Come, come whoever you are—wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving, ours is no caravan of despair. Come yet again, come.
The words of Rumi, 13th century Sufi, everlasting. Each year we turn and return—we gather again, the caravan circling round to pick up each one as we are—wherever we are in our journey.
We are not all in the same place for over the summer some of us have taken journeys and some of us have been taken by them. For many, it has been a summer marked by transitions—changes of heart, of home, of spiritual, emotional, physical condition.
As the caravan stops, waits for each of us to board, we take note of our fellow travelers—the ease or difficulty with which we climb on—some hopping, some creeping—color radiating from our faces or color drained. Some with our last two chickens, some with jewels.
We each join the caravan because it transports us here—together in our separateness.
Arlene Gay Levine writes:
Here is the road: the light
comes and goes and returns again.
Be gentle with your fellow travelers
as they move through the world of stone and stars
whirling with you yet every one alone.
The road waits.
Do not ask questions but when it invites you
To dance at daybreak, say yes.
Each step is the journey, a sing note the song.
Not so unlike William Blake who bid us to see the world in a grain of sand, eternity in an hour, each moment in time is time. Each step is the journey. The journey of a thousand miles begins again with each step. That’s why we never step in the same river twice. The river flows, ever-changing—and we who bob and float and flow, sometimes snag, drift or swirl about in the eddies. We travel the river of life never coming up for air in the same place twice for just as the river changes, we change—we age, we ripen like cheese or wine or pears. And as we know, some of our ripenings toughen our skin and others tenderize us to bruising.
Thus we gather this ingathering Sunday once again, each in our own state of being—our ripeness fragrant or aromatic; some of us thick-rind as the rhino, some of us thin-skinned as the grape under a heel. We gather not just to be renewed but to be noticed in our renewing.
This week I received a few photos taken on Star Island where I spent a week in mid-August—photos of my mother and me laughing, no, cawing wild and exhilarated as crows; photos pixilated with innumerable points of joy—my mother’s sun-drenched face upturned, me banjo in hand. The photos tell of our renewal—not just mine and Taya’s, but an island of people, travelers all. Who gathered as we each “moved through a world of stone and stars” whirling together—alone but collected, separate but connected.
Each experiencing the moment co-created by each other. No moment belonged to any being alone. Every moment held the sound of the surf, the scent of salt air, the heat of the sun. Each mote of stone dust rising from the dirt embedded with particles of light—solar yes, but sacred, too—“nor do I mean anything miraculous,” to quote Mary Oliver,”only the light that can shine out of a life.”
I had never been to Star Island before but once there I understood its allure—the way our separate togetherness formed an invitation to dance at daybreak, to say yes because each note is the song.
And just like here, the song changes—it shimmies and coils, undulates like great undersea grasses swaying from the ocean floor.
At church, people make decisions about all kinds of things—steeples and buildings, budgets and mission, but that is not why we come; that is not what compels us to climb on the caravan—deciding things. No, we gather for something else—we gather to be the note in the song, the duck in the sea.
Donald Babcock writes:
Now we are ready to look at something pretty special.
It is a duck riding the ocean a hundred feet beyond the surf,
And he cuddles in the swells.
There is a big heaving in the Atlantic.
And he is part of it.
He can rest while the Atlantic heaves, because he rests in the Atlantic.
Probably he doesn’t know how large the ocean is.
And neither do you.
But he realizes it.
And what does he do, I ask you.
He sits down in it.
He reposes in the immediate as if it were infinity – which it is.
That is religion, and the duck has it.
I like the little duck.
He doesn’t know much.
But he has religion.
We come like ducks to the ocean to be religion, not to study or parse it, analyze or justify it. To experience it, full-bodied; to make ourselves “part of the boundless, by easing [ourselves] into it—we come just to be where it touches us”—where the fragile and tenacious humanity of another brushes our skin, thick or tender, calloused or bruised, and like the duck, we probably don’t know how large the ocean is. We may ponder, dare to imagine its vastness though we cannot know with our finite bodies its infinite waves—we can rest while it heaves; we can bob and float—and because we lack the poise of ducks, we may overturn. We may churn in the undertow gasping for air, popping back up, scanning the water for a glimpse of the others, “finding repose in the immediate as if it were infinity—which it is.”
We come together this ingathering Sunday “to repose in the immediate, to make ourselves part of the boundless, to ease into it where it touches us”—here and here and here.
We return to one another, to the river never the same twice, to notice the changes, to feel them in our bodies and in our souls. We gather to witness and be witnessed, to hear and be heard, to behold and be held—whirling with and yet alone.
Come—come whoever you are—wanderer—worshipper—lover of leaving. Ours is no caravan of despair. Come. Yet again. Come.
Closing words
Here is the road: the light
comes and goes and returns again.
Be gentle with your fellow travelers
as they move through the world of stone and stars
whirling with you yet every one alone.
The road waits.
Do not ask questions but when it invites you
To dance at daybreak, say yes.
Each step is the journey, a sing note the song.
