Pat Bizzell | English | College of the Holy Cross

Montserrat

     Imagine that you have organized your entire adult life around one worthy endeavor. And you are good at it, and you have achieved recognition, companionship, and even love through it. And then something happens, a catastrophe. You cannot go forward in this path you have chosen. What do you do?

     There is a period when you are just laid low. Then you begin to recover. You pick up your head and look around for a new direction. And you are blessed with a vision that points you the way.

     So: go to a high place. A beautiful place. A place where pilgrims have come for centuries to look into the inscrutable obsidian eyes of a little mother holding an infant. Go up, and place before her the useless instruments of your former life. When you leave, you are free.