Some years ago I found Marcia Prager’s gem “The Path of Blessing” which entered into the simple six opening words of Hebrew prayer and called forth an astonishing creative cosmos of breathtaking wonder. And when we feel so deeply the source, we can be amazed and grateful at everything that appears. As a special treat, I appreciated learning what to pray when a person of exquisite presence enters my life, whether for a moment or a journey. Thank you, who brings forth one such as this into the world!
I feel playful around this because I don’t know if I will ever actually meet this one. We live far away. But I’m grateful for the sweet feeling of fresh aliveness. And in the playfulness I got inspired to review old blog entries and remember the simple pleasures of writing about life.
Thirty months ago a wormhole appeared and I moved from small town life (with my usual 3 month respite at sangha house) to perhaps the oldest and densest urban neighborhood on the west coast. While in the wormhole I finished my dissertation and the next day was invited to participate in yet another creative adventure in adult graduate learning and healing. In two days I’ll have a three week break from a busy semester, and after some good family time, I will go walkabout in this place of beauty, the bay and delta region, where I have lived most of my adult life.
Pilgrimage is one of my most satisfying spiritual practices. I have walked back my blood ancestry across the oceans, and visited places of immense power on continents and islands, and it’s just as good to go for a day or two not so far from home, when my intention is to honor and to learn, to pay attention to small things, to pray and write and draw in a journal. The mystery, as Reb Gershon points out, is always in front of us. I want to see and feel that mountain Tamalpais more deeply than ever before; visit neighborhoods in Oakland that I have never seen.
And maybe when I get home I will blog about what I find.
