LONGING

Longing is divine discontent; the unendurable present, finding a physical doorway to awe and discovery that frightens and emboldens, humiliates and beckons, makes us into pilgrim souls and sets us on a road that starts in the centre of the body and then leads out, like an uncaring invitation, like a comet’s tail, felt like both an unrelenting ache and a tidal pull at one and the same time, making us willing to give up our perfect house, our paid-for home and our accumulated belongings.

Longing is nothing without its dangerous edge, which cuts and wounds us while setting us free, and beckons us exactly because of the human need to invite the right kind of peril. The foundational instinct that we are here essentially to risk ourselves in the world, that we are a form of invitation to others and to otherness, that we are meant to hazard ourselves for the right thing, for the right woman or the right man, for a son or a daughter, for the right work, or for a gift given against all the odds. In longing we move, and are moving, from a known but abstracted elsewhere to a beautiful, about-to-be-reached someone, something, or somewhere we want to call our own.

He had me at pilgrim souls. I have known this reality for such a long time. To have brushed up aside the Mysterium and experience the slightest touch of awe and discovery is enough to keep me going, as long as I remember. The forgetfulness of life, the distractions of this age of distraction, the petty preoccupations that I allow to cling to my mind or heart make me lose sight to having sensed the "Something more" of life. That curious question of the something or Someone more than lies at the edge of my perceptions, that plays with my mind to question my sanity and reality. Call it the Divine or the Mind, there is something more than the confused Me that I know too well and hardly know at all. I vote for the Divine, the Mysterium, others would probably vote for the delusional and wishful.

The dangerous edge - that cuts and wounds while setting us free. I often think the right kind of men & women in the military and first responders know this instinctively. They have found a greater something to give themselves to. The right kind of peril awakens the soul like nothing else. Anyone who stumbles across their vocation - there calling, the gifting of their personal uniqueness find the treasure in the field that is worth the cost of everything because it is more than everything. It is more than you could have hope or imagined. I am an invitation to others and otherness. That quest for the beautiful, about to be reached someone and something to call my own, and yet that "owning" is free of all desire to possess and full of the surrender to the Good, the True and the Beautiful.

Happy Thursday Digital Neighbors! Mr. Whyte has a lot more to say about longing, those are the first and last paragraphs of his goldmine of meaning. My ramblings are just a little something to stir our minds, awaken our hearts and opens my eyes just a little bit more. Have a great day my friends.

Vermont Barn Autumn by Edward Fielding