SERENITY FOUND ON AN ALMOST SILENT NIGHT

JOE BARKOVICH
GUEST COLUMNIST, THE WELLAND TRIBUNE
(DATE UNKNOWN)

Here in my neck of the woods, the college campus offers more than meets the eye.

It can be any time of the year, but especially right now. We come here to the campus grounds, Buddy the dog and I, early in morning or late in evening. Nowadays, in this season, sometimes both. These days, the campus is all but deserted. These evenings the air is clean, crisp and cold. Here we come for silence, serenity and solitude. They are all here for the finding.

So, no time to think about Christmas lists and last-minute additions, I am listless for presence of another kind. We are here with different purpose on our minds.

Buddy the dog finds joy in walking through the drifts of snow up to his chest. On occasion, he stops to stick his snout into a partially snow-covered clump of brush. Then he sniffs. He sniffs and sniffs and sniffs.

I wish I had a loonie for every scent he picks up. I might even force myself to say: “Gosh, it’s a wonderful life.” Me, the dog walker, I find joy in the interruptions.

Here is one example.

Just the other evening a choir of Canada geese flew overhead, their “honk, honk, honk” a harmonious chorus in their open-air cathedral for thought, thanksgiving and tryst.

Tryst?

I yearn for a meeting, an encounter, an experience-here, away from it all and far from it all. A little bit of imagination helps achieve such altered time and place. A little bit of faith is all it takes to make it real.

Me, I find warmth in the interruptions.

Here is another example.

In my mind’s eye, I see the handwritten message in a Christmas greeting card received a few years back.

Words, pain staking handwritten; words, rich in message.

Here on a cold December evening, no mind-numbing TV set in sight and no throngs of shoppers on site, I call the words to mind: “Hope you are able to simplify during this confused holiday season. We wish you peace with silence.”

Peace with silence. Elusive too many, these days.

Buddy the dog and I have found peace, but silence escapes us for the moment, just the moment.

Virgin snow crunch, crunch, crunches under my heavy winter boots, and brush snaps, crackles, snaps as Buddy bulldozes through.

We try to cut a swath through the still undisturbed woodchip trail, but snow cover hides ATV ruts that make this seekers’ footsteps treacherous. We double back to safer terrain.

From a distance I find our beacon, of sorts-the outdoor stairway leading from ground to peak of a berm. The stair way beams bright in the night because of its lights.

We quicken our pace through the snowy field heading closer and closer to them.

Excitement building, we climb the stairs, taking care not to lose footing.

On this snowy evening the top of the berm becomes the closest thing to a mountaintop-well, in these parts anyway.

Looking skyward, left breathless by the expanse of translucent ceiling as far as the eye can see, this was trysting time.

And in that simple, newfound silence, serenity, solitude-a sampling of the spiritual experience I’d come to find. Joy.

The message in this mid-December rendezvous on our make-do mountain top is pure and simple. Have faith in joy. It is yours for the finding.

“When I am a seeker, I seek both night and day; I seek the Lord to help me, and He shows me the way.

Go, tell it on the mountain, over the hills and everywhere; Go, tell it on the mountain, that Jesus Christ is born.” From Go, Tell It on The Mountain, American black spiritual.