Getting Home...the Long Way

   Sometimes, sitting and thinking is about all I can force myself to

do, especially on a day like today has turned out to be- sun-filled

and warming and bright and blue, the grass bright green from
three days of much-needed rain which nevertheless gave me the
blues. I want to be creative, want beautiful words to emerge from
my latent poet’s heart, want to put loveliness and hope and
wonder out there into a world which seems to need them all so
much. I want to feel useful, to have a sense of having
accomplished something with this April Wednesday. But, you see,
I am still in the doldrums…still lost in the wilderness…still
wandering in a spiritual desert- though I have been here before,
so there is a certain familiarity to it. Doesn’t make it any easier,
though, this sense of lostness…in spite of the déjà vu quality per-
vading it. Wandering in the wilderness is never, ever easy.

   Just ask my wandering Hebrew forebears, the ones who spent
forty years lost, without any roadmap or GPS or guidance other
than that offered by a wild-eyed prophet named Moses who was
convinced that his God, their God, was leading him and them to a
place of hope and home- if only they would follow the Divine
directions. It took them a long time- the afore-mentioned forty
years- and many wrong turns and detours and misadventures,
notably one centered around a certain golden calf, a god of their
own making, but finally, finally, these ancient sisters and brothers
stopped griping and complaining and kvetching long enough to
hear- and heed- the very voice of God rather than to rely on their
own self-centeredness and human certainty and hubris. And the
result? The Promised Land- God being as good as God’s own
word, offering on-going guidance and redemption and a home-
coming welcome.
    Perhaps there is a message for me in all this. After all, this is

where my creative impulse (God at work in me, after all) has led

me on this lovely afternoon, marked by the thwop-thwop of the

rescue helicopter landing at nearby High Point Regional Hospital…

by the throng of lovely young people running past my porch as

part of their track-team workout…by the noise of numerous lawn

mowers making the air redolent with the sound and scent of new-

mown grass. Perhaps this wilderness in which I have been finding

myself is part of the necessary journey to get to the Promised
Land of new writing and creativity and purpose. And perhaps I
have been lingering here because I have been creating my own
gods of sadness and discouragement and hopelessness and self-
pity in order to give me some justification for wallowing, for
kvetching, for more than a little bit of “oh, woe is me”, along with
those long-ago Hebrews kinspeople.

    All around me in my lovely old neighborhood are signs of life…

beautiful, glorious, springing-into-being life. Flowers blooming,

grass (and weeds) growing, birds nesting, squirrels scolding, kids

laughing, dogs barking. Cars go by, driven by other human beings

going about the business of living their lives. A breeze is ruffling

the leaves on the bushes beside my porch. And somehow,  it all

feels right and good and hopeful. I think my journey, my
wandering in the wilderness, may be over for now and I’m finding
myself at home, blessedly at home.