Journey ...

The sheer drudgery of journey is remarkably absent in travel magazines.

I see fresh-pressed khaki, sun-kissed smiles, and streamlined luggage skimming smoothly over tarmac as glossy as the pages I turn.

Even the paper cut I get on the side of my finger is precise and clean-edged.

For travelers of flesh and bone, the Earth turns with rough beauty:

The sun burns, rain chills, and strange winds drive dust like shrapnel; 

there is:

the placing of foot before foot, eyes cast down seeking a predictable landing in unfamiliar terrain;

the kinesthetic of each arm swinging with stride, heavy with the burden of bundles and time;

the restless scanning of a bewildering landscape for routine comforts;

and the unfamiliar greeting of strangers, busy on their networks of constructed pathways incomprehensible to tourists.

Journey is to live in the alien present in a relentless search for home.

My missal is crisp with the newness of December; the Advent journey has begun again.

I enter the foreign landscape of sand, stars, and a Savior-Child.

Shepherds and kings rush by in a restless riot of joy, angels fly as thick as fog.

But stillness lives in the stable—the donkey and ox.

Deprived of their manger they stand patient,

seeing with soul-eyes the sacrifice—Bread of Life—offered up for all.

Their waiting holds no internal movement of chronology; neither is it passive.

instead it is Presence held in dynamic meditation, a still movement through time.

Journey is to live in Presence, a quiet center in a relentless search for home.

Many blessings on your Christmas journey and throughout the New Year!

Faith & Vincent and the family:

from left to right on the carpet back row: Maggie Muggins, Gabe, Janna Banana, the Lovely Ladies (represented by Emma in the front row), one unamed honeybee (on the Nativity stable), and Puck! (looking in the window) ...