Traveling light

… you know this moment as a new beginning

with no idea of what is arriving,

only for the sudden departure

of the burden you have been carrying for a lifetime,

leaving instead an unfamiliar lightness

as you struggle not to ascend toward the sun.

 

How you no longer need

to carry this heavy stone in your arms,

on your back, in your throat,

and you wonder why you didn’t lay it aside long ago

and you see how your curled fingers

have become frozen in their grasp.

                     Christine Valters Paintner

___________________________________________

 

yesterday was a day from hell

a spinning journey down through the circles of the inferno

through limbo, lust and gluttony

 

into the deeper reaches of greed, anger

heresy (trying to claim God for agendas and actions that are ungodly)

to violence, fraud

and treachery

 

I know of course that some of this is in the eye of the beholder

and perhaps others think

we are climbing Jacob’s ladder

higher, higher

 

but for me these are dark times

and my heart has been gathering stones

proverbial pebbles in the heart

and growing heavy

 

until even as I walk the backroads

with happy dog dancing by my side

even as God’s grandeur

flames out like shining from shook foil (G M Hopkins)

all around me

I find my mind and soul are tired

and

all is smeared and blurred

 

and I am cast down, bowed by the weight of it all

and my heart echoes the words of the Psalmist (55)

 

“My heart is in anguish within me;     the terrors of death have fallen on me”

and I would fly away

far away

to a place of shelter

 

and yet I cannot run

I must stay

and I must walk this road

and I must do what I can

 

to love my neighbor

to create community

to calm and heal rather than rant and rave (as I am wont to do)

 

but I cannot carry love and hope

if my hands are full of anger and fear

if I hold resentment in a death grip

 

if I would ascend

I must let go of so much

and travel light

 

I must hand my burdens over (Psalm 55)

all that fear, and anger

all that resentment

to the One who can (and will) carry them

 

I must die (as Jesus insisted I must)

to all that blurs the Sacred image in me

to all that hinders and binds

 

I must die and be reborn

not just once, but over and over

each moment

endless resurrection

 

rising up

out of the ashes

bearing good news

 

 

 

 

 

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