"On the Road Again"

Traveling Mercies

“My faith did not start with a leap but rather a series of staggers from what seemed like one safe place to another.  Like lily pads, round and green, these places summoned and held me up while I grew.  Each prepared me for the next leaf on which I would land and in this way I moved across the swamp of doubt and fear.”

                                  Anne Lamott

                                  Traveling Mercies

         The house is protected, the dogs are stowed, and today I travel to God’s country, North Carolina.  I make this pilgrimage twice yearly to reconnect with the roots of my childhood and my heart-hood.  I will be traveling from Murphy to Manteo, and will be writing to you from a number of stops along the way.  I ask your prayers for safe travel and inspiration.

        North Carolina is both the ground from which I sprang, and my spiritual birthplace.  Along a zigzag and intermittent green path, from the woodlands and the white water, from the fern glens and the moss covered, wind-smoothed outcroppings, a candle was lit and a lifelong love of all things spiritual burst into flame.  When people ask me what I “believe in,” I tell them “everything!”  I choose to see life through the lens of the great mystery that is faith.  I love believing that there are many layers of reality and my eyes see only one, that ‘heaven’ is right here among us and available to us if we ask.  Call me a mystic and I will proudly step into that label.  North Carolina bequeathed this tap-root and I am firmly fixed.

         Most of us arrive at our faith, or lack thereof, by a series of fits and starts, of disappointments and rebirths.  In the final analysis, faith is a matter of choice.  Over a lifetime, most of us go from a belief that is concrete and rooted in our ‘tribal traditions,’ to one that is unique to us.  Sometimes we are fortunate enough to find a community of likeminded people to share our worldview and we travel with them for a time.  Like all living, breathing things, faith changes; sometimes it deepens and broadens, sometimes it fizzles out, and sometimes it hardens into something quite akin to stone. 

         I have found that believing in something grander than I am, enriches my days and unlocks a door to people and experiences that enliven.  Faith has taught me that if my hands and heart are open, the universe provides precisely what I need.  Today, I need traveling mercies.

                                  Keeping the faith,

                                  Jane