What is represented here are the experiences of a person with a small life shared with those who have experienced dramatic change in their lives. One day things are one way. One day later …two months or a year …and everything has changed completely. Have you sometimes found yourself in a pitch black room feeling your way along to find a door? There is a deep abyss in the center. You know, because you have gone toward the center of the room and almost fell into it, but have been able to keep your foothold and continue to search for the door.

You find the door. It has a brass doorknob engraved with a pattern smoothed by time. The antique key is already in the lock. You turn the key. The rusty lock clicks out of the door jamb after several tries. The wobbly doorknob opens into light, but, perhaps, it is not all that bright at first. You stumble along until you see a broad road lit in the distance with bright lights. There is also an overgrown path with an old lantern hidden in the bushes for nighttime travel. You choose.

We all choose different ways. None seem to be “right” or “wrong.” They are just paths. They are just roads. What has been written here describes an overgrown path that is traveled at night in the wavering light of the lantern …a path that winds around bends down into a thick forest and, then, up a mountain beside a lake under a starlit sky so bright that it wonders what need there is of day …past people whose partial shadows reveal the essence not understood in mid-day. They look at you with eyes full of glowing light that see the same light in you. Sometimes they pass you in the night with only the memory you see in the light of your own eye. Sometimes you travel together. There is laughter. There are tears. Sometimes you travel together for a long time …sometimes just a moment until you turn off into a different path like the veins on the back of a hand. You travel into night markets that appear out of nowhere in cities and towns with the things of the dusty caravan for sale …sleep under the moon listening for the tinkle of the sheep’s bell and the howl of the wolf …imagine the sound of the surf …of the calm of the midnight blue sea lit by the path of the full moon that you walk along in your dreams

This path is far from perfect. This path will not be easy. The blessing of this path is found in what is imperfect and what is overcome. There will be the same lessons again and again that arise from our human stumbling. There will be days of walking …just walking until weariness is blessing in the form of rest. There will be moments of fear when one must leap over the gap …but, there will also be simple well-being found in the silence under everything…in discarding much of what was thought to be important that will allow the space to be filled with ligh t…and there will be gratitude for a strong pair of boots.

Change is a traveling companion that fills us with light. To be filled with light has little to do with hope and permanence so much as it has to do with letting go …flowing slowly forward, without haste.

There will be space to let go. The empty space that creates you will expand to allow little more than light until you no longer need the lantern you found in the bushes to travel the path.  Be encouraged to be free of the things that get in the way of a journey toward light. Allow what happens. Stop looking for answers. There is little satisfaction to be found there.

Sit with your friends, don’t go back to sleep.
Don’t sink like a fish to the bottom of the sea.

Surge like an ocean,
Don’t scatter yourself like a storm.

Life’s waters flow from darkness.
Search the darkness, don’t run from it.

Night travelers are full of light,
And you are, too; don’t leave this companionship.

Be a wakeful candle in a golden dish,
Don’t slump into the dirt like quicksilver.

The moon appears for night travelers,
Be watchful when the moon is full.

~~Search the Darkness

~~Rumi