All That Is Bitter and Sweet_ A Memoir - Ashley Judd [83]
When our conversation was finished, I imposed on the archbishop for counseling, even though I could tell he was ready to move on with his day. He graciously offered to hear what was in my heart. I told him how, on several occasions during my travels in Asia and Africa, I was worried that I could not feel the presence of the Holy Spirit. I told him about the (seemingly) godforsaken rice tents of Antananarivo and the profound grief of a young mother dying of AIDS at a hospice in Cambodia with whom I could not summon that palpable sweetness God has so often given me in difficult, complex situations.
The archbishop said he would not presume to give me spiritual advice but instead told me a story: There was a Jew in a concentration camp in World War II who was being ruthlessly tormented by his Nazi guard. On one particularly harsh morning, the officer ordered the beleaguered man to clean a foul, stinking latrine. The guard taunted the Jew as he worked and said to him, “Tell me, where is your God now?” The Jew looked up at him and responded, “My God is in here with me.”
I buried my face in my hands, realizing that just because I couldn’t feel God in the rice tents, just because I couldn’t conjure a command performance of the Holy Spirit at the hospice, didn’t mean that God was not there with me.
We spoke for another half hour, and he nourished me with the fruits of his experience. He talked about spiritual maturation and how sometimes during our growth we have dry periods, or rather spells that feel dry, because we have moved beyond the need for that blissful flood of grace that encouraged and informed us at the beginning of our journey. I instantly apprehended what he was telling me—I had always been so grateful for the grace I could summon and feel growing in my heart when I meditated. But now I saw that those instruments had served to confine and reassure my thoughts until I was mature enough for something more subtle—when I could sit in a rice tent and feel what it was like, and not flee its reality by asking God to blow me away with some on-the-spot transcendence.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, my mentor in spirit and now in the flesh, helped me realize that I didn’t always have to pray with words or thoughts or have that buzz that came with them, because I was praying with my very body, with my presence. I thank him so much for it, and for everything he has given all of us.
On the flight from Cape Town to Johannesburg, I closed my eyes and all the sense of Spirit that I did not have at the rice tents and hospice flooded my chest as if a tuning fork had been sounded. It coursed throughout my body, especially my chest, and this time the sense of Spirit was accompanied by colors, something I had heard others describe but had never experienced myself. I was flooded with rainbows of color that I could feel. I pictured the plastic on the sidewalk and rained down on it with white light, with majesty, with protection, with purification. I pictured the weak and ill at the hospice, and they glowed with keen, brilliant lights. It was a busy ninety-minute flight, the prayers flying through the African sky faster, higher, and more accurately than any airplane ever could.
The part of this trip that I most looked forward to, outside of our meeting with Archbishop Tutu, was visiting Soweto. I had always elegized Soweto as the seat of the struggle, where angry, righteous Africans fought against persecution by a monstrous minority government. Images from the news, bulletins from Amnesty International, U2 records—I followed it all. To actually go to Soweto was akin to a pilgrimage.
And as with so many other things in life, I was quickly