Wanderer

I was perusing through my old visual journal, dated April 1998 - December 1999.

Perusing, for it slowed me down to an even slower pace than when I came to realize that this was a Monday and I wasn’t in school!  (Deep breath of appreciation here.)

I had just completed the entry of Motherhood, the poem about Judas Iscariot’s mother’s reflections after her son died.

I had found that poem in my visual journal, 1998-99 (see photos above for details), and that lead me to ponder and reflect on other entries I had made that year. I decided to take some pictures of the pages because I really like the combination of pictures, photos, and drawings combined with my own words, and the words of those I admired. A later entry will explain my visual journal, and how it helped me find the lighted path.

The next poem you’ll read is by Theodore Roethke. I didn’t even know who he was when I copied the few lines back in 1998 (detail of that page is first photo above). I didn’t know that there was more than the first three lines.

I just knew something in those words resonated within me a deeper meaning, something I knew about but could not voice into my own words. It had to do with waking up, with realizing I’d been “asleep” throughout most of my life. It had to do with a time of personal change and transformation: over a year before starting that particular journal (April 1998), I found myself walking a path that lead me into the teaching profession. I had graduated from Elon College in the summer of 1999, and began teaching that August.

“I learn by going where I have to go.”

Actually, every year during the week prior to the day we celebrate our Risen Savior, I make discoveries, and I always write about them in my paper journal. I’m making an attempt to make them public in my blog this week.

Usually, following Holy Week, the days of His Passion, and Easter Sunday, something changes for me… something really important happens. It never fails that something will be different by Easter Sunday.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.

I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?

I hear my being dance from ear to ear.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?

God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,

And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?

The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do

To you and me; so take the lively air,

And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.

What falls away is always. And is near.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I learn by going where I have to go.