I needed a vacation.

I could have gone on one if I had also wanted to lose my job, but I've decided against that option tonight.

Instead, I have driven my car to the nearest park, put on my tennis shoes and I am walking as far away from this parking lot as I possibly can.

Well, I'm walking.

And walking.

And walking.




Still walking.

The air is perfect, the earth alive with growth and fragrance. I'm taking long, quick strides - a girl on a serious mission to an unknown destination.

My life has felt blurry for months. If one were to ask, I would say that I had been working a lot, sleeping a little. Head buried in piano keys, song arrangements, ukulele strings. Counseling my way through a past of hard self-criticism, discontentment, failed relationships. A head full of grey, mostly. Makes it a bigger exhalation when I catch glimpses of color.

It all brings me here - fast paces along paved paths, suburban neighborhoods, patches of early spring growth.

I've spotted some large, flat rocks lining the creek to my right. I am releasing control - my feet carry me over. Drawing close, I can smell the rich mixture of water and earth. I am, once again, a small child standing in a creekbed, turning over submerged rocks in hopes of finding an orange newt or a brown "crawdad." A wave of peace surges through me in this moment of nostagia. I am young and free.

Muscles release tension, head slowly falls forward. Eyes shut and the scent of my memory is exemplified. The breeze blows through a patch of reeds to my left. I open my eyes and the sun births a dance of shadows through late winter branches.

All feels well here.

There is a therapy in stillness. In quiet. In just not thinking. In being. A discipline worth worth the practice for the preservation of sanity.

I return to my feet and begin the walk back.

I am ready to return.

Travels: Fall 2012.

Part IV: First Morning.

8:50.....8:51.

My alarm was set for something really unrealistic - say 5:30? 5:45?
Yeah right.

I do remember getting out of bed to shut my alarm off. Typically I would never remember ("Can you believe my alarm didn't go off this morning?) that my alarm even went off. I particularly remember turning it off earlier because I unsuccessfully tried to lay my head back down afterwards. Instead of hitting a nice soft pillow, the left side of my head slammed into the wooden headboard behind the pillow.

Now it is 8:58 and I am just now waking to this day. [Side Note: Waking at a monastery at this time is the equivalent to sleeping until noon at your home. The monks hold their first service at 3:20 a.m.]

I've signed up for "Spiritual Direction" at 10 a.m. According to its description, this is a one-on-one session with one of the monks to discuss one area of my life with God.

I just wanted to sit and talk with a monk. [I mean...what fun is a monastery if I can't talk to a monk?]

Of course, I can't give myself away here. I need to pick a topic within the hour.

Where I slammed my head in the middle of the night: 

--------------------

(afterthought)

I'm getting coffee.

That's good coffee.

There aren't any clocks anywhere. I wonder if one's body becomes a clock after living here a while. 

Part III: Squirrel Deception.

There are small, brown squirrels everywhere. With cute squirrel faces.

Why aren't they scampering up and asking me to be their friend?! Isn't this a monastery?! Isn't this Disney?!

I feel so deceived.

Part II: Inch Worms and Alligators.

What sheer joy it is to observe a small, green inch worm float high above the earth - swinging high on her silent string - weightless and free.

I wonder if I should ask for a turn next. Swinging above the earth - silent and weightless.

----------

I have seated myself in a small opening between two short brick walls. I have been creeping along this courtyard's edge, careful not to make too much noise for fear of the alligators in my imagination. The courtyard runs along the side of open water and there are yellow warning signs with pictures of alligators on them. I spotted two the last time I visited and am not highly interested in meeting another.

The conflict here lies in my spotting of an age-worn, cracked set of stairs on the opposite side of the water. There is a wide, grassy trail that crosses over the water and works its way around to the mysterious stairs.

Now I can't stop thinking about them.

But I don't want to be eaten by an alligator.

Ugh. WHY IS LIFE SO HARD SOMETIMES?!

Thoughts from the Abbey. Part I: Arriving.

[I recently revisited my favorite monastery in Moncks Corner, SC. These are thoughts from my time there.]

5.4.12

We jumped into her car, eager to be away from the city. Bags impatiently tossed into the backseat, iced coffees dripping puddles into the cup holders. Sunglasses, dresses, tattoos. No A/C. Two windows rolled down, knots in our hair, driving just past the speed limit.

We chatted our way into the deeper South - beautiful, old houses next to overgrown horse pastures. Wild, untamed trees hovering over two young girls in the front seat.

I called - we were going to be at least five minutes past 4:00 and I had read somewhere that monks had an appreciation for punctuality. I suppose I could have guessed this, given the lifestyle of routine and discipline.

I could have guessed.

"I'll wait on you!" came the friendly voice on the line. This was Brother Gary, as I would soon discover and he met us with a gentle smile as we walked in the front door.

We exited and, just as we were about to get back into the car, a voice called, "Girls, girls!" Brother Gary was standing on the porch, waving red bags at us. "You forgot to get your keys! And I gave you the wrong directions," he added with a sheepish grin. "You'll be staying at St. Bernard. Come back at 4:30 and I'll begin the guest orientation."

At 4:30, we joined the other guests: three senior aged men in khakis and solemn faces and two middle aged  men in khakis and smirky, businessman faces. Kendall in her flip flops and tattoos. I in my glasses and leggings.

After a rundown of schedule expected behavior, we gathered into the guest dining room until we were told to begin eating. The meals here are to be eaten without speaking.

Suddenly one is faced with the awkwardness of not being able to start polite conversation [in hindsight, I would say we were all faced with the freedom of it all]. There is the heightened sense of hearing every scrape of a spoon, every lip smack, every scuff of a chair leg.

But one is, all at the same time, made aware of how perfectly pleasant the moments are when complete strangers are not forced into small talk or are simply able to sit and enjoy the quiet . Together.

I must admit that, at one point, I felt like a child again. The same child that was sent to the "bad table" in the cafeteria, where one is banned from speaking while eating - seated along with other students who had somehow acquired the same punishment.

I did not feel punished. However, one must quickly overcome these thoughts for fear of bursting into giggles at a silent dinner. 

One Week Ago: Bare Trees, Clay Jars.

Saturday, Dec. 24. Christmas Eve.

My brothers were out kayaking, my parents out singing carols for a candlelight service. Presents wrapped and, refusing to stay in the house alone any longer, I got into my car and headed for the mountains.

The higher I climbed, the more mountains came into view. I could see them clearly through the bare branches of winter trees. Higher and higher.

I parked right on the NC/TN border, got out and hiked up to the top of my favorite bald. It was cold...breathtakingly cold. The sun was on its way to setting and the world just seemed to open up all possessed beauty before me. And trees - winter trees. Their branches bare...mere skeletons of what they once were. But beauty - so much sky and green and vast stretches of mountain that I could see through their bare branches.

And it hit me.

2 Cor. 4:7 is the biblical verse that compares us to clay jars. "But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us..." -- broken, cracked, fragile jars. Put a light inside of a jar. The greater the crack, the greater the light that is shone. The more broken, the more the treasure inside is exposed.

I had only heard this spoken of (in this specific way) only a few weeks before.

(Check that out here.)

And on this day, I could see it in the bareness of winter trees.

Fall is beautiful, but speaks of things dying. Passing away. The colors fade to brown and join the earth. All that is left are these bare branches, these colorless limbs. The attention is no longer on the shape of the leaves, the size of the fruit it bears, the fullness of its' leafy growth.

Now it is bare. But now it is free to reveal beauty greater than itself. Through its' branches, there are endless skies, the poetry of the sea, grandeur of the mountains.

And so we see - brokenness reveals beauty. Hallelujah.