. Stay here, they say. The one you love has more for you. Stay here, and shut the door, they say. [End Page 133]
Kathleen Henderson Staudt works as an educator, writer, retreat leader and spiritual director at Virginia Theological Seminary and Wesley Theological Seminary. An officer of the Evelyn Underhill association (www.evelynunder-hill.org), she has offered retreats and workshops at the Washington National Cathedral, including the annual Evelyn Underhill Day of Quiet offered at the Cathedral each year in June, as well as conferences on poetry, spirituality and spiritual guidance. Her writing has appeared in Weavings, Christianity and Literature, Sewanee Theological Review, and The Anglican Theological Review. She is the author of At the Turn of a Civilization: David Jones and Modern Poetics (University of Michigan Press, 1994); Annunciations: Poems out of Scripture (Edwin Mellen Press, 2003), and Waving Back: Poems of Mothering Life (Finishing Line Press, 2009). www.poetproph.blogspot.com.
