So, where am I?

It's that time of the year where I rue the lengthening days, watch the waxing and waning moons, walk circumspectly and consider the earth's circuitous route around its solar meanderings. Reckonings of the journey, gleaning the lessons learnt, the smells smelt, the sights set and the sounds sought.

Rosh Hashanah! Shana Tova, beloved.

So where have I been? And where am I now? And what mysteries lie up the corner? Questions, some answerable, others impossible! Can we know anything at all? Is there anything to be known?

Journeys, milestones, stretches of grace and highways of peace. Life on the fast track, slow glide on a tube. It has been an incredibly eventful journey. Amazing. Grace-filled, divine appointments of cosmic proportions. When did the mayhem start? I don't really know... unconsciously, unknowingly, the wheels began to turn, and something stirred. How do such things start? They mess you up, and one is spoilt for life. Yet, its incredible! How does my feebleness and multitude shortcomings match up to Grace? Precisely, it doesn't, and it cannot. And that makes it both reasonable and incredible. Thus I am caught in the beauty of the paradox, like a deer mesmerized by the terrifying on-coming headlights. Yet this journey is barely begun. And on it goes. What does one make of it, moment by moment, day by day, month by month, and year by year?

So it has been restfully quiet. Am grateful for it. Time to think, time to rest, time to recuperate and assume normalcy, whatever that means... Tempting to idle, tempting to procrastinate, tempting to say: hey, live for the now, the journey's almost done. Yet time marches on, and guilt, justifications and well-meaning intentions like the road, like sweet fruit on the garden path...

Yes there is hope yet. And hope is very often fully tangible. It's what we make of it. Hope, simple trust, in God's goodness. Glimpses of glory, glimmers divine. Its all in the mind, is it? or in the heart? Which aches worse? Maybe it hurts too much to think about it. But probably hurts more to feel it.

So choices, and decisions. Sure there's been good fun. Excitement, fulfilment and a fair share of disappointments and trepidation. Many a-things still lie in the fine balance, on the edge of a knife, and even more things are still in the air, tossed, open, unresolved, as far as I can tell from my limited earthly eyes, weak and feeble on this side of heaven. Choices. I don't know. I need wisdom, grace and favour to walk on. Sometimes it just feels lacking and soooo distant. Sometimes it comes in overwhelming abundance. Can we store these for a rainy day? Couldn't my faith just please be simpler and more child-like? Doubts and double-guessing... why? and how? and which?

Donch know, donch care, donch ask? Questions for now; chick-peas in hindsight. All I need, perhaps, is just peace for the moment, strength for the day, and grace to carry me. His mercy is new every morning, and that is more than enough. But sometimes I am blind to it, and instead try to barter my way out...

So there... I've said it - Help me along, Son of David, have mercy on me.

Κύριε Ἰησοῦ Χριστέ, Υἱέ τοῦ Θεοῦ, ἐλέησόν με τὸν ἁμαρτωλόν
Господи Ісусе Христе Сыне Божїй помилѹй мѧ грѣшнаго.

Is there a great divine hourglass,
each precious grain trickling mercilessly
through the fabric of time and space?
Will the passing seconds be redeemed for hours?
Will gold be bought for silver?

Buy wine and milk without money and cost?
Have bread for money spent, satisfaction for labour lost?
Will rain and snow not return
without watering the earth, bud and flourish,
to yield seed for the sower
and sweet bread to be eaten?