sabbatical

many of you know i put my stuff in storage and have been taking a sabbatical for the month of august...i've been telling people i'm homeless which is a statement weighted about its neck with the millstones of many emotions...

there is a freedom in having nowhere to go and therefore everywhere to go...there is a longing for the happyness of a settled life...and a mysterious sadness for something not yet found...fears that i will never find my way...and fears that i will settle and get stuck in some place i will come to resent and regret...

the lessons are really only the hints of lessons...strange vapors that wrap around my heart and mind and whisper stories and thoughts and hopes and dreams and discoveries and condemnations...mometary clarity and nothing more...i know less now than when i started and i didn't start with all that much...

what in me stirs this dissatisfaction...what keeps me longing for something more...i don't know...i've been reading "on the road" by jack kerouac...and except for all the drugs and the sex...i find myself in the story...the longing for home...and search for the place my heart can settle...and the seeming insatiable desire to discover the world, to open my heart wide and drink it all in til i drown in the wonder of it...

i find myself more mindful of the places that have been wrong...the places that though i can't quite put my finger on it, i know that there is a deep sickness in the community...something not true...something not real...like smoke and mirrors...crazy people, if you spend enough time around them, will start to make you question your own sanity...i don't want to go back to those places...

i've reflected on the friendships, or supposed friendships...finding the deep truth of who is a real friend and who was simply using me for whatever they wanted at the time...again...those who make you feel like it's your fault that the friendship faded...those who believe the lies of others about you...those who spread the lies themselves...

and the friendships that have been true...tried by fire and come out shining as pure gold...the people who are thoroughly convinced of my intrinsic value...and who by their loyalty and kindness, have convinced me of their own great value...those who have checked in with me in my journey...reminding me they are praying...those who know how incredibly difficult this time has been, not because i told them, but because they care enough to pay attention and to ask about me...

i have joyed over the deep love of friends and family...and grieved over the betrayal and abandonment of users and frauds...

and i have been battling...waging war against complacency...apathy...trying not to settle for the easiest way...i want the road less traveled...i want this journey of my life to mean something...i don't want to exist in a space...i don't want to simply take up space...and i don't want to just work to fund that kind of existence...

all the great stories are not ones where the main character plods safely and easily along, following the path of least resistance...the great stories find conflict and challenge and the desire for more...the drive to take life by the horns and channel its power...like jacob wrestling with the angel in the desert...refusing to let go until you get the blessing...

so what is my story to be...where is the "happily ever after?"...who knows...i don't...but i gotta believe there's something good coming...i gotta believe if i keep holding on and wrestling through this black night...i will get the blessing...limp and all...

what we need is here...

"horseback on a sunday morning,
harvest over, we taste persimmon
and wild grape, sharp sweet
of summer's end. in time's maze
over the fall fields, we name names
that went west from here, names
that rest on graves. we open
a persimmon seed to find the tree
that stands in promise,
pale, in the seed's marrow.
geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. abandon
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear,
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. and we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye
clear. what we need is here."

wendell berry

this poem has been on my mind alot...i have repeated the last line like a mantra..."what we need is here"...

as i begin my sabbatical month of august...a month of traveling and of reflection...i find my self struggling against the fears of new things...the fears of the unknown...the fears of losing all that is dear to me...but it is the loss of those things that has driven me to take this time...a time to search out home...

i told a friend that it hit me that i was officially homeless...and i let the heaviness and emotion of that pour over me...and then i thought that i've really been in search of a home all along...even while paying rent and calling many places my "own"...

i feel like i have had moments of happiness, pregnant with promise that have fallen apart or been torn from my hands, from my heart, just as i was getting used to the idea that this might be the time i get to just rest in the happiness of something and breathe...and i've grown weary of beating my head against a wall...of having doors slammed in my face...of being abandoned and rejected...and i don't want to try anymore and i don't want to hope and take chances...my heart...my soul...have had enough...

so i decided to put all my stuff in storage and take the month of august to travel and try to find answers...to try to find healing...to try to find home...

but as i prepare for this time and struggle through the goodbyes i've said...the one's i wish i could say and the one's i haven't gotten to say...i am trying to center myself in the moment...i don't want to miss anything because i am too long looking back or too much looking forward...i want to be fully present in every moment of this month...

and wendell berry reminds me that everything i need at this moment is here with me...even the seeds of things that i will need and want in my future...it's all here...right now...and i don't have to find the tree...just water the seeds that are here...

and so i pray to see my way clear...to remember what i need is here...and to find my way out of the deep sadness and weariness of soul and to somehow find my way home...