by Kat Silverglate ©2024

Often attributed to St. Philip Neri, a sixteenth century Italian priest, the story of a fantastically creative reaction to a confession goes something like this. A woman tells her priest that she has repeated a non-flattering story about another woman. The priest tells her to go home, find a feather pillow, go the top of the church bell tower, cut the pillowcase open, shake out the feathers and then return for her penance. She does this. As the wind catches the feathers, she watches them fly far and wide across the land. When she returns to the priest, he gives her this penance: now go and retrieve all the feathers. She instantly understands the impact of her actions. Just as it would be impossible to retrieve the feathers, so too would it be with her words.  

I’d found the feather story while preparing a multi-week sermon series on conflict and peacemaking. The Sunday after sharing the story, a woman who served at the food insecurity mission where I preached came to the altar, opened her bible and tenderly lifted a beautiful white feather from it. She offered it to me personally. I knew exactly what it meant.

When it passed from her hand to mine, I felt the feather’s weight – a weight only the two of us could truly appreciate.

We had history she and I. Known each other a long time. Met through the local church my family had just left before I agreed to serve full time at the mission. When she first came to the church we had attended for years, I was knee deep in a role I knew I was called to but felt insecure in -- Director of Women’s Ministry.

She was a bit older than me. Bent more toward the introverted temperament than the more-the-merrier type. Well versed in the Bible, literally. She could quote countless passages from memory punctuated by precise citations. I hadn’t gone to seminary at that point. I had been educated mostly through bible studies, discipleship programs, mentors, sermons and books. She had studied at a different level. The breadth of her knowledge intimidated me. She loved God and His church, and she was passionate about many things with a heart moved deeply by getting things right and the impact of sin. I was bent more in the extreme extrovert direction and approached women’s ministry from this temperament. I loved God and His church and was passionate about many things with a heart moved deeply by authentic community that was unafraid to ask hard questions and safely sort wounds within the family of faith.

Almost from the get-go, we were like oil and water. After several interactions went south in unexpected ways, a tension grew between us. We would talk it out only to discover later the other had a far different interpretation of what the issue was or what transpired in the meeting. It was as if one was speaking French and the other German and neither understood the other’s language. The experience was confusing and confounding.

We would go miles to reach reconciliation and rejoice in getting there only to experience the pain of conflict again. When feathers escaped, it wasn’t out of malice or an intent to harm; but mostly out of clumsy attempts to bring others from the church close in order to broker peace or sort out what was going on. The experience was messy, painful and exhausting. It felt a bit like someone had signed me up for a Master’s in reconciliation without my consent, and by the time I started to study I realized the curriculum was far more challenging than I could fathom and I was certain I didn’t have the perseverance necessary to get my diploma.

When I accepted that feather at the altar that day, my heart was still very guarded but also understood that reconciliation was possible without becoming BFF’s. Without intertwining our lives. When she asked me out for coffee, I gently declined explaining that I felt genuine peace between us but that I needed to draw a boundary around my heart as I was starting a new leadership position full of challenges. She was gracious in the moment, but I think it hurt her. She stopped coming to the mission while I was present.

Years went by. I completed what I felt the Lord had called me to do at the mission, graduated from seminary, and started The Ridiculous Hour Foundation. By February of 2022, the Foundation was in the middle of its 26th mission called the Boundary Protection Program. It included a lesson on boundaries, but not the kind that keep people out. The kind where you learn to appropriately invite them to help you maintain a healthy hedge or invite them on the inside of a tender place. There was about a week left before the next mission started. I was in Arizona at a conference. My phone alerted me to a new text message. When I glanced down, her name was at the top of the screen. I didn’t expect it.

The message was short and to the point. She wanted me to know that she was looking in the rearview mirror at that season of her life, having some epiphanies about where she was then and wishing she had done some things differently. The message ended with this:

My heart clenched. Clearly there was still pain there. Pain I thought I’d released. She had forgiven me and I had forgiven her. Why was there resistance in my heart when I thought about opening the door between us again? I decided to wait until I got home. So, I went on with the conference. Flew home. Moved on to the next mobile mission. Pretty much forgot about the text. Until March 6^th when I was on a plane to California sitting by a young man. A pastor’s son who was angry at his father. They weren’t on speaking terms.

I started to talk to him about peace making. The whole sermon series from all those years ago came up in my heart. I gave him chapter and verse on how far God went to forgive us. How far God went to reconcile with him personally by giving His own son. I asked him to pray about contacting his dad when he got off the plane. To at least crack the door open to communication again. And then, like a slide on the projector of my heart, the unanswered text came up. God was poking me. Asking me if I was gonna practice what I was preaching to this young man.

I opened my phone. Found the text. And responded.

Nearly two more years passed. And then out of the blue, I got a call from a mutual friend. “She’s dying. Maybe only a few weeks or days to live.”

This time, my heart breaks. Shatters. I’m filled with the kind of grief you experience when someone you love deeply is leaving. I hang up. Dial her number. She answers right away.

I say three words. “I love you.”

She says four. “I love you too.”

Hospice was arriving just as I called. There was no time for more words. What more was there to say?

After a good long cry, I find a snow-white feather, place it in an envelope, and mail it to her.

Her final text to me said this:

The weight was gone. My heart was light… as a feather.

The Gift of Reconciliation:

The Scripture reminds us that a gentle word can break a bone. What was so compelling about this woman-of-wonder’s approach with me from the giving of the white feather on the altar that day to the sending of the boundary breaking text years later was her patience and utter humility. She didn’t demand or insist on pressing her cause. Didn’t recount all the ways she was wronged or justify herself. As far as it was up to her, she did her part to reconcile knowing that the Lord had done… and was doing… His part in my heart. She came gently and humbly until the Lord brought down the walls around my guarded heart eviscerating the boundary of old hurts and wounds that still separated us.

2 Cor. 5:17-19 says it all:

Our Mission:

In your mission pack you will find two feathers, one brown or speckled and the other white as snow. Are you reconciled first to God and then to your neighbor? Made clean not by anything you’ve done but by what He has done? We can’t possibly gather all the feathers of our actions. Only God makes us white as snow and then blesses us with the ministry of reconciliation to share with others. Our prayer is that the feathers would fly in September 2024 – snow white feathers of reconciliation with God and others.

Amen? Amen!