Legit

Of all the legitimate excuses to neglect daily writing (at least on an blog site) the limited access to a keyboard other than the one on my phone is perhaps understandable.  Still, the notebook I brought with me on this two week trip to the land of my birth and early growth still sits in the backpack.  Now, as my vacation winds down and I am left with the necessary task of packing all the goodies of this experience (not just the material ones) I find myself beginning to reclaim the life I live in Alaska.  That life entails not just the day to day details of keeping myself alive and reasonably intact, but is rich in relationship to meaningful work, play and most importantly love of family, friends, the physical environment and of course the self that I have created there.  It is no different from the self that I created here in the quiet and remote places of Wisconsin and Michigan, for my soul knew its earliest yearnings in this land and when I come here again and again the panorama of my life is set before me and I know that I am truly blessed.

Yesterday while driving from the rolling farmlands of central Wisconsin to the more heavily treed knolls of the north, Aron remarked that what was missing from the backdrop of colorful leaves was the omnipresent mountain vistas in Alaska.  Still, he said, Lake Superior is like nothing else, like nothing Alaska offers in all its grandeur and awesomeness.  It brings me joy to hear him say that for the lake is as much a part of who I am as the genes of my ancestors who worked in this land and built lives that would eventually entail my entrance on this physical plane.  That deep connection stirs in me when I stand at the shores of this grand majesty and reflect on the millions of others whose lives are linked in this dark and wild inland sea that is not sea--but so very similar in its expansiveness.  It's unforgiving waters are the graves of many who were caught by its power and its waves are the delight of those who have been fondled in its cool refreshment.  It is the resting place (if such a place can ever be called that) for the ashes of many mortal beloved whose bodies have yielded to the eternal yearnings of the soul.  My brother's are here and hopefully someday mine will be as well.  And so, above all, this place is Holy.

While I yearn to return to the place where my heart took wing and grew in the lush and harsher realm of Alaska, a part of it remains here, with both my ancestors and my progeny.  So my leaving is bittersweet, as all leavings must be.  And the vague tears that form in my eyes and the tightening that gathers like afternoon clouds in my throat are like all things of the heart and the soul--legit.

Not exactly what I had in mind

A part of me feels guilty for having neglected the 15 lean daily here, but then again, I am really accountable to no one but myself.  To say it is a certain amount of busyness that has overtaken my life and prevented me from sitting in front of the computer to write would be a lie, again to myself.  I have sat in front of this computer for too many hours in the last three weeks, posting the mundane details of my life, exchanging discourse with those who both share and oppose my position on various topics.  Never would I say they have been a waste of time.  I do not waste time, I simply use it like everyone else, perhaps not always wisely, but nonetheless time moves no more quickly for me than it does for anyone else.  In a sense, it is all illusion anyway, this passage of a thing we call time.

What matters is this moment, the now of my present thought, the odd crackle of neurons firing in my brain to breathe, to think, to move my fingers across a keyboard to elicit the magic of words, the transmission of thought in language both common and obscure.  This always amazes me, and even when I neglect to record the vagaries and details of this gift I call my life, I still am amazed at my own consciousness and a myriad other things as well.

This consciousness brings a certain amount of joy and peace, a certainty in the rightness of the world as it is sustained moment to moment by the One who holds it all, and always will.   That I cannot elicit any adequate language to even begin to describe this Reality is not at all disconcerting, because I can touch It, be immersed in It, live and move and have my being in It.   And that is enough, for now, and for the 15 lean minutes it took to write this.