I guess I'm back on Blogger with tales to tell in a whole new place. A literal one this time.
We moved to Colorado over the summer and now live in the one of the country's richest, "safest," cleanest places. In Boulder County, the beauty alone evokes pleasure, strength and venture with every daybreak! The receptiveness from everyone we meet is wonderful and it frees us to be ourselves. It’s nearly too much to comprehend how many facets of opportunity this culture provides to enrich our lives. This is a season for restoration and enlargement.
Intriguing, then, are the frequent dreams at night that I have of home in NJ. With all the celebration I'm taking in, I'm not longing to go back. They’re not leftover nightmares about troubled days, either. But they do cause heartache. Sometimes the prostitutes appear, the homeless, the drug dealers, the imprisoned. They’re all there, with our other neighbors and friends, going about their usual business like any other day in Millville. And I’m there with them.
As major changes go, it's natural to miss what's familiar, and our neighborhood was the thing most palpable, dynamic and affecting to me. It wasn’t relatives nearby, our church friends, the other places I frequented or my regular escapes into nature. Life was a struggle on our troubled street, but it was home. And it’s where I loved and found Love.
I’m paying attention to these dreams and the feelings welling up, to the grief over how much tragedy occurs and how many lives are ever-stuck in emptiness, darkness and despair. I’m considering how it all translates into life here and the now-distant relationship to Millville. Yet I recognize the need to let things play out as they will, in their own timing, so to enjoy the gift of the present.
Years ago, Kenn gave me Mother Teresa’s A Simple Path. I do prefer weightier books but decided to read it another time. It’s straightforward, like the life of Teresa and her fellow missionaries: all sincere yet most unsophisticated. Except for their love. To simply love, with no questions asked (or strings attached) and no judgments made, this is the most profound way of life. It is The Way.
Almost daily, I celebrate how our NJ days rooted us deeper on that Way. Those times enlighten these, like a preface to a book. How will this story of Love go on? Let's let the Artist do the unveiling.
Unfold the Tapestry.
