Home Is Where the Mysterious Heart Is

And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long, but only by a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, by which we arrive at the ground at our own feet, and learn to be at home. It is a journey we can make only by the acceptance of mystery and of mystification—by yielding to the condition that what we have expected is not there.

—Wendell Berry, The Unforeseen Wilderness

I love the phrase, arriving "at the ground at our own feet."  We must begin with the humble beginnings of who we are in the bodies we have today.   We will be always be called further along, but most of us will not leave our own skin today.  Tomorrow, perhaps.  These passages are usually not for us to calculate.   Our call is always to come home to the moment.  Not as a this or a that, but as being.  A wise elder shared with me a few days ago:  "The only way I can live in faith is accepting that God is a mystery. Faith is not knowing.  We do not know, so we go in faith."   Despite our fears and our graspings, we really do not need God, or ourselves, to be a quantifiable this or a that.  We do, however, very much need God, and ourselves, to faithfully be where we are - and where we are is quite mysterious indeed.     

   

Today, I arrive at the ground of my own feet and fingers, and begin to write again.  I am grateful to reconnect.    

 

I pray the summer is bringing you a sense of connection and joy - in the home of your being in our beautifully mysterious God.    

 

My thanks to Parabola for sharing Wendell Berry's wise musing.