I will show you hidden things, hidden things you cannot see.

Isaiah 48:6

Vocatus atque non vocatus deus aderit: Bidden or unbidden God is here.

On plaque above door of Carl Jung’s home

January 27, 2020

I will show you hidden things, the words of the chant I meditated to this morning. The exquisite, ethereal woman’s voice gently evoked my mother’s presence. Forty-five years ago today, as she was dying my mother wordlessly showed me hidden things I did not know. Even with her blood steadily flowing from tubes, she communicated to me with her peace-at-the-end smile: 

I am fine. This is what I want. This is my death. Do not take it away from me with any thoughts of what might have been. Live your life.

My priest-husband arrived, then my younger brother, joining my older brother, my father and me. Touching her lightly, my father recited the 23rd Psalm and the Lord’s Prayer, his eyes focused on her face. My husband put a tiny bit of bread dipped in wine on her tongue.

When we all stepped out of the room, she dies in her chosen way.

That evening at my parents’ house, I left the men talking and went into the living room. Knowing and not knowing I was seeking my mother, I was drawn to the small black lacquered dresser with Japanese designs on the four drawers. Nothing to inspire me in the first three. In the bottom drawer I found what I did not know I was seeking; I pulled out a thin sheaf of paper with my mother’s handwriting on the top sheet. 

Dear Sara, Suzie, and Corey, 

Rah Rah, and I have bought our Christmas tree….the draft of a letter my mother had written in 1970 when I called my infant son Corey. At the witching hour one night close to Christmas, she wanted to give my children my fairies through her intense love of small things, hidden things people often do not see: 

Look, Look. This sweet, beautiful strawberry waiting for you to press it to your lips and to smell the fragrance and to taste its nectar. The very words we use to describe them are fairy words, words like ‘nectar’ this is like no other red or berry in the world.

 But she did not stop with the sweetness: 

Call it magic, call it a miracle, it’s there waiting, “The Inner Light” as the Friends call it, or the presence of God through the Baby Jesus…. I know because there were years when I couldn’t see the magic and the fairy voice was still…. I finally stopped trying to solve my own problem and said, “Our Father in Heaven, I don’t know the answer but I am willing to listen.” And the first book I saw gave me the answer in its pages that I had seen many times but only with my eyes. This time it was with my heart and I knew what God was telling me. 

I’m telling you this because each of us has an Inner Voice that speaks to us. I hope I have given you the magic key–you, even as I, may mislay it for a time– but it’s there and when we use it, everything we see or touch has meaning. 

Then thirteen years later, two days after my ordination to the priesthood, I said to myself, “I wish my mother knew I have been ordained.” As though directed, I went into the study, opened the door to the small closet where I kept long ago letters. From the top of the pile, I picked out the finished Christmas letter she had actually sent to my children. Hidden things, once again appearing, unbidden, are here.