Sometimes I glimpse, for a millisecond,
another reality, another way of being in the world.
It’s as if I have been wandering through a giant old building,
catching shards of light as they stream through cracks
in the weathered walls.
An old structure along Route 2 in western Maine,
headed for school in Vermont,
an ancient barn in the midst of perpetual renovation,
perched high on a hill,
the sign Bought and Prayed For hanging
on its time-worn clapboards.
I imagine walking inside on creaking sturdy planks,
smelling old dust and animal breath,
years of hay stacked in bales,
ready for winter.
Suddenly I can see more clearly through an opening,
Alice in Wonderland in the midst of New England,
drawn not to adventure,
but to another world
outside the familiar.
The faded colors are what one would expect,
though the light is different—
luminous,
shimmering almost.
But it is not even this light that captures my attention
so much as the feeling
of being slightly outside myself,
looking in.
The inner landscape has changed.
I am me,
and yet more expansive;
not daring exactly,
but wholly unfamiliar—
a woman wearing the same skin
while her insides have been washed clean.
Gone are the judgments and justifications.
Absent is the inner dialogue,
the self-critic.
All that remains is pure love,
pure light.
And I simply know
this is who I am,
underneath years of practiced life,
of hopes and dreams not entirely my own,
expectations that are nobody’s fault.
Rather, I am the product of a larger arc—
of home and family,
of community and world.
I do not pretend to know these people,
or their own dreams and fears and history.
It is enough simply to know
I am far larger,
more spacious,
than I can ever fathom.
And it is insights such as this
that keep me wondering,
wandering,
and loving
this evolving, imperfect
and extraordinarily beautiful world.