Chapter 2: An Encounter

I walk through the woods. A brown-headed nuthatch appears, hopping from branch to branch, chasing after her bridegroom. They chirrup smart sensuous songs to one another. A stream, clean and new and cold, runs through birches and white pines. I step over the low, broken stone wall that marks the far edge of my property. Ivy runs over it and a variety of mosses huddle together in community. I am crossing into another's woods. Whose, I do not know. The woods are not wholly lovely. There are dead trees and rotting trunks, just as on my property. Here an old oak, once a prince of the forest, lies split asunder. It rots. There are also denser spots that are dark and leave me feeling rather uncomfortable, making me look nervously over my shoulder.

The Church is sensory. It fills my five senses until I know somehow the spiritual. Pictures and smells and symbols, water and bread and wine - the invisible becomes incarnate. And I find myself remembering Jesus. The Church calendar takes me through the birth and life of my Lord. It participates in his passion. It mourns his death and celebrates his resurrection. It adores him in a world that forgets him. Many churches are letting go of the Church calendar, claiming that every day is new in the newness of Christ (which, of course, is true). But I wonder if, in removing the celebration, we have removed the reason for the celebration. We make ourselves a dead and empty marriage without memorial, devoid of intimacy or anniversary, reft of romance.

As I continue, I come into a clearing. And before me is a garden, perfectly kept and newly in bloom. Rose bushes are red-and-green alive, though still without rose. Forsythia shine. Dogwoods unwrap themselves in an ever-widening circle, white and pink, and spread gloriously into the forest beyond - ethereal beauty floating between heaven and earth. Sounds catch my ears and draw my eyes. They are gardening sounds: pruners pruning away dead branches and shovels shoveling soft, good earth. The gardener wears white, somehow kept clean. I greet him, and he I.

"I was walking through these woods," I say, "but I do not know whose they are."

"They are the King's," he answers.