Where do you want to go?

Journey: c.1225, "a defined course of traveling," from Old French journée "a day's work or travel"

I love to travel.

Not just to faraway distant lands, but even just down to the corner shop, or leaving for work or errand. Its that tension of leaving home and the resolution of returning home that makes the story so. An ad-venture: to+risk. Some stories arch more than others. Some are meta-stories - a story about stories. Likewise, some journeys are meta-journeys. Some journeys intertwine in some sort of a divine dance.

There is a ritual to preparing for the journey, to think ahead for the day, to plan and pray, and also expecting the unexpected. The process of joining the dots, linking threads together. Meeting strangers, making friends, finding old friends again. To make sense of something, to form. The act of creation, ordered from chaos. To name the animals.

"If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together". - African Proverb

Sometimes we have companions for a while, fellow sojourners - travellers for a day or two. Travelling with company is swell - you get a shared experience and perspective on things, to cry with, to laugh with, to cringe with. Stuff to talk about, a portable communion. Laughing alone isn't all that fun. Per-adventure, some stay for a bit, others travel a distance with you. Per-chance a forever friend stays, commits to you; mayhaps some like Eliezar are more faithful than death. Blessed is that man who has a forever friend.

Yet, some valleys, we are to walk through alone. There are places no one else but you can go. We have just to grin and bear it, trudge and walk through. Only our Shepherd's staff and rod to guide. No light. No cheer. Faint hope. Traveling alone however, one learns volumes about oneself, and how we relate to community, to God and ourselves. There is beauty in the desert journey, grace in that brook we drink from, sweetness in the honey and meat the raven brings. A ragged, wild, unreasonable grace and mercy that pursues us. Almost obscenely beautiful.

Journal: c.1355, from Anglo-French jurnal "a day," from Old French journal, originally "daily"

So we think about the journey (literally 'the day'), write it down, record the daily exploits and the milestones. The mundane, even. Does forty years chasing sheep followed by forty years chasing cantankerous crowds make an epic journal? Perhaps - only if you've got a phenomenal God of the day (jour) and night (nuit) each and every one of those eighty years. A journey journal is something like old hansel and gretel's breadcrumbs. Except this one we carry with us, a map of sorts. A map that only works in hindsight. A map nonetheless. A map of grace.

Our story? His story. my story. turn the pages, leaf me through. I'm not finished yet.

The One You Left Behind
(Sarah Lacy, David Bird & Richard Lacy)

I have lost my true and only love
To the waves and far away
To the listless sea, the cloudy skies
To a new and distant day
Though I know you must go
It is hard for me and so
In the eventide I cry
And I hope that you will think of me
The one you left behind

Under different skies you'll do His work
Under different stars you'll stay
I pray that when your work is done
That He'll send you home someday
Every thought, every breath
Carries aching emptiness
For your loving arms I sigh
And I pray that you will think of me
The one you left behind

I would travel over water
I would race the river to the sea
I would give my home, my everything
Just to have you here with me
But my heart is alive
To the knowledge of His timing
And so ‘tis here I'll stay
‘Til He sends you home to me again
To the one you left behind

So, where am I?

It's that time of the year where I rue the lengthening days, watch the waxing and waning moons, walk circumspectly and consider the earth's circuitous route around its solar meanderings. Reckonings of the journey, gleaning the lessons learnt, the smells smelt, the sights set and the sounds sought.

Rosh Hashanah! Shana Tova, beloved.

So where have I been? And where am I now? And what mysteries lie up the corner? Questions, some answerable, others impossible! Can we know anything at all? Is there anything to be known?

Journeys, milestones, stretches of grace and highways of peace. Life on the fast track, slow glide on a tube. It has been an incredibly eventful journey. Amazing. Grace-filled, divine appointments of cosmic proportions. When did the mayhem start? I don't really know... unconsciously, unknowingly, the wheels began to turn, and something stirred. How do such things start? They mess you up, and one is spoilt for life. Yet, its incredible! How does my feebleness and multitude shortcomings match up to Grace? Precisely, it doesn't, and it cannot. And that makes it both reasonable and incredible. Thus I am caught in the beauty of the paradox, like a deer mesmerized by the terrifying on-coming headlights. Yet this journey is barely begun. And on it goes. What does one make of it, moment by moment, day by day, month by month, and year by year?

So it has been restfully quiet. Am grateful for it. Time to think, time to rest, time to recuperate and assume normalcy, whatever that means... Tempting to idle, tempting to procrastinate, tempting to say: hey, live for the now, the journey's almost done. Yet time marches on, and guilt, justifications and well-meaning intentions like the road, like sweet fruit on the garden path...

Yes there is hope yet. And hope is very often fully tangible. It's what we make of it. Hope, simple trust, in God's goodness. Glimpses of glory, glimmers divine. Its all in the mind, is it? or in the heart? Which aches worse? Maybe it hurts too much to think about it. But probably hurts more to feel it.

So choices, and decisions. Sure there's been good fun. Excitement, fulfilment and a fair share of disappointments and trepidation. Many a-things still lie in the fine balance, on the edge of a knife, and even more things are still in the air, tossed, open, unresolved, as far as I can tell from my limited earthly eyes, weak and feeble on this side of heaven. Choices. I don't know. I need wisdom, grace and favour to walk on. Sometimes it just feels lacking and soooo distant. Sometimes it comes in overwhelming abundance. Can we store these for a rainy day? Couldn't my faith just please be simpler and more child-like? Doubts and double-guessing... why? and how? and which?

Donch know, donch care, donch ask? Questions for now; chick-peas in hindsight. All I need, perhaps, is just peace for the moment, strength for the day, and grace to carry me. His mercy is new every morning, and that is more than enough. But sometimes I am blind to it, and instead try to barter my way out...

So there... I've said it - Help me along, Son of David, have mercy on me.

Κύριε Ἰησοῦ Χριστέ, Υἱέ τοῦ Θεοῦ, ἐλέησόν με τὸν ἁμαρτωλόν
Господи Ісусе Христе Сыне Божїй помилѹй мѧ грѣшнаго.

Is there a great divine hourglass,
each precious grain trickling mercilessly
through the fabric of time and space?
Will the passing seconds be redeemed for hours?
Will gold be bought for silver?

Buy wine and milk without money and cost?
Have bread for money spent, satisfaction for labour lost?
Will rain and snow not return
without watering the earth, bud and flourish,
to yield seed for the sower
and sweet bread to be eaten?