silver thread of eternity

I think there are little clues, tiny gifts, in life that remind you who you were meant to be.

I don’t know always if God sent them on purpose or if they are simply woven into the eternal world like silver threads through a veil.

They are the signposts we are to follow: This is love. This is purpose. This is home. This is what they feel like, this is what you have been searching for.

I don’t think it has to be like lightning from heaven that changes your life forever. I think it is often the little things.

It is walking into your grandmother’s house, and all is quiet, soft colored curtains blending together and light through the windows, crocheted doilies and the clock that has chimed on the hour for 26 years. And you know what it means to have a home you are at peace in, and you feel the beauty you are meant to see when you walk through your own door. This is what you need to create in your house, this is the home you were meant to have.

It is when you feel the calling on your life, the puzzle-piece place in the world where you were designed to fit. You see glimpses of the things you would die for, the people you wish to fight for, the elements or injustices or visions for this world that keep you awake or bring you to tears or you want to change forever. They are the things that make you feel alive and is the life you were meant to have. This is your vocation; you have found what you love, now let it drive you.

It is the moment you hear from God, visions in your head and words in your mind, and God breaks out of your small rule-bound box. Your friend tells you when a word from heaven saved his life during the war, you speak in a foreign language you were not taught, or the one you prayed for is healed from cancer. Angels whisper to you in that place between awake and asleep, and you let go of religion to see the face of God. This is the touch of God you were meant to know, and the relationship with the divine you were meant to have. Don’t let it go.

There are others. There are moments that show you the love between a man and a woman, the rest available to your heart, the beauty to be found in clothing and paintings and music, the raw power in the art of war. These are the infinite glimpses of eternity.

Hold on to them. Don’t ever let them go. They are the key to abundant life.

For it is in those moments, if we will be quiet enough to feel it and humble enough to accept it, we will feel a sad-sweet longing, a calling to something we do not yet have but know we are created for.

This is our call to redemption, to holiness, and to a world we were made for before evil and pain.

Perhaps this is what Jesus meant when he said, I will give you rest.

The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing — to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from — my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back.
 ― C.S. Lewis

hope, on sale with coupon

Life is composed of things that are more important than they should be.

You are existing, moving, minding your own business in a black-and-white world, and suddenly something meaningless becomes doused with a bucket of scarlet importance, like a single snowflake on your tongue.

And it feels like hope.

………………

I’m at the front doors of Kroger, shopping list in hand: six apples, some bagels, a bottle of wine. And more I’m sure I’ve forgotten, and more I need that they don’t sell. Where do you buy joy, or happiness, or peace?

Hope. On sale. 50% off with coupon.

For the past year, the colors had been slowly fading from my world like a book in the August sun on a front porch swing. With every day, I had less energy to paint in the color that was draining away or to remember what it was like to see beauty where others saw darkness. Now I was the one who saw in shades of grey.

But sometimes you don’t know what will become color in your grayscale world.

In front of the grocery store doors, a pallet of miniature roses. Cheap green plastic pots and buds wilting from the hot Texas sun, soil dry from neglect and leaves turning brown.

But color.

Green and pink and soft dull white, red-tipped buds that promised to bloom and some that already had. Smeared yellow leaves with purple jagged edges, tips curled down like toes in sand and petals that felt like peace. Long green stems and pink-rimmed buds, bees crawling in dirt like children at play, and as my fingers brush through flowers and leaves, my world becomes a three-dollar rose bush.

And like in the stories you heard as child and you always wished were true, for a moment the curse is broken and my world is drenched in color, and I remember what I used to know: that there is beauty in this world, and to see it is called faith.

That morning, I took a rose bush home.

Hope. On sale. $2.99.

………………

In the end, I believe that life is composed of things that are more important than they should be, like sunsets and love and small red rosebushes.

To see that is an unreasonable thing, an unreasonable happiness.

But it feels like hope.

One second of eternity

It’s the desire so strong it hurts. It’s so strong you almost don’t want to tell anyone about it. You can try to describe it with words like adventure, battle, longing, calling, but that never quite describes it and you are left with a something that is not a feeling nor a word but a shift of your soul.

It is someone is calling your name over and over and you have to respond or you’ll be trapped in a fog you were never meant to die in.

It’s when you feel life's very core, like how glittering music affects you or the mountains, or great beauty or great pain; when a small child dies or when you hear the stories that meant something.

It is anything that makes you feel eternity for one second.

Just one second.

...

Listen to it.

Whatever it is, this soul of yours, this calling or cry or pain or joy, this is who you are. Somehow, here is the key.

The terrible pain of the kingdom of God

It’s the longing that hurts the most, the beauty so intense it will claw your soul to shreds—or perhaps, make it whole.

We all feel this pain at some point. In horses, I am torn by it most in story—in Shadowfax, Flicka, the Black Stallion. In reading about Tsornin and Bree and Hwin. The longing for that beauty, to be caught up in its transcendence, to reach that place entirely beyond words is so deep for a time I thought of leaving horses entirely: the desire for it was so strong if it couldn’t be fulfilled, I wasn’t sure I could stand it.

It’s odd, you know—a beauty, a longing, a glory, a transcendence so great that it may drive you away as much as it draws you in. I am glad the Lord made it that way, because pain—the grief of having lost something we can’t remember having, of searching for the story we were supposed to live and trying to wake up from the dream in which we seem to be trapped—the pain is sometimes more transformative than the joy.

If you’ve ever felt it, you know what I mean; some of you have, with horses, with why you sought them in the first place. It’s to touch magic with horses. Some feel the beauty, the longing, the touch of the divine in other places: my dad knows it in flying, one of my friends in playing flute. Another is gripped by its power in writing and another in filmmaking. They all agree—it’s the same no matter where in the kingdom you are—the same blinding pain with incredible longing, the insatiable desire for the beauty always just beyond your fingertips, the vision of the way the world was meant to be and the life you always longed to live. The transformative power that drives you straight to the face of God.

That is the kingdom of God, after all.

When you've lost your story

Deep within our hearts is an aching longing and desire. It is sad to me how little such longing is spoken of; somehow, it seems wrong or frivolous, yet it is a crucial part of kingdom redemption. This desire is endless longing for a better land, endless aching that you were not meant for this country—an aching that drives you to redeem it, to change it, and to make it a little more like home. We will never quite get there, never "quite get in," as C.S. Lewis says, for we know that ultimately sin runs too deep in creation and can only be removed by having a new heavens and new earth. But until that time, we keep redeeming the land in beauty and glory and in our war against darkness.

I feel I need to defend desire, and it is devastating to me that I need to do so. We have learned to destroy our desire, to hide our heart, instead of guarding it fiercely as the wellspring of life and remembering that true desire may be one of the strongest pulls of the holy within our soul.

Desire is feeling so much longing—the longing you feel when you are supremely happy and yet then aching for the eternal. It is the perfect longing when you see the total glory of this world and the incredible magic in it and love it a thousand times more than you ever did before, yet simultaneously feel your heart is being ripped out for the truer land, the clearer Narnia, the redeemed land where that magic would be made perfect:

When I attempted, a few minutes ago, to describe our spiritual longings, I was omitting one of their most curious characteristics. We usually notice it just as the moment of vision dies away, as the music ends or as the landscape loses the celestial light...You know what I mean. For a few minutes we have had the illusion of belonging to that world. Now we wake to find that it is no such thing. We have been mere spectators. Beauty has smiled, but not to welcome us; her face was turned in our direction, but not to see us. We have not been accepted, welcomed, or taken into the dance. (~C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory)

That desire is the reality behind every storybook and every fairy tale. Where do we get the ideas for those places, those lands, those adventures? The desire for More, for adventure and battle, heroism and beauty, and a depth so deep it moves beyond all words cannot just come from within us; we know it is true, somewhere, in some world. It must be rooted in reality, as the feel of it is far closer to memory than to make believe, and we are searching for it with every breath we take. We find it in our world, though dimly, though one day those who have lived in Christ’s glory will see it face to face.

Once, I was snowshoeing through my grandparents’ woods by myself. The flakes seemed the size of cotton balls, eternally silent falling, catching on my eyelashes; it was quiet and beautiful and Christmas Eve. The beauty was so intense, the longing and desire to be within that life I always longed to live so strong, I couldn't speak or even think, and all I could grasp was that it looked just like what I thought Narnia should.

And then, I realized, it was—it is. This is Narnia. That is what I sense sometimes, and this is why people are so drawn to magic and fairy tales and unicorns and fantasy, for it strikes a part of us we think isn’t “real”; we think magic isn't a part of this world, but it is. That is why we love the fairy tales, and that is why we love Narnia—because it reminds us of us—of home—of the story we left but once we knew. Because there is magic in this world, there is something so much deeper; there are miracles and true love and mountains and sunsets and families and dreams that come true. It is truly magic, it is another dimension, there is storybook adventure here in this world, but we close our minds to the dimension of adventure and magic, and we do not see it.

I love Narnia because I love the Narnian dimension of this world. We do not have to search for Narnia and magic and adventure any longer, for it is here, and in the new heavens and earth, it will be perfected; it will truly be magic. Now I see as in a mirror dimly, but then, face to face. I feel wisps of the magic brushing by me, of what life is supposed to be like and was like before we fell, before we lost our story, and what it will be like at the end of time.

Saying goodbye to the stars

The quilt binds around my bare shoulders as I twist to face the window and see the stars. Midnight, and in five hours and twenty minutes my watch will beep, and I will get up and put on my backpack and leave Austria for home.

But that doesn’t matter when you’ve seen the stars.

The door to the balcony swings wordlessly—respecting those who dream while asleep, not while awake. No makeup, bare feet, hair loose, I greet the cow bells on the hills, and the mountains look up, brushing my gaze toward the crescent moon. In Paris, I watched it rise alongside the Eiffel Tower, full—now it steps back, making room for the stars.

Ten million stars, each a window God slit in the curtain of this world to allow the outside light of heaven through; now, He whispers, you can see home. If I spent ten minutes looking at God’s stars, heaven's stars, each night, I would love life more. In the city, we drown and build our own stars, flickering halogen that makes moths commit suicide, and humans too. A breeze blows off the mountain, and my face is cold to the touch.

Above me, an ivory rainbow. I haven’t seen the Milky Way for three years, since the farm, when my sister didn’t live on an island and there were four at the dinner table each night. On those evenings, Dad would bring us to the end of our driveway, a quarter-mile walk between fields of crickets, and teach us about Cassiopeia. I don’t see her now and don’t remember where to look.

Yet perhaps I’ve never seen the Milky Way, for even now when I look at her, she fades. But, then, of course she does; beauty doesn’t make sense and you can’t explain why it matters and it’s only on faith you see it at all. Beauty is the greatest builder of faith I know.

Above me, a shooting star, God’s prayer. And I wished on it, that I would always return to nights that are cold and skies full of stars, if not in this world, then in the next.

the darkness prayer

Four braids. Three, actually, with one still undone. Maia’s tangled black mane reaches to her chest, my fingers run through it, and rainy wind breathes on eastern pasture.

It’s nearly supper, and I haven’t had lunch; a little dizzy, but I don’t notice; long ago I learned to keep myself from fainting. I stand and the world swims, can’t hear, can’t see, hand reaches silently for a wall. But I learn to hide, to sit and look in embroidered purse for something invisible, and no one knows the imminence of a fall. They go on with their lives, and in a few moments, my world returns, and I continue with mine.

Maia breathes free from halter or rope. Fourth braid almost finished, and horse dirt sticks to mane-greased fingers. Maia is not quite sleeping, standing with me in the field. She would be, except for the turkeys poking through violet clover on the far side of the hill. They need watching, suspicious things.

Maia never misses anything. I get dizzy, stop breathing, and she knows, but she also feels when I live the joy of my grandma’s purple-flowered trellis. She never asks me to be anyone I cannot be at this moment, but she does demand I live in all the beauty I can today. This is a good lesson, to live in the moment.

I crouch for the comb in the grass, stand, vision blurs, hand touches Maia’s shoulder, she stays still for me. When I stand and darkness closes in, I don’t think well, and sometimes all I can remember is the presence of God. Then I understand the meaning of prayer.

Why people rode west

When wondering
Why people rode West,
I ask horses.
For once I knew bright wanderlust,
Tears when sun wove down to flax—
But now I stay, as statues stay:
Sleepwalk.
Yet mustang herds in picture books
Choose godly mud, swim
Through oceaned fog as rivers
Under Utah stars—
So I mount my mare to rise
To fields of blistered sky,
Scale a cliff of glass or grass—
Let September sun trade places
With life in stirrups' muddy tread,
Nails pushed full of dirt and sand,
Living unasked.

Moonlight

We may want to love other people without holding back, to feel authentic, to breathe in the beauty around us, to dance and sing. Yet each day we listen to inner voices that keep our life small. 

~Tara Brach 

As a college freshman, desperate to loosen the choke of city’s fingers around my throat, I would walk carefully beside the sidewalk. With eyes focused on the ground, I’d see only grass, pretend I was home on our 30-acre prairie farm. Three years later, a senior at Northwestern College, I have learned to see the beauty of a Minneapolis skyline trading places with the stars. I still leave the paths, though no longer for fear.

My high heels clip the sidewalk and stick in cracks as I walk to my Corolla, classes over at three in the afternoon. The tulips are like the breathless aurora this April, and driving onto campus this morning, I most respected the white-tipped scarlet ones—“beauty is the secret sound of the deepest thereness of things.”

A hill rises to my left, Riley Hall seated on top, radiating spring heat thick from its roof like a dry riverbed. The sun drenches, dripping golden-hour light down redbrick walls into a watercolor of tulip rivers. Warm wind brushes aside my bangs and breathes gently on my forehead. I find myself with shoes deep in grassy surf, peasant skirt twisting around my knees, climbing up the hill to the flowered stream, searching for tulips already broken onto the lawn; I will not pick any. Three torn crimson petals and a damaged blossom offer themselves, and I cup them in my fingers to bring back with me—somewhere. I balance on hill’s crest.

Uplifted. Below me on concrete path, a football player who appears to have his summer home in the weight room. He watches, tight-lipped; I feel petal silk on my fingertips and know he sees only a torn-up tulip, though it isn’t his fault my world is lit by a different sun—Oscar Wilde said, “A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight.” For a moment, I feel childish and wonder if someday I’ll know someone who treasures shattered flowers. The boy looks away; perhaps he thinks staring is rude. I stare at the rubies in my hands.

In the car, I place wilted tulip and three petals on my dashboard, and when I reach the freeway and 73 miles per hour, I roll fully open every window so my hair tangles and lips dry out and I can listen to silence. The fiery petals flicker and twirl under the wind; after minutes of straining, one slips out the window, a blink, or a breath.

I watch it leave and wonder if a little girl will find it on her doorstep and stare. She will see the dawn, Wilde says, before the rest of the world.

Purple clouds

They're always the same way, I thought as I opened the coffee shop door—passive and serious, like the home you just left but better somehow, because the music whispered there was nothing to do, just a place to be. The idea made me discreet, productive: it was like thinking of being a writer. I was not a writer when I stepped out of my rusted Toyota, but passing through the door—now I was.

They are the same way, all coffee shops I’ve been in, from the nameless one with the broken chair in central Ohio to here at Nesting Grounds in my hometown of Wyoming, Minnesota. At three in the afternoon, the March sun was fool’s gold promising warmth and masking chill, but inside, the fertile smells thawed the air and allowed it to be spring.

Today was too long. Up early for accounting homework, to the barn to ride, to class, to a meeting, to class again. Now when I could’ve gone home, I rejected the living room—tan leather couch and awkward fake fireplace—and came here to the plaid armchair by the photograph of a tree with the beige tag that said “$20.” Be a writer, start with this essay, or start with a coffee shop. The sun slanted in, amber light on mocha plates, and you knew when you sat down with your purchase, you could let yourself into your thoughts.

I waited in line to buy my coffee, so many choices, a way to feel productive. My mother has given me a coupon worthy of an adventure—buy one get one half off—so I run my finger down the small sign labeled “FLAVORS,” tasting hazelnut, almond, Irish crème (what’s that?). If I’m inspired now, I will be later: marshmallow white chocolate mocha it is. I judge people by their coffee sometimes. Why did he choose just vanilla? Does she care sugar-free flavorings cause cancer? I suppose others are judging me.

The deer are eating the daylilies this year. At the breakfast table yesterday, Dad ate his oatmeal, Mother said, “I don’t know what to do,” and the doe relished her meal. Mother recited the arsenal she’d employed: the rotten egg spray smelled bad and worked worse, but the wire-mesh fencing was ugly along our residential road, and the deer weren’t eating the neighbors’ flowers. I drank my juice.

The daylily sprouts are now a crushed running board along the wooded driveway, but that is all right, I like the crocuses better. There is only one patch of them this March, set back from the mailbox, touching the crowded trees. I like them for their bravery as well as for their color; purple was always my favorite, because in it you could see the clouds.

I take the proffered mocha, resting it on its blue-painted holder under the armchair’s window with the cold apple muffin nearby to keep it company. With laptop on my knees, I am here but also present, and I am a writer.

Coffee shops listen to something you didn’t know you were saying. Sitting in my chair, patterned purse bound around my feet, I thought I heard voices in the espresso machine’s grind. The blonde waitress asked if I needed anything else, and the mahogany wood tables held their ground.

Eternity under an oak tree

Lake Johanna before me, Nazareth Chapel behind. Oaks in front, so many, criss-crossed, a giant’s sideways version of pick-up-sticks. This is the seen, and the unseen is here too: now ahead, down the hill, to the right, by the shore, a small cave sleeps. In it is one awake and watching with sightless eyes—the Virgin Mary, hands upraised, blessing me, sanctifying the water. The sunlight does not reach there.

It does not reach me either. Wrapped in the oak tree’s stretching shadow, I am sitting in its lap, and it lets me be alone. The ground is dry here—drier than the manicured lawns I left minutes ago—maybe because it is happy, not crying, content to be where there are beaches and breezes and a view of the sea. My bare feet are pleased to be dirty, my hair not so pleased to be spitting out twigs onto my homework (I was rude to it when I lay in the dirt two minutes ago). Backpack, papers, Fundamentals of Finance, pens I keep losing, papers that keep blowing, shoes beached on their backs, I carried so much baggage with me when I came here a half hour ago. I should be doing homework. No, actually, I shouldn’t.

There is no one here. There are people, but there is no one here. We all came, this evening, to be alone with the hillside, to listen to the sun and hear the warmth and feel the silence, to believe it is June when it’s actually March, to pretend we are not prisoners in a dizzy anthill that won't let us go.

Beside me, a silent maiden descends the cold old hillside steps—awkward stone stairs too large for one step, too small for two—down toward the water, toward Mary’s shrine. And as she glides, the clouds open to allow glory-light to whisk out its rug ahead of her, making a royal path of heaven for her to walk on, the chosen one.

I am still in shadow. The light did not come for me.

A puffed-up chickadee, mottled black on swirly brown, flits on her song: up and down and down and around—“Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi!”—until an owl with a headache finally shouts, “Hell-oh!” and she stops. Shocked. Muddy bark runs down in rivulets, headwaters in the sky; a good place to be from. Leaves spin and skip, no longer leashed to trees or imprisoned by snow, bouncy now. Clover buds, threads of grass, moss coral, waft out of the ground as steam from winter’s last breath. Just before sunset, all seems sacred—colors more royal, leaves more hallowed, trees more divine. Evenings and mornings were given so we could touch the face of God.

The water was silver before, flat, but now it shatters under the setting sun to reveal a glittering opal center, like the quartz-filled rocks I used to find and line up on my bedroom shelf—the ordinary holy. There is something of forever here, in the psychedelic water and the mahogany trees. Seeing it is like grasping at something you thought you forgot; it is a dreamy reflection remembering vaguely that “beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror” (Kahlil Gibran).

I know my eternity, now, my beauty, for the hillside told me so. Eternity sits under an oak tree with her twiggy hair and dirty feet, brushed by a scepter of light set with gold.

The nature-learners

My education may well be right; yet nothing I heard in school, nothing I’ve read, no lesson reached by logic has ever convinced me as utterly or stirred me as deeply as did that red-tailed hawk… I learned from the land itself.

Scott Russel Sanders, “Buckeye,” p. 8

It was fuming at me, the snow was. It didn’t, always. Sometimes it seemed to have woken up in a pleasant mood, presumably having had an uneventful trip down from Canada and arriving at our barn door in quite enough time for tea. But some days, the prank-playing prairie birds gave it poor directions and the snake snow fence of my father’s caused a traffic jam and the brash blaring winter winds gave it a headache and by the time it arrived at our red barn door’s stop sign, my shovel was just the last straw.

It was angry today. I couldn’t exactly feel the snow, what with my nuclear holocaust body armor on, and I couldn’t exactly hear it, what with the pack of rabid dogs shrieking inside the barn, but I sure had to deal with it. The barn door, I had to free it, it needed to be rescued. Punch through the crust, heave out a shovelful, toss it a foot away, get it blown back in your face. Whack out the ice, scrape along the concrete, breath-thaw the frozen handle, kick free the frost-frozen door. Don’t stop, it’s your job. Do it.

The child, the shovel, and the snow. And the barn door. Every morning, every day, every week, all month, month after month after month until Minnesota finally got sick of winter and made it go away. That year I had been tasked with shoveling out the barn door, and, unlike when I was Morning Chores Person, my assignment didn’t switch off every week. Every day, no matter how upset the snow was that morning, I had to shovel out that barn door, crusading valiantly against the worst drift on the farm during the worst winter we ever experienced.

I rescued the barn door that year, but what I didn’t know is that it also, in a way, had rescued me. It had been speaking to me all winter but, like a voice carried back to you on the forgotten wind, I didn’t hear its whisper until I had left it years behind. Instead of going to school in nature, I left it for education in the city. And my fellow classmates, they often puzzle me. The December walk to chapel—I hear bitter complaints of the “cold.” Cold? You think this is cold? The early morning talk with a friend—I listen to grumbles about waking up seven minutes before class. But you don’t have any chores, think of that! I feel I don’t fit in here, where I get my education; I went to a different preparatory school.

Nature is a teacher unique among men because it does not follow any rules and speaks with an unadulterated voice. The blessed who grow up in nature, in wide-open spaces and far-flung skies, they think differently, live differently. They work because they have to, because there is no choice, but they are rarely bitter. They are not bitter because nature always reveals the beauty in the pain; that is the way of God. The furious snapping snow bites only because it is made of a trillion sharp diamonds and the sun only burns because it is filling your life with a million bright lights.

I did not find many of nature’s students in my new school, but there are some. We always do seem to find each other, the nature-learners. It is good to be together, to share the experiences of the snowy barn doors and the dragonfly wings and the red-tailed hawks wheeling where earth and heaven meet.

Wildflowers

"Wildflowers"

By Tom Petty

You belong among the wildflowers

You belong in a boat out at sea

Sail away, kill off the hours

You belong somewhere you feel free.

Run away, find you a lover

Go away somewhere bright and new

I have seen no other

Who compares with you.

You belong among the wildflowers

You belong in a boat out at sea

You belong with your love on your arm

You belong somewhere you feel free.

Run away, go find a lover

Run away, let your heart be your guide

You deserve the deepest of cover

You belong in that home by and by.

You belong among the wildflowers

You belong somewhere close to me

Far away from your trouble and worry

You belong somewhere you feel free. 

Cantique de Noël: A direct translation of "O Holy Night"

This is a direct translation from French of the song, "O Holy Night." I love it this way...

Cantique de Noël

Midnight, Christians, it's the solemn hour,

When the God-man descended to us

To erase the stain of original sin

And to end the wrath of His Father.

The entire world thrills with hope

On this night that gives it a Savior.

People kneel down, wait for your deliverance.

Christmas, Christmas, here is the Redeemer,

Christmas, Christmas, here is the Redeemer!

The ardent light of our Faith,

Guides us all to the cradle of the infant,

As in ancient times a brilliant star

Conducted the Magi there from the orient.

The King of kings was born in a humble manger;

O mighty ones of today, proud of your grandeur,

It is to your pride that God preaches.

Bow your heads before the Redeemer!

Bow your heads before the Redeemer!

The Redeemer has overcome every obstacle:

The Earth is free, and Heaven is open.

He sees a brother where there was only a slave,

Love unites those that iron had chained.

Who will tell Him of our gratitude,

For all of us He is born, He suffers and dies.

Wanderlust

I’m sitting in my room, alone. My window is open and I hear the crickets and the wind and the leaves of the trees talking to each other. The night is so incredibly beautiful. It’s calling… calling so hard I could cry—or dance—or laugh—or just lean out the window and feel the breeze in my face and my hair and my soul.

It is on nights like these I wonder what would happen if I just got in my car and drove—and drove—and drove. To see the world and to meet so many wonderful people, to seek out new experiences and new places. To move and run and drive and travel, going nowhere and leaving nowhere, and yet being everywhere and doing everything.

It makes me want to dance and sing. It makes me want to go out on the island and walk through the waves and draw pictures in the sand. It makes me want to balance on top of an old moss-covered wall and weave a flower crown out of the fading late-summer flowers and roll down a hill in the autumn-bright leaves. It makes me want to lie in a meadow and count the shooting stars for hours and then fall asleep in the dry, warm grass. It makes me want to take a friend by the hand and smile and laugh and dance and drag them with me on this great, wild adventure.

Can you feel it? Can you feel your heart racing? Can you feel the excitement welling up in you like a wild song aching to be free? Can you feel your restlessness and your hopes and your dreams?


I know you can.

So come with me.

"She Walks in Beauty"

I heard about this poem only just this evening, when my friend mentioned it by name. With a name like that, I thought, it simply had to be wonderful.

And I was right.

"She Walks in Beauty"

By Lord Byron

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that's best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes:

Thus mellowed to that tender light

Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,

Had half impaired the nameless grace

Which waves in every raven tress,

Or softly lightens o'er her face;

Where thoughts serenely sweet express

How pure, how dear their dwelling place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,

So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,

The smiles that win, the tints that glow,

But tell of days in goodness spent,

A mind at peace with all below,

A heart whose love is innocent! 

"Nightway": A Navajo Prayer

In beauty may I walk.

All day long may I walk.

Through the returning seasons may I walk.

Beautifully will I possess again.

Beautifully birds . . .

Beautifully joyful birds . . .

On the trail marked with pollen may I walk.

With grasshoppers about my feet may I walk.

With dew about my feet may I walk.

With beauty may I walk.

With beauty before me may I walk.

With beauty behind me may I walk.

With beauty above me may I walk.

With beauty all around me may I walk.

In old age, wandering on a trail of beauty,

lively may I walk.

In old age, wandering on a trail of beauty,

living again, may I walk.

It is finished in beauty.

~Navajo Prayer -- "Nightway"