Sycamore trees and weeping willows; Maple leaves and fruit orchards; Conversations and this world.
I am a few more miles down this road of faith and find, when glancing over my shoulder to see how far I’ve come, that I haven’t covered as much ground as I’d like. I haven’t scaled higher mountains more recently and I haven’t gone to greater depths of late. My spirit still slumps, my soul still falters and my mind is prone to wandering still. I haven’t become more gifted and I haven’t given more away. I’m still very much the same inside, yet something is so different and I can’t put my finger on it.
Perhaps it is the knowledge that this world is not my home. It has floored me lately. I think I write about it a lot. I know I think about it a lot. Every story I recount, every joke I attempt at retelling and every memory I tuck away, has the stink of rubbish about it. Rubbish of this world.
The sycamore trees, fruit orchards and the pretty Starbucks in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, home of my youth. The black and white portraits of my little brothers standing on Hardscrabble road late this summer, them holding onto Queen Anne’s Lace and me holding onto a memory. The white lights and even the front room last night, filled with the people I really do love most in the world, and, which is suddenly so much more, people who love me back. The words they shared and the prayers they commissioned me with. The tears which subsided and the tears which shouldn’t. All the things I hold dear, built my life upon.
Conversations and this world. This world. And I’m just passing through.
