People of the Way

People of the Way

The Way is what we choose. You have chosen to read. I have chosen to write. And so this is the Way.

As I descend the last stair and look through the glass door of my office building, it strikes me that the world begins and ends with this day. I walk across the grass in front of the car dealership, the same route I take everyday on my way home from work. As I make my way through the grass, wet as it is everyday from the timed sprinkler system, I allow myself to sense every blade of grass that pokes through the side of my sandals as each one embraces my exposed flesh.

There is something very different about today, this day. I stop to consider the grass for a moment, wet, yet parched and dried from the summer sun. Yes, something is different. I remember my bus, leaving in only five minutes and pick up my pace. I am on the way somewhere, is it home? Is there any consequence in where I am heading if the world begins and ends today?

The Earth, the universe, each blade of grass, all created today. And this day, before I have a chance to explore any of these things fully perhaps before I even get on the bus, they will all be destroyed. I stop in the grass again, allowing the wet, but parched grass to poke through the sides of my sandals. Why rush in a world that is temporary?

The bus passes the end of the block and I realize that the world begins and ends on the Way. And so I am of the Way.

Looking at the glass, but not through the window.

On the bus this morning I spent a few minutes watching the tiny beads of condensation that had accumulated on the window. As I watched these beads merge together to form long, streaky drips across the window I noticed that as soon as the molecules gathered enough to form a drip, they then succumb to gravity leaving part of their community behind. These small molecules, left alone to the mercy of the sun, quickly evaporated and became a part of the wind. My eyes turn to the page of my book for a moment and then I begin to wonder what it would feel like to evaporate. How amazing it would feel to become a part of the wind! I think about the logistics of condensation. Ideally I would re-condense in my human form; whole, unchanged. But, in actuality, I think that some molecules would be forever freed from their bodily prison, enslaved for eternity by the wind and the rest of my particles would probably be irrevocably disordered. The fact is, you can not become a part of the wind without being changed. And so I decide, right now, that if ever I am presented with the oppurtunity to evaporate and become irrevocably changed by the power of the wind, by the power of the One who makes the wind blow, then I will take it. I will leap from my community of molecules and lay in the heat, clinging to the bus window, waiting for each part of me to be inhaled by the sun and released into the wind. I will sacrifice the temporal for an eternity in the wind.

Xalt is a community of the wind. We are tossed, torn and pulled together. And so I will change, and be changed. Thank you friends for the life we share.