The road is Self-Remembering. The roadsigns our conversations from meetings and readings. Every junction is that moment - to be or not to be - to stay on the road ahead and be present or to turn off onto the myriad alternative roads of life.
This is no highway with large, clearly marked signs and many cars and trucks travelling down it. No, this is a little known unclassified road - no longer on the maps; although veiled reference is made to it here and there. It runs the length of the country but is only visible in parts - fragments here and there. Like the remains of our Roman roads. There are many turns onto the bigger better known roads - the motorways of family and career and the many roads of friends, relatives sports, games and lifes pasttimes. What we 'should' be doing.
Our road winds through all these but rarely parallel to any other. We carry our bags of the years and at various stopping places we may manage to put something down and move on - lighter and fresher. Now there are less roadsigns and fewer direrctions to follow - out on the open mountainside, the wilderness years. we have come to know this road well now but there will still be unexpected twists and turns ahead.
The work is the road and the curb and the faded whitelines keep us on the middle way. Our features our inertia the denying force that like the brake, constantly draws our foot to it. We travel at our own speed - each of us as we can manage - sometimes quicker, cruising in fifth; other times in low gear negotiating steep hills and tight bends. This is how it is. Because this is how it always was.
This pilgrimage and at the end of the road in the distance the mass of Canterbury or Santiago de Compostella or the Great Pyramid drawing us ever onward. Under a clear starry sky in the crisp night air we know what is expected of us. But the journey itself is our reality and it is the journey that must be lived wherever or however we are. The Doing of things. The end is always in our heads and our hearts but after all is done the journey was what we were. That was us. The road to love.....if we can live the road.
~J
No comments:
Post a Comment