When I was a little kid, I lived in a big white house.  The biggest in the neighborhood.  It was on a hilltop and had many trees and flowers and bushes.  Fruit trees:  apple and crabapple and cherry. 

But my favorite was a white birch, a giant white birch.  It was taller than our house.  To my young eyes its tip-top branches seemed to brush the sky.  When I sat at "my mother's knee" she'd read me stories.  I was sure that my white birch was just like Jack's beanstalk.  In my imagination, I had climbed to its top many times and had all kinds of adventures.  One afternoon I was playing outside with my best pals, Billy and Jim.  It was almost suppertime; the Halloween sun was ready to call it a day.  We were by the side of the house under my white birch.  I made a dumb mistake!  I confided to them that I had climbed to the top of the giant tree many times.  They laughed and started to tease me.  Jimmy howled with disbelief.  "If you've climbed to the top, do it again, do it now."  The two of them wouldn't let up.  They hooted and laughed!  They began to chant, "Climb it! Climb it!" 

But I was so small, I couldn't even reach the bottom limb.  They spotted a stepladder leaning against the house.  Billy and Jim wrestled it over to the tree and dared me to climb to the top.  The limbs were quite close together so I started up.  It turned out to be pretty easy.  I climbed and climbed.  I didn't look down, just up toward the top most branches.  "I'll show 'em," I thought.  Suddenly I became aware that my big birch tree was moving.  The evening breeze was making my friendly white giant sway from side to side.  I was almost at the very top but I couldn't make myself go an inch higher.  For the first time, I looked down.  Jim and Billy looked so small.  And they were yelling at me, "Come down, Come down."  But I couldn't move.  I felt the tree was swaying more and more - back and forth.  I held on for dear life!  I pressed my cheek tight against the bark.  I can still remember the smell of white birch.  I heard my mother's voice from way down below:  "Robert, you come down here this instant."  My pals had called my mother and as soon as I heard her say "Robert," I knew I was in trouble.  Even so I couldn't move.  I was frozen -- like a kitten on top of a telephone pole.  Then I heard my father's voice.  He didn't yell or holler.  He knew what had happened.  He talked softly, but I could hear him.  "It's ok Bobby, just hold on and I'll be up to help you.  So he climbed too.  Right under where I was.  Then he whispered kind words, gentle words.  He said, "Let's play a game."  He had a small pencil flashlight.  "See where I am shining the light?"  It was on a branch four or five inches below my right foot.  It was dark by now and he said, "See if you can move your foot into the light."  And I did!  I surprised myself.  But his encouragement was so warm and gentle. 

Then he moved the light under my left foot.  And I managed to move it there too.  We repeated the little game time and time again -- I stepped from darkness into light, until I was at the lowest branch.  From there it was no trick at all, even in darkness, to jump into the open arms of my father.  

Many years later, and many, many miles away, I was thinking about "The Will of God."  How do we know the Will of God?  How do we know what God wants us to do?

            Maybe it was my Guardian Angel who prompted me to remember my white birch.  I don't know what made me think of it.  All across those many years I made a connection; between the "Will of God" and "my white birch."  I remembered again being frozen with fear among the topmost branches -- unable to move.  And my father with his little flashlight and his little game gave me courage to move my foot from darkness into light.  I moved in darkness one small step at a time into my father's light.

            Maybe that's the way it is with the Will of God.  I can't see what God wants of me or where he wants me to be five years in the future or five weeks or even five minutes.  But He will light my way in darkness one step at a time.  

"You are my lamp, O Lord!

O my God, you brighten the darkness about me" (2 Sm. 22:29).

"A lamp unto my feet is your word, a light to my path" (Ps. 119:105).

Fr. Robert McQueeney, 1919 - 2002
Spiritual Director
The Padre Pio Foundation of America, 1982-2002