Walking where you know the Reed
It is possible to walk through life and not see the trees for the forest - to sort of amble about with no particular focus - failing to absorb what is happening around you. Those who have experienced extreme isolation often report that it changed their priorities - it changed what they considered to be important in their lives.
It is a matter of intimacy - how much do you really know about your surroundings, and the people you live and work with every day? You may be intimate with your i-pod, but are you intimate with your friends, children, and closest loved ones? What color are their eyes? Do they have a “secret” longing or desire unfulfilled? Do you walk through each day in a flurry of self imposed busyness - always searching for that special someone, that special event, that special place that will make it all meaningful?
God knows ’twere better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear…
- Alan Seeger 1888-1916
The spectrum of the human condition is not enough to quench the beauty and wonder that can be experienced - even the meanest of circumstances yields up its epiphanies. We cannot be bound by scourge, calamity, or frustration - “For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” - Paul (formerly Saul the Murderer)
If you walk in the fields, you will most surely come across some form of reed or grass - the reed is universal.
Delicate yet hardy, an emblem in the wind
Waving over fields and meadows
Gilded by the sunsets glow
Beaten with the slightest blow
Rising up again, reaching for the heavens
Wispy in the wind
To know the grass of the field, to understand the birds in flight, to listen to the sounds in the night, of salt and oil and leaven, of wine and wind and song - for blinded eyes to see, the lame to walk, the dumb to speak, the dead to rise - the sky to open and reveal, the full uncovering - of nakedness and need.
Endeavor to walk where you know the reed.
