Someone wrote recently and inquired about my thoughts on the song, Born, by Over the Rhine. I wrote back and this person suggested I consider a blog post inspired by this song. I haven’t blogged in a long time; it’s been a strange time in my life. This person, whom I have not met, suggested it might be a good re-entry–when are you going to start blogging again? Why not give it a try?

Sometimes we need to do what we ought. Sometimes we need to do the things that make our hearts sing. Sometimes they are the same, and we, tired and low to the ground, see the feet of the Beautiful there, so close. We draw near. Tears pour from our souls, lavish and unrestrained. Salty streams refresh the dusty, weary feet of the Beautiful. We remain when the well-meant tell us we don’t belong there. We remain.

My heart stubbornly clings to my place near those feet in the face of landfills of hurt and heartbreak. I believe we are born to laugh and to live with joy. The pain we inflict on each other is not what we are meant to be creating. We are born to bear forth love.

Few would claim this world is as it was given to us. What was ours once by birthright, we now must rediscover. Life is an opportunity to learn to love in spite of the junkyard version that leaves so many with a gnawing fear where laughter was meant to live. Even if we have known more love than most and feel all is well, are we satisfied with what is inflicted from one to the other? Do we ignore the unacceptable as long as things are fine with me…

Some may be too barren to discern when something is amiss, but I think most are haunted by a memory of what love truly is and how separated from it they have become. This song, Born, brings the memory of the mysterious forward. It draws me in from the bitter cold, cozies me up to a fire (in an Irish pub of course), the numb in my fingers gives way and I feel my blood rush hot. Life is an opportunity.

My heart at times gets worn thin in this world–lately I’ve experienced a spate of promises unkept. Cynicism is in easy reach. Yet there are others whose hearts are not twisted, whose self-interest has not inoculated them against truth and rightness of action. One, then another, shows up to remind me why remaining near the feet of the Beautiful is the only sane choice in the face of the psuedo-powerful–those whose sleep is troubled by the dogged memory of what is good and true and how far afield from this they have traveled. Long is the night when sleep comes easy to those who remember their origins no more.

If in doubt about what to do and unsure if anything can be done, rest at the feet of the Beautiful. This simple, quiet choice holds the miraculous capacity to heave immovable obstacles from the path and simultaneously inspire the heart to sing freely again. It chases fear as far from us as the sunrise is to the sunset. The memory, this great mystery, enters the present moment. Our breath slows. Our hearts find rest. So Beautiful.

I have started several blog posts in the past few months and never finished them. In between the heavy load of assignments, I wrote what might have become posts but refused to form more than a mess of words. I really had no choice but to keep writing until mind and heart sorted themselves out. So much change has been happening, it seems to only bring clarity when I work it out on the page. It also seems some things are meant to remain a deleted fragment in a hard drive’s memory.

There are so many lovely things in my life right now – people, opportunities, adventures. Yet I wake in the night from a dream that I had thought long gone. Thoughts return to a time that isn’t, and my heart is unsettled. Meant to be, and not, for here I am. And I feel that right where I am is steeped with purpose. But I drowsily stir in the wee hours, disoriented by the moonlight falling soft upon me; I am somewhere else, in some other version of what was meant for me.

I find sleep once more and wake to the sun streaming in; being where I am comforts. I may never settle on the role of fate or roads not taken as Robert Frost ponders. I think that in the mystery of all the unexplainable that moves us in one direction or another, there are moments in which we are allowed to choose. Experience leaves me thinking we can foil the hand of fate – in the sense of rejecting the road that draws us – and choose some other path. Sometimes we do our part and yet the road closes in front of us. Sometimes we turn away willingly and take the other road.

Once I would have said that it is easier to live with having tried and things not working out, but I understand how tempting it can be to turn away and never try. I am becoming – for better or not – a bit tempered in my approach to life. Some of my joie de vivre will likely come back; my passion may return even more fully in time, though it is quiet and muted right now. I haven’t known quite how to write about it here without it seeming that my life isn’t lovely, because that is inaccurate and unfair to all the beautiful and wonderful blessings I have.

I realize that it is rather normal when facing new directions in life for a path that has closed or one we have not taken to come back to visit. Our dreams sometimes play out what might have been. But pain can live among joy; my faith has shown me that this is how it can be in a complex, broken world. It is not in the denying but in the ability to hold both at the same time that helps us get on with things and take the value from our experience with us. And so it is that life right now for me is full of much wonder and beauty even as many things have stacked up to be other than claimed and have left me a bit weary. But I am among loving people who treat me like family and who nourish me and my writing. I will find my way through.

Wide awake, with more wood on the fire, cozying deeper into the feather-cushioned chair, a dreich day creating a moody Scottish atmosphere out my window, I write my way through the swirl of thoughts, memories, dreams. I give myself to the day and let the blessings of the beauty, friends and possibilities settle in, and peace comes to rest.

I heard this song last night in gym class – a weight training class – of all places. It sent chills through me – the beauty of Il Divo’s vocals, the orchestra, later the discovery of the translated lyrics I sensed upon first hearing.

‘I’ll go with you upon ships across the seas,
seas that exist no more,
I’ll revive them with you.
I’ll go with you.
You and me.’

It is quite a thing for a heart to take several beatings in this life, to lie still, broken, not expected to rise again without brittle fragility. The heart fades pale, yes, weary eyelids will their own closure. But then, just then, you hear the whisper ‘Rise up’ and a hand comes in offer. You leverage yourself on this gift, stagger, sway, but imbued with the strength of this remarkable hand, you rise. And the promise burns, warms, lights the path forward.

I may be a hopeless romantic but God is a hope-filled romantic. Nothing is too broken, too impossible, too far gone to become the promise it was meant to be. At the same time, some things are not meant to be, are not what was hoped, did terribly dash the sparkle in bright eyes, left regret and disappointment.

Now is a perfect time to say goodbye to the sting of things we wished hadn’t been and the lingering taint of disappointment over what we had wished for, and open our hearts to all that lies within the promise of our lives. When a broken heart takes the hand of God, it may be too shattered for a human alone to mend but God knows where every tiny sliver fits and how it all goes back together.

We get worn threadbare. Life breaks us down. Things don’t work out like we had hoped or even in a way that we can comprehend. The business we’re trying to build isn’t where we hoped it would be at this point. Every effort to find that job that has a sense of future just isn’t coming through. The call we feel on our life isn’t resulting in the vision we were given. What are we supposed to do? Survival mode becomes regular mode. Will it always be like this?

Is hope worth having? Hope in what?

When we reach the place where our hope is so thin it’s transparent, we can let the last of it dissolve, or reach out and find a way to keep it alive.

Find someone, something, to spark a glimmer, to ignite the best in us. Someone told me recently that she relies only on herself. I’m not sure if this is even possible in today’s world but even if it is, how does this work when shit hits the fan, when you’ve reached the end of everything you’ve got? Where do you go then?

The thing is we do need others. Some we have to let go of, and they move on down their path. Some let go of us and we move on down our path without them. But if our heart is sincere, over time we will find our lives richly interwoven with love and intertwined with others needing and being needed. And that’s the good stuff.

I have heart-gorgeous people in my life who love me enough to kick my arse if I need it, help me buck up, remind me to turn my face to hope, see my blessings, live in gratitude and above all, carry on. I have been in a long breaking down process and didn’t know if I could hold on until the rebuilding commenced. This last week has been the turning of that corner. Many things have happened to signal to me that rebuilding is underway. But before this started to become clear I had hit a terribly low point. But I can’t emphasize enough how it is then, when things seem too heavy to carry any more, that it is so important to keep a spark of hope alive and carry on. Change is coming. Things go in cycles: breaking down and building up. If you’ve lived through a long period of breaking down, hold on for the building up. Why get through the tougher part and then not experience the exhilarating part?

Get up, do this one day. Go to sleep and let the day go. Get up and do the day. Go to sleep and let that day go, too. This is how we carry on. Living one moment at a time. Not stuck in a moment that was. Not anticipating a moment that is not yet or may never be. The present moment is the place of hope, of sanity, of possibility. The present moment contains all that could be. Grab it. Make it something. Then let it go.

Moments are like bubbles. Some are big and massive and hover. Others are little and fly through the air quick and airy, hardly noticed. I have sometimes sat and looked at the suds left on my hands from grabbing a moment and wondered why it couldn’t stay nice and round and full in my hand forever. I wanted it to come back, to never have left. But it popped. Why should I reach out and hold another one if it is going to be so brief? Because this is what life is made of. Moments. That’s just the way it works. Everyone gets one moment at a time.

Do something joyful in as many moments as you can. Create joy. Create the feeling of joy, the knowing of joy, the experience of joy. Choose joy in as many moments as you are able no matter what those moments contain. Find someone to help you to increase your ability to choose joy, to rediscover your joy, to bring joy into your life, to lift you up and help you laugh and love.

Pain comes around often and easy. Joy takes a bit more intention. But it has the power to make this whirl of life a bit more than just a dizzy whirl. It kind of makes it worth doing.

Be filled with joy. Fill your moments with joy. And carry on.

What is a kiss? A sign of affection, routine, politeness, betrayal, goodbye, lust. Kisses have been made to mean so many things.

It is exceedingly rare when a kiss lays both people bare to the soul, when masks drop away and each is vulnerable and at risk. Here I am. I am here. This is me. It is not in the territory of lust, or even passion. It humbles. And it is meant to be rare. Perhaps only meant to happen with one person, maybe another if something happens and the person with whom you knew this once isn’t in your life any longer. I had known this only once, but for a thousand reasons, and no reason, it wasn’t to be. I believe that I will know this again someday but also believe that it will be far more beautiful for a thousand more comprehensible reasons. Building a meaningful, love-filled life together takes two people who have the character and maturity to cultivate rather than strip dry the gorgeous, fertile ground of vulnerability. And this is what makes both hearts grow larger and more generous and more sure.

In the modern world, some people will kiss at least a few, or maybe even many, people, and never know this rare vulnerability. Some go through a lifetime of marriage and never share it and build something beautiful upon its foundation. Others mistake lust or passion for it. And some fully experience it with whom they are meant to spend their life. If they are blessed, it will be all they ever know. I think this is the intended power of a kiss like this, the intimacy, the laying oneself bare with one’s whole heart. What would I know, though.

A kiss can be just a kiss. A thing. There are far too many kisses that should never be at all. Why are they given away so cheaply? A kiss, at the right time with the right person, can and should be a supreme gesture of trust, of revelation, of knowing more deeply the other and oneself.

Yeah, the second kind (with the right person). That’s the way.

Things are brutally challenging. Increase support. Add short-term counseling. Done.

Took an hour and two buses to get out to this place just beyond Edinburgh’s borders. It was in a small village. The sky was country-dark, the street deserted, the wind mustered a ghostly whine. This was the location where I attended church on Sunday. It runs the counseling program. A man was in the hall as I entered the building.

‘Can you point me to the counseling?’ I ask.
‘Aye, this way,’ he replies, leading me down the hall and through the empty auditorium. The church is a high school during the week or rather the high school is a church on Sunday. ‘You can wait for the counselor on the bench just there.’
‘Thanks,’ I reply. I have twenty minutes to spare so I complete the phone call I had interrupted. The counselor appears in the open door, sees me on the phone and says, ‘Anytime you’re ready.’
The schoolroom environment seems un-counselor-like but what do I know? Maybe this is how it’s done in Scotland. The smartly dressed man in black is sitting on one side of two student desks shoved together. I sit down at the other.
‘What can I help you with?’ he asks.
‘Well, I don’t really know where to begin,’ I reply, suddenly embarrassed.
We look at each other. Silent. Awkward.
‘Okay then, why don’t we start with your name,’ he says.
I say it and spell it, given and surname.
‘And your address,’ he continues.
I comply, careful to say ‘stroke’ instead of ‘slash’ for the division of my building from my flat number.
‘Why are you all the way out here?’ he asks.
I think the question isn’t very enterprising, but I’m game. ‘My friend goes to church here. I came along on Sunday and thought some counseling would be helpful as things are really demanding for me right now and I want to make sure I have support.’
‘Okay,’ he says, lingering on the word, seeming to consider my explanation.
I realize it’s far to come but I am sure I’m not the only one. My friend lives in the city too. I don’t say anything.
‘So what’s your issue?’ he asks.
I gape at him, the too-long pause jangles my nerves. ‘For some reason, I still don’t know quite where to begin. I can’t get the words out.’
He looks at me again. I look back. We search each other’s faces. Am I really supposed to confide in him? He is different than any type of counselor I expected. But I’ll go with it. I gear up to begin. He reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a card.
‘Well take this so that you have my contact information,’ he offers. And then he waits for me to begin. I don’t. He watches me scan the card, sees my face fill with confusion.
‘I’m a councillor, a politician,’ he explains kindly as he might to someone who doesn’t speak English. ‘Usually issues are from people in this area but what issue brings you all this way tonight?’
‘A politician?’ I parrot. ‘You’re a politician.’ My words are slow and ponderous. My lips move without sound, forming the letters and then the syllables of the word on the card, ‘councillor.’
‘Yes.’
There it is. I laugh. I laugh hard. I laugh until I snort. Words splutter out in fits. ‘I have an appointment with a counselor, not a councillor,’ I manage. ‘I almost spilled my guts to a politician. A politician.’ I echo the words for my own benefit. I am bent over the desk howling with the imaginings of what nearly was. I am stuck on repeat of the word ‘politician.’
He suddenly gets it. I can’t pull myself together.
‘If I had started talking, if you hadn’t handed me this card, things would have gotten pretty interesting.’ My abs hurt, tears squeeze from my eyes. ‘I haven’t blogged in awhile but this is going on the blog. You can’t make this stuff up.’
‘I blog too,’ he is smiling.
I try to sober up, ‘Really?’
‘But I won’t blog this. I’ll respect your confidentiality,’ he offers.
‘Oh please don’t. This is too absurd.’ A different concern jolts me. ‘Where am I supposed to be? I hope it isn’t all the way across town.’
‘Well I can at least help you get to where you’re going,’ he offers.
An iPhone is sitting on the desk. I ask if it has internet. He confirms it does and looks up the location. It’s across the street. He walks me out into the night air, says goodbye and wishes me well with whatever it is for which I am seeing the counselor. I belly laugh and snort all the way to the white house on the hill. I can’t stop. I don’t want to. Life is amazing and hilarious and fanfreakintastic. Things are gonna be just fine.

It is an honest thing to say that I am optimistic.
It is more honest yet to say that I am blessed.
My whisper steams your skin, lingers.

I live with a broken heart.

Ungodly? Blessed, yeah. Navel gazing? Star gazing baby.
So many reasons, reasonings. Not small most.
It isn’t sticky with pine and wist. It isn’t dried of joy and pluck.
FFS fierce. Splashes red across my chest. Runs down my skin before the edges still.

I live with a broken heart.

Steam wet whispers. Blood red manifestos. It comes.
In and out breath. Spirit sails through skies,
sinks through waves. Mind blusters busy out there.
Here it waits, at the door of home.

That broken heart lives with me.

Quiet. Calm. Day is fine.
Stuck in there just behind the bones.
Doc, if you cracked them open
could you see the bugger and dig it out?

My vulnerability isn’t an accidental door upon which you stumbled. It is my offering, laid down to ensure safe passage across the barren fright that lies between your heart and mine. I reached long and touched your deep. Fear knocked me back. Tender bruises remind me still. What does this mean. Your journey. Mine. Something. Nothing. Yes.

Secrets stir you restless in the dusky hours of the night. Curving thoughts ripple, circle, land hard upon your mind. Memories. Longings. Hope. Regret. Maybe. No.

Desire fills. Empties.

What were those words?
Do not fear. All will be well.
Trust. All will be well.
Be true. All will be well.

Love. Do you love?

Yes. All will be well.

Work hard, and strive not.

Be humbled in fear, and fear not.

Ask, and accept.

Hope, and persevere.

Hard, so hard, and light, so light.

Leaving behind the unaccountable for the uncountable. The known for the unfathomable. The delusions for the truth. The cynical for the faithful. The unbelieving for the knowing. The unseeing for sure sight.

These are some of the things that makes a vagabond long for home so badly they leave it. Displaced and willing in the displacement.

Courage has a role but thankfully it does not lead the way. It is not a greater strength of will that provides a compass. It is faith, buoyed by courage to continue on, nourished by a strength of will to hope that what is invisible on the map will become visible when its needed.

And what is hoped for? That in the end life’s regrets will be made of the dust in which they were formed. And all that remains is what is alien to this world, and not subject to it. It was before and will be beyond this fleeting whirl.

Let it be that there are far more days of life spent in what is important to the Maker of the day rather than the temporal wisps of my own untempered desires.

Hopes, plans, ambitions, dreams. Broken or realized. Nothing but a breath of wind. They matter insomuch as they are the hammer and steel that forge in us what is more than the sum of time. It is not the role of time to grant us what we want merely because we pursue it and commit to it, but it is in this time that the work of the journey is done. This journey to create, to bring to life an idea, to realize a dream, reveals our weaknesses, our shallow depths, the hairline fractures and gaping holes in our character, which will surely carry us crumbling into the sea when our sure world shakes. The journey will expose us, and if we recognize the report and submit to the restoration, the realization or otherwise of our dreams or ideas or ambitions is not the ending of our story, but they play a critical role in how our story turns out. Will we become brittle and easily trampled if things don’t go the way we hope or if they do? Are we made fit by the journey of life for the journey that matters? Brittle and fragile or toned and supple: how will we face the challenges of this dusty existence?

Without bonds but willingly held by commitment. Alien in the midst of the familiar. Homesick in the heart of the only home ever known. Unsettled in the blissful stillness.

Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Not quite. Not quite home.

There is nothing so soothing to me as the stramash of blues from the sea, the lochs and the sky lit by an unfettered sun, revealing their deeper shades as a lazy cloud passes over. Nor is anything so fancy as the stars on a clear, summer Highland night, a lavish toss of diamonds against a sapphire sky, which gives midnight blue its meaning.

I suppose that like any kind of love, what brings you to commit is that you have come to accept the less lovely bits along with all that draws you. And so it is with this country. The weather that characterizes many an Edinburgh winter day is one of the things that I choose to accept. But even that is not a pure sacrifice because dreary in Scotland becomes a pleasure in itself. A dreich day in the city makes for a cozy evening in with a good chat over a warming beverage and a decadent chocolate treat beside a crackling fire. Not so bad.

Yet given a choice, I would be further north. But for a time, I must be here. This last week I was blessed to spend in the Highlands and enjoyed gorgeous, sunny weather for most of it. I cycled from Inverness to Dores and up the side of Loch Ness. I hiked to yet another clearance village, my second on Skye. I have visited some on the mainland as well. I think I may end up making it to every single one in Scotland. They draw me. The sense of the lives of the people who lived, loved, gave birth, wept tears of grief there. Their joys and loss haunt me. In the name of profit, many were uprooted not once but several times, and were given the worst places to eek out a living or no place at all. They were made vagabonds. Some of them were shipped off or came to the Americas, others to Australia and other parts. And so the Scots were scattered across the world.

I have been intrigued by the story of Calum MacLeod, a crofter on the Isle of Raasay, just off of the west coast of Scotland between the mainland and the Isle of Skye. Calum famously built a two-mile road on Raasay with a pick, shovel and wheelbarrel because he couldn’t get the government to do it. It took him ten years. I spontaneously jumped on the ferry from Skye to Raasay, with my mountain bike, and cycled from the port out to Calum’s Road. It was harder than I thought to cycle out. Some of the ascents and descents were quite challenging. But I am so glad I did it. I got a ride along the way back from a man and his border collie, Suki, who had been on my ferry earlier in the day. So Steve from England loaded my bike up in the back of his car and Suki sat with me in the front and we went back on the ferry to Skye where I loaded my bike back up in my car.

I decided to stay on Skye that night because I was so wiped out from cycling I couldn’t drive. As goes the story that is my life, at nearly midnight the door of my room opens and in walks a long-haired man in a kilt. I didn’t even realize I was in a mixed gender room but I was so tired I hadn’t asked. It turns out he is a tour guide, full of stories and eccentricity (or is that just being Scottish?). I was unsure for a moment if he meant to change right there or if he would go to the toilet down the hall to change (I don’t need to know what’s under the kilt, thank you). Fortunately he opted to adhere to hostel guidelines and things better left a mystery remained so.

He regaled me and the other hostelers with interesting stories over breakfast the next morning and freely handed out travel advice to all of us, which was useful. I headed off early to get back to Edinburgh, knowing I would take most of the day to return as I planned to make frequent photo and video stops to replace my lost photos from last year. I itched to get off of the main roads with the tourists and noise because a video of the quiet Highlands just isn’t as lovely with the roar of passing vehicles.

A friend had recommended I visit Glen Etive and I decided when I passed the turn-off for it to go back and take it, as the day was so beautiful it was too good to pass up. I pulled off of the A82, a main road through the West Highlands, got my bike out and cycled down the quiet, single-track side road deeper into the glen. Soon I came upon a man climbing over a fence with kayaking paddles in his hand. I stopped and asked if he had a boat down there and he said yes. He shared that several of his friends were getting ready to kayak over a large waterfall if I wanted to photograph it. I replied with an enthusiastic yes and the adventure was on. What a great afternoon! Eventually we parted ways and I cycled on for awhile before turning back and heading out in the car once more, stopping only for photos and hot veg soup and cracked black pepper scone bread at Tyndrum.

I thought I would be sad returning to Edinburgh from the Highlands but when I returned to my new flat for the first time, it felt like where I was supposed to be, cozy and comforting, and just the place I need for all I have to do. And the better I do what is before me, the more time I can carve to spend in my Highlands. I want to see them and feel them covered in snow, the lochs tinged with ice. Everything still and hibernating. I will write there by a fire somewhere cozy and inviting, warmed by a mellow dram or two of whiskey as the snow falls to silence the noise of the world. Christmas in Edinburgh or Christmas in the Highlands? I love that it’s a question that I am blessed to consider.

One of my most loved Scottish ballads, Come by the Hills. It was performed live by Kenny Jamieson of the band Schiehallion, in Inverness while I was there. He performed it with just a pianist. Gorgeous. This version is by The Corries… still lovely but I wished I had filmed Kenny’s that night.