“We’re all strangers here,” she said. Then she smiled again again and turned back to the roses.

September 4

The Spirit’s Path turned out to be a walk.

Phillip gathered us on the lodge porch at eleven and, without explanation, led us down the slope behind the lodge along a row of white stones set into the grass at even intervals. Someone had painted them, and someone repainted them often, because not one was chipped. The stones ran past the cabins and the shed and ended at a split-rail fence where the lawn gave way to the woods.

“This is as far as the path goes,” Phillip said. “For now.”

He asked each of us to name one thing we would be willing to leave behind. Not a bad habit, he said. Something we loved.

Claire said her name. Harlan said his sleep, which he had already told me he’d given up years ago. Benita said her mother’s house. Remy said the city. Larry said a future. Eileen, last before me, said, “Everything, dear. I’m old.” They answered quickly, the way a congregation gives its responses in church. No one hesitated, no one laughed, and no one asked what the question was for.

When it came to me, I said, “Nothing.”

Phillip smiled. “Everyone leaves something.”

He walked back up the path and the others followed him. I stayed at the fence a while longer, looking into the trees. I couldn’t see more than twenty feet in. The air coming out of those woods was cooler than it had any right to be in the middle of summer.

I don’t postulate whether there is a god or not. I’m not interested in the answer to it. So, too, devils and demons.

August 16

The morning brought an eerie stillness to the cabin porch, as if our surroundings did not want to disturb us. There was birdsong, but muted, and I was certain I heard running water in the distance, as if a stream were hidden in the woods.

The woods. For some reason I hadn’t paid much attention to them the day before. I’d been busy meeting my retreat mates and getting settled in, and of course our dinner last evening.

“Where are we?” I asked.

I was sitting in one of the six wicker chairs that lined the front wall. My question was to Larry, who had been sitting there when I came out just as the sun was beginning to rise. It was clear he had not gone back to his bed after waking me from my dream—it may have been as disturbing for him as it had been for me, although he did not indicate this.

“I’m not sure, really,” he said.

Looking at him, I realized he was more handsome in profile.  It made me think of my own younger days—as if being forty-two made me past my prime. There was a pensiveness to his expression as he stared out at the trees, as if trying to determine for himself where we were.

“I went where the GPS told me to,” he added.

“We probably all did. This retreat center did not show up on my map. It was simply my destination.”

The gods? I had been led to believe there was only one. Sometimes he was called Jesus. Sometimes the Holy Spirit. But most often just God.

August 12

I’ve had what are called lucid dreams twice in my life: once when I was ten years old, and that first night of the retreat. These are dreams in which you awake within the dream and you know you are dreaming. It’s very unsettling at first, as you examine the dream you’re in and realize you are its stage director, its script writer, and its cinematographer. There is an unfamiliar experience of power unlike anything else you have known. Reality, such as it is, cannot be manipulated in the way a lucid dream can be. Once you have your wings, you can fly. You can sail on your imagination and decide what you want to see and experience in your dream, as well as who you want to share the stage with.

When I was ten, my grandmother died from some form of cancer the adults would not talk about. Some kind of woman’s cancer, breast or ovarian. It wasn’t until I was in my teens that my mother told me it had been metastatic breast cancer and it had consumed my grandmother within a matter of months. Aggressive, they’d called it. And uncurable in any case.

I attended the viewing and the funeral. My grandmother Antonia, whom everyone called Toni and the children called Nonny, had been a sturdy woman from a working-class background. Her death was a shock to me less from the death itself than from Nonny being felled by anything at all. Hers was a formidable presence, and she had a particular fondness for me.

But to the dream: three nights after her funeral, I relived it in exact detail. This was a dream and I knew I was the dreamer. I was able to magically appear next to one relative or another and hear what they were saying. When one of the mourners was not sufficiently sad, I made him sob at the loss of such a great woman. And then I made Nonny sit up in her casket. She called me over and we talked for several minutes while no one else seemed to see me there.

“You’re a special boy,” she told me. “Someday you will know why.”

“But I don’t want to wait,” I replied, having no idea what being special meant.

“The gods act in their own time, boy.”

The gods? I had been led to believe there was only one. Sometimes he was called Jesus. Sometimes the Holy Spirit. But most often just God.