All of life is a coming home
From Patch Adams ...
"All of life is a coming home, salesmen, secretaries, coal miners, beekeepers, sword swallowers, all of us, all the restless hearts of the world, all trying to find their way home. It's hard to describe what I felt like then. Picture yourself walking for days in the driving snow, you don't even know you're walking in circles, the heaviness of your legs and the drifts, your shouts disappearing into the wind ... how small you can feel and how far away home can be.
"Home. The dictionary defines it as both a place of origin and a goal or destination. And the storm, the storm was all in my mind, or as the poet Dante put it, in the middle of the journey of my life, I found myself in the dark wood for I had lost the right path. Eventually I would find the right path, but in the most unlikely place ..."
I am generally a hopeful person. I'm not always cheerful or happy or optimistic, but because I spend large amounts of time alone, I usually know exactly where I am ... whether it's confusion, joy, ambivalence, hesitation, extreme sadness or rootedness .. and amongst all these varying states of being, I have always felt that I was on the path that was meant. So even if I found myself in deep sadness, I knew that it was all part of the process, and that each part of the journey is beautiful.
But I haven't always been this way. I remember times when I would walk endless paths until my feet hurt, feeling so low that I felt that there was nothing in the world to live for. Those were dark days when solitude imprisoned rather than liberated my spirit.
On hindsight, though, I realize that at that time, something was birthing in me, at that time wordless, formless ... a light, a recognition, a knowing ... of God's goodness, of Life's beauty, of the healing power of kindness and compassion. The dark wood was the path after all, it was the inevitable seed of this deep joy that grounds me now.
And so, as I've discovered many times over ... after everything is done, all that's left is boundless gratitude. It is all good.
"All of life is a coming home, salesmen, secretaries, coal miners, beekeepers, sword swallowers, all of us, all the restless hearts of the world, all trying to find their way home. It's hard to describe what I felt like then. Picture yourself walking for days in the driving snow, you don't even know you're walking in circles, the heaviness of your legs and the drifts, your shouts disappearing into the wind ... how small you can feel and how far away home can be.
"Home. The dictionary defines it as both a place of origin and a goal or destination. And the storm, the storm was all in my mind, or as the poet Dante put it, in the middle of the journey of my life, I found myself in the dark wood for I had lost the right path. Eventually I would find the right path, but in the most unlikely place ..."
I am generally a hopeful person. I'm not always cheerful or happy or optimistic, but because I spend large amounts of time alone, I usually know exactly where I am ... whether it's confusion, joy, ambivalence, hesitation, extreme sadness or rootedness .. and amongst all these varying states of being, I have always felt that I was on the path that was meant. So even if I found myself in deep sadness, I knew that it was all part of the process, and that each part of the journey is beautiful.
But I haven't always been this way. I remember times when I would walk endless paths until my feet hurt, feeling so low that I felt that there was nothing in the world to live for. Those were dark days when solitude imprisoned rather than liberated my spirit.
On hindsight, though, I realize that at that time, something was birthing in me, at that time wordless, formless ... a light, a recognition, a knowing ... of God's goodness, of Life's beauty, of the healing power of kindness and compassion. The dark wood was the path after all, it was the inevitable seed of this deep joy that grounds me now.
And so, as I've discovered many times over ... after everything is done, all that's left is boundless gratitude. It is all good.
posted by rainchild at
7:14 pm
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