Augustine: Of loss and love and fire and rain, never would have come this way

Athena,

I've sat down to write to you multiple times these past days. I have several blank sheets with the date written across the top and I have sheets that are filled with rambling frustration. Finding an element of insight or truth often feels like digging in sand. Will every handful that you pull out, some slides back down. Some days it seems that I never get to anything of meaning after all the digging. Sitting down to write means I have to let down the barrier and listen to the voice inside, but there are so many other voices that were being quieted and they are no free to yell, scream, and whisper incoherently in my ear.

Anne Lamott encourages writers to think of the voices as mice. Do put them under little glass jars, turn up the volume to let them scream, and then turn the volume down low. I call mine ghosts. I don't like the name ghosts, it doesn't seem fitting. But the fact that I don't like their name seems even more fitting.

I've had occasion to write about a topic but whenever I sit down to do so, it feels like single person sail boat in a storm. I imagine the apostles in their small fishing boat being overrun by the waves. Somedays writing feels like insisting on casting a net out to fish while the storm is tearing the vessel apart.  I forget the storm can be calmed. Or I don't remember how.

"Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace."

'Touch, taste and smell your way to the holy hidden heart of it.'

There are not clear guideposts with directions, distances, and names. There are cairns, stacks of rocks, small and large, strewn across the landscape, sometimes close enough to see from one to the next, but often times they appear just in the moment when you wondered if you have entirely lost your way.

And in the moments when I pause and look up to see where it is that I am, I wonder if I am lost. I wonder "where are the signposts?" I look out over the land ahead that holds only stability but nothing else that I desire and wonder "why do I keep walking towards this?" But no other path seems stable or wise.

The blog was a new medium when I was in high school. I presented my senior project across a series of blogs. Mine was named after Jars of Clay lyrics which I also used as my senior quote:

"We look out way down past the road we came from

We're looking for redemption

It was hidden in the landscape

Of loss and love and fire and rain

Never would have come this way

Looking for redemption"

In those moments when I let myself question "what am I doing here?" I wonder if there is redemption hidden in this landscape?

+Augustine