In the book The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, an ordinary boy named Bailey is tagged to save a dying magical circus that enthralls and enlivens the lucky people who discover its luminous and joyous presence. A magical circus that brings awe and wonder into the world, one community at a time. Bailey loves this circus. Celia and Marco, who have been keeping the circus and its performers alive with their powerful magic, are being forced out of the circus as their magic consumes them. When they ask Bailey, who has through the years become an integral part of the magic, to take on the care of the circus, he insists that he is not special, he’s not anyone important. How can he take this on?
“I know,” Celia tells him. “You’re not destined or chosen. I wish I could tell you that you were if that would make it easier, but it’s not true. You’re in the right place at the right time, and you care enough to do what needs to be done. Sometimes that’s enough.”
Each of you reading this, let’s just say that you are here at the right place at the right time. You come as you are, with all of your gifts, your quirks, your foibles, and your faults. You also come with willing hearts, strong spirits, great love, and deep and enduring faith in something enduring and good – we might call that the Holy Mystery – the Love that flows in this world, our beloved world, our home – our beloved home that seems to be too easily losing more and more of its magic. This world is filled with people who are in great need of soul care and guidance as we try to navigate a treacherous and uncertain path in a world breaking under the weight of the rot of greed, oppression, and cruelty. It is a rot that is harming – often lethally – way too many beings, in way too many shocking and terrifying manifestations.
Debra Rienstra, a writer and literature professor, tells of an illuminating lesson from Washington’s Mt. St. Helens when it erupted in 1980. The force of the eruption was so great that the volcano lost 13-hundred feet of elevation. 57 people were killed. The surrounding landscape of lush forests was destroyed. Completely, utterly destroyed, obliterated, by more than 500 million tons of volcanic debris. It was believed that it would take several human lifetimes for the devastated and desolate landscape to recover. But – after just a few weeks, small signs of life emerged. Scientists were shocked. Life continued to cover the landscape far more quickly than anyone could have imagined. Now, after 46 years of recovery, just a few decades after that catastrophic eruption, the area is lush and thriving. The old growth forest, yes, that will take centuries to return. But other forms of life? They have returned with vigor.
How could this be?
Well, here’s the thing. Not everything, it turns out, was completely destroyed. Rienstra, citing author Kathleen Dean Moore, says that the deadly eruption spared some tiny sanctuaries – protected pockets where life was sheltered just enough to hang on.
Life persisted.
And then, life re-asserted itself at the first opportunity, quite quickly emerging from the sheltering spaces to reclaim its bigger space. Life’s re-emergence could only be done from the space of these little hidey-holes called refugia. What is true ecologically is true also when it comes to living in ways that are faithful to your deepest wisdom. Rienstra wonders what it would be like to, quote, ‘recommit ourselves to creating, as Jesus calls us to do, refugia for human souls.’ End quote.
In this life, you can do that!
In this life, you can inhabit and maybe even create spaces of refugia.
In this life, you may even actually become refugia.
Let that sink in. Take a pause and breathe that in.
In a landscape scorched by death, each of us might offer the sacred gift of refugia, the protected space where Love thrives, ready to send out tendrils of life when even the smallest opening appears.
- Where are the places of refugia in your life?
- What are the ways that you need refugia?
- What are the ways that you offer refugia?