The dream never repeated itself, but I can still make my way back inside it, remembering it. I was in a great church, rich with colour and beautiful woodwork and gold leaf, solemn and glorious. The community, full of people I had loved and lost, was welcoming me in gladly, embracing me and seating me among the choir, where we sang deep and splendid music. It had everything a person's heart could desire in beauty and liturgy, and I was grateful and appreciative. But all I could manage in response was a sense of such exhaustion, and a painful emptiness, as though all the air had drained out of the room. Beautiful and welcoming as it was, I had to get out.

So I got up (in the dream) and excused myself from all the splendour and went out through a side door. It led into a warren of offices and small rooms such as you find in a big old church building: linoleum floors and beige wainscotting and green paint and framed portraits of long-dead rectors in muttonchop whiskers, bulletin boards with out-of-date notices.

At the end of a corridor I opened an inconspicuous door to my left, and found myself in a large, plain, low-ceilinged room, dimly lit, full of old furniture covered with dust sheets--a place where people had stowed away things that were too good to throw out, but which where not wanted for the present. I was bone-tired and suddenly desolate right down into my bones, and I curled up in the angle of a dustcovered horsehair sofa, leaning my head against the broad, solid arm. There I cried for a while, but quietly; and then I slept.

And when I woke, there he was standing next to me, this lean inconspicuous man who had obviously come such a long distance, who (I knew) had worked among the poor and comforted the oppressed. He could have passed unnoticed in any crowd, with his thin face and lank mouse-brown hair, but his eyes were very kind. He took my hand, gently examining first the back and then the palm, holding it lightly, and from it he told me things that seemed startling and odd at the time. He said, I see you are an exile. Only afterwards have I managed to unpack the dense, packed meaning in what he said--deep, thick, ropy truth, hardpacked down to the size of a bouillon cube.

To understand what he said would likely take me years. It would be made clear to me not by my own probing efforts of logic and intelligence, but by being proved through experience. I couldn't dissect and analyze it and say "Ah, he told me this, so that thing will happen." I could only look backward on what had happened and see it laid out so clear, that he'd assessed it rightly. We get at the truth of things by looking backwards to them, once we're well and truly past, not by inching our way forward trying to figure it all out.

But one thing I can tell you: there was authenticity and authority in that man's every muscle and movement, and it was an authority that I--and I blow raspberries at authority, on principle--could yield to without a second thought, because it flowed from his power and integrity. And so I could say "Yes, Lord," trusting, and sleep again, my soul comforted and quiet "like a weaned child with its mother."

I can still taste the cool, fresh, slightly chilly air of that room; no sound but an old clock ticking; the low slanting light diffuse and gentle, but still so clear. I want to go back there, because it seems to me that in that place I might be able to untangle all the knots, sort out all the strands, and learn what this soul of mine is, that I have to live with, to heal, and to rebuild.

Do all our journeys take us into such quiet places, such plain places of mild desolation and quiet comfort? I don't know. I can't know anyone's journey but my own. We travel related roads, but never quite the same roads, and never in lockstep. Life's simply too variable for that. For you, maybe the richest experience lies in that glorious church with its colour and music. It wasn't for me; it made me feel as though my knees would sag with tiredness and sorrow. And maybe my quiet room would make you feel antsy and uneasy. But it was where I had been called to then, and will find myself called again.

What matters is to listen, to be alert for the call, ready to move when it comes. That may mean laying down what you thought mattered desperately, without a second thought or a look backward. It may mean holding on in trust and patience, even when things seem utterly without hope. It may mean standing up or sitting down, waiting or moving, speaking or being silent. It may mean that church; it may mean that quiet room.

But whatever you do, do it faithfully. Listen to that still small voice within. Attend to that true, quiet impulse that says "here, not there", to that touch on your arm as soft as a child's, but surprisingly firm. Turn your face toward that current of fresh air that fills your lungs when the tiredness grips you. Grace is seeking you; all you need to do is to turn your face to it and say "yes", and it will bring you home--to that place where you find yourself alone with that quiet man with his gentle authority, who you can finally call "my Lord."