You Better Best Rearrange

Weeks into the Season of Lent and I feel I've contemplated nothing at all concerning Jesus' journey, or my own journey, for that matter. I feel I've abandoned that duty to myself, to my family, friends, community, and to Jesus. Especially in recent years, I feel like I've made good on putting my thoughts to good use. Toward matching them to the moment of time at hand. I feel like I've used the moments of reflection to make wiser choices. To take better-prepared steps forward. To break free of regrets and mistakes. To strengthen myself from the inside and out. But this year I feel lost. I feel I've strayed way off the path. Almost to the point I can't see it any longer, and I'm not sure in which direction I should be looking for it. Still, I know I have to find it again if I want to continue to open my eyes. To continue to see. To continue to believe in something more than day to day or detail to detail. If I don't find it, I'm just going to stray and float and float and stray until there really is no purpose to serve other than satisfying my ego, and I'm not interested in that.

When I look around these days, the view doesn't seem nearly as dark or forebodding as it has in the past. It seems stranger now than ever before, but strange is good. Strange is learning. The view also seems familiar, as if I've been here before, if only for briefly. I have this sense that although I don't fully recoginize everything that's surrounding me these days, I like what is there. And I like the notion that I can explore it deeper to find further meaning. I know exploration is what the path represents. Learning is the path. Knowledge is the path. Belief is the path. I know there are many destinations to which the path could take me, and I know that any of the destinations would probably be the right one for me. But what about everyone else I'm connected to? Does the path hold something for them, as well? I have to figure out how to get to where I'm going and keep what I can while shedding what I must. That's the difficult question: What must stay and what must go?

A Walk In The Park

 

If not for the park located a few blocks from my house, I'm not so sure I'd even like living in my neighborhood much any longer. I don't have anything against my neighbors or even the current physical state of my house; I just no longer want to live in a city. I'm fairly convinced I was made for the country. I'm more sure each day as proof of city life presses in tighter and tighter. I can hear the city louder. I can see more of it every day. More streets, more cars, more houses, more apartments, more people, more sidewalks, more tidy front lawns, more track suit-wearing moms bebopping from one block to the next. More fences, more happy landscapes. More strip malls. More Wal-Marts and Best Buys and cell phones and headphones. I don't want to see them anymore. They're tired. I'm tired. We need a break from one another. But I'm stuck. Fixed. Situated. Immobile for now. A housing market that currently doesn't exist will define you that way. Except for the park down the street. Except for the walking path carved out about a half-mile round in the park down the street. Except for the walking path carved into the federally protected wetlands in the park down the street. Toward the east runs the Salt Creek where ducks and geese swim, beavers build dams, deer slide down the banks to drink, and farmers have built concrete runoffs. Nice. Toward the north and south run nothing but long grass, soggy bottoms, deer tracks, hints of rabbit paths, and geese and black birds too many to count. Well, the long grass runs free up until the Interstate reigns it back in toward the north and a car lot and civilization do the same toward the south. Toward the north lies said neighborhood. My walks around the park are always too short but always renewing. It's not difficult imagining Native Americans or pioneers crossing the land hundreds of years ago. Although minuscule, this area has been relatively untouched since then. The natural barriers, plant life, trees, wildlife . . . everything is orginal. Currently, this park is one of the few places I feel the same.