A Sabbath I've Never Known (and Always Missed)
/A poetic reflection on short sabbath I took last week at a dear friend's cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Northwest, Georgia. stubborn hill, spinning tires, back it up, try it again. Focus, Feel...forward! Up it goes and forward I look... and there it passes by my right, unnoticed.
It will not scream out to me; it will simply wait to be found
for waiting is its only purpose, its only calling.
At the top I weave and wind, whither and wane as I shift and rev to return to a lane that I once wandered far and traveled upon alone and with courage.
I celebrate my victory for the briefest of moments and then remember that I have yet to find that which begs to be found.
Rain gently drums on my windshield and the wipers wake me from my thoughts. I could call, I could ask, but, no, this is the point, isn't it?
I return and slowly slide down that same stubborn hill. the first time, I had no choice but to speed for only momentum would do. But this time I creep, I crawl, my neck is free to turn my wandering head back and forth. My eyes squint and
there it is!
My heart leaps and I delicately turn into a sanctuary that I have never known and I have always missed.
I welcome the rain for it reminds me that I am alone. While others see it as dismal, distant, and dark, I feel it, in this moment at least, as soothing, as something that reminds me that things are in need of being washed away.
I am alone. I am welcome. I am known.
Here I was....here I am....here I will be.
I adjust to the quiet; it is, after all, alarmingly present. It isn't a simple thing going from an everything that is nothing to a nothing that is everything.
I walk around, it take it all it, or perhaps it takes me all in...I'll never quite understand.
The mist rolls over the mountains and the chimes, ever so gently, respond to the wind's subtle push.
You're here, it's time, let go, and listen their song so simply suggests. And I relent, and reluctantly retreat into nothingness and there abide for a while.