The Path

It is evening.  The dishes are washed.  The tree is lit and fresh candles have been set out. However, I do not light them.  Tomorrow our Christmas gets underway, a bit early, but family is coming in.  So, tonight I pause.  It is still Advent.  I remember walking one morning in the high desert outside Sedona in late November.  Gently and quietly, the layers slipped away, and step by step, I traveled a little further, walking a path that so many others have walked.  It is a blessing to be no more than that.      

  

Lord, I will learn also to kneel down 

into the world of the invisible, 

the inscrutable and the everlasting. 

Then I will move no more than the leaves of a tree

on a day of no wind, 

bathed in light, 

like the wanderer who has come home at last

and kneels in peace, done with all unnecessary things;

every motion, even words.     

 

                     from Coming to God: First Days by Mary Oliver