Carmel Reflections

31 - Of desolation and consolation, the gift of the bees.

The hermits "lived in small cells, similar to the cells of a beehive, they lived as God's bees, gathering the divine honey of spiritual consolation."

Elijah was one of the desert fathers, thought of as the founding father in spirit of the Carmelite movement. You will find him pottering about in the book of Kings, trying to do what he thinks God wants, sometimes not getting it right and mad at God for being so difficult. He reaches the point of desperation more than once. Eventually he takes himself off to a cave to die, he really can't take any more. But we know, as he did not, when we read that story, that after the storms and the screaming have worked themselves out, a raven will come and drop bread and cheese for him, and he will at last hear the voice of God in the whispering wind.

I wish I could remember hearing that for the first time, not knowing how it would turn out. Not knowing that in another crisis help would come, and he would have someone to whom he could hand on the cloak, that he would not die, but would rise up and blaze his way to heaven in a chariot of fire.

You just have to love him. He was so keen to do right, and so got it wrong, and sometimes did do it right but didn't get the reassurance he longed for. And he just yelled. I can't stand it.

Ignatian spirituality teaches, in consolation or in desolation, tell God what you are feeling. Elijah never failed there.

If you realise he is seen as the founding father, you have to take a second look at the quote from the constitutions of Carmel. It's just not going to be that easy.

It sounds selfish on the face of it, these little hermits just sitting about being consoled. But of course that's not it. They gather 'consolations' (concrete grace) at great cost, through both consolation and desolation, never giving up, in wind and rain, and storms, for the use of the community which ripples out infinitely in a setting which only functions on the axis of sharing, which can only work when they work for others.

Hermits and bees have to bring the tools for the job. The little guy above brought a really ugly looking proboscis. Being a saint is not about sitting pretty.

In Suffi meditative dancing (whirling), one hand is raised to receive the blessing, palm upward to heaven, but the other is turned downward to pass the blessing on to the earth. It is the metaphor and the reality. But the dancer, who only seeks to transmit, is still flooded with that blessing, for that time.