It could take a tribe to find the way back to what you love. A day's wandering could become a season, then another. At times it may all signal chaos. But take heart. Sometimes there is intelligence even in the crumbling of things.
The creek is wearing its usual disguise, braiding and unbraiding itself through narrows and pools as it pleases, proving its force by taking the path of least resistance, taking apart the stone one grain at a time.
If you were water, what part of your will would you be willing to dissolve? Which of your ways would you have to learn not to want to have? And how, if you always ran downstream, would your desire know how to live?
A fragment of fence long trampled by those who needed most to pass. Pilgrim, immigrant, refugee, all journeys severe, all made in longing. Most cross over what's already breached, but the step is long and touches down In a world that takes heart in the breaking of what divides.
Lord, am I such a pain in the neck? I see you everywhere, yet turn from your presence in the faces of my wife and children. I look for your face everywhere and then spit in your face -- in the faces of those you give me to love ... and in whom you offered your love for me again and again in a million imperfect ways every day. I turn from them if they aren't just so -- just perfect. Nevertheless, your quiet is finally growing in me ... I want to calm my restless feelings, Lord, and look deeply into the faces of my family and see you face to face as we talk during our meal.
To see the face of God in those you love and live with takes consistent commitment and concentration. It is the same contemplative act that one experiences in the stillness and silence of solitary prayer and adoration. It takes simultaneous attention to the "without" and the "within", to self and to other. It is a paradox, a simultaneous joining while remaining solitary and separate. It resembles the act of physical touching and loving. It is separate togetherness and oneness experienced separately at the instant it is shared.
~ from BECOMING AN EVERYDAY MYSTIC by James W. Warnke