You Belong to Me

By Rev. Dr. Clay Brantley

Almost six years ago, I was on an eight-day silent retreat at Montserrat Jesuit Center on Lake Lewisville, near Dallas. I had just left the church I had served for five and a half years because I felt called into a deeper relationship with Christ, with Life itself. The invitation to leave had come from a Fool I encountered in a dream. I understood that fool to be Christ.

On the third morning of the retreat, I woke up at 2 a.m. gripped in fear. I immediately wondered what I had to be afraid of. I was on a retreat in a beautiful place with no demands being placed on me. I got up and started to journal. I journaled for the next two hours, schizophrenic journaling between the hope and excitement for this journey and the harsh fear and questioning of what I was doing.

My confidence in my decision to leave my church work was taking a beating. I heard a voice in my head speaking to me. “Who do you think you are? This is the biggest waste of time. You have been here for two days and you’ve got nothing. NOTHING. How are you going to explain your decision to leave the church to other people? You’re a pastor. They will really see you as crazy and even worse lazy. You’re just running away.” It felt like these voices were yelling at me.

I felt my anger rise. I screamed at the voice inside of me, “F*#ck you. F*#ck you. F*#ck you. (Not language I ever use). I saw I was at the same level of energy as it was Anger. Fear. I tried to move into the presence of love, but it was impossible. I decided after two hours of wrestling to go back to bed, having resolved nothing except that there’s a schizophrenic me in me.

Eckhart Tolle teaches to be present to what is and to hold whatever it is that comes. I decided that would be my path. I would no longer struggle against this fear but would simply hold it. I laid in my bed in a fetal position and was present with the fear, simply holding it in my body. Breathe. Breathe. Deep breaths. After about twenty minutes, the fear subsided. I lay on my back, placing my hands on my chest, giving thanks that whatever that fear was, it was gone for now.

I then experienced what I call the communion of the saints. I experienced my grandfather, whom I call Big Daddy, on my left-hand side. He had died about 20 years earlier. He is Harold Clayton Brantley, and I am Harold Clayton Brantley III. Big Daddy told me, “I will be with you on this journey.”

I thought “Wow. I am on a journey and Big Daddy, my role model, will be with me. This is good.” I began to say the Lord’s Prayer. Big Daddy said it with me. I felt blessed.

On my right-hand side, my mother-in-law Mary Lou said to me, “You are loved.” Those words washed over me and struck a deep place within me. Love, for me, is often experienced as conditional. You must like me to love me. You cannot disagree with me and love me. Mary Lou was stating a truth I needed to hear. “You are love as you are.”

Mary Lou also said “Crysta (my wife, her daughter) is part of the journey.” I was very thankful. What I heard in that statement was that I was not to go off to a monastery, learn what is to happen next for us, and then go inform Crysta. She is part of the discernment, part of the unfolding, part of whatever future I will have. She will bring her own insights, prayers, hopes, and dreams into our lives; together we will see how this plays out.

I was lying in the bed thinking, “This is good. I have Big Daddy and Mary Lou with me.” Then I felt another presence in the room. I knew it was Christ. Christ did not stand in the room. His presence filled the room. Christ announced, “You belong to me.”

I replied, “I believe you are the Christ, the son of the Living God, all authority in heaven and on earth have been given to you. We all belong to you.”

Christ said, “No, you belong to me. Kneel.”

I said, “Excuse me?”

He said again, “Kneel.” I got up out of the bed and knelt on the floor. I felt an anointing on my head. I wondered what was going on. I knew I was fully awake. This must be the moment for which I had been waiting.

I decided to ask the question. “What do you want me to do?”

Christ replied, “I will let you know.”

The rest of the retreat I remember as being one of deep love and presence. I felt alive. Called. Sustained. I could live in this moment. These last six years have been a journey of knowing and not knowing, of struggle and searching, of fear and presence, of being lost and found, of bursts of energy and no energy. But in the midst of it all, I have returned to the phrase from Christ again and again, “You belong to me.” That is what comforts me, strengthens me, holds me as I walk this journey, following this Fool.

Rev. Dr. Clay Brantley is one of the directors of Retreat House. Learn more about Clay here.