Tag: journey

The Things You’ll Need for the Journey

Journal & Essays

Reach into the depths of your soul and pull out the things you’ll need for the journey ahead: courage, patience, trust, fortitude, perseverance, love. These things are just as essential as the water and food you’ll be taking with you.

Does that sound odd? Well, consider this: how deep into the woods would you venture without courage and fortitude prodding you forward? How long would you keep walking if you didn’t have patience and perseverance keeping you to the route? If you didn’t have trust, would you even bother setting out on a journey in the first place? And absent love, would you find the will to keep going when all within you said: “Stop! I want to give up!”? For love, of course, is the great mover of feet.

These are not trivial elements – abstract virtues with no practical impact on your life. On the contrary, these virtues – or qualities of being, if you prefer – are eminently practical, if by “practical,” you mean that they have the ability to equip you to live fully and effectively in the world. You must always leave room for them when packing your bags.

But if you find you’re running a little low on one virtue or another mid-trip, don’t worry. Your traveling will obtain for you an increase of these virtues, and many more besides, simply because you’ll be moving forward, and in moving forward, you’ll be assenting to the work of every human being, which is to discover for himself the possibilities of the world and the capacities of his soul.

Time is of the essence, though. Pack your bags quickly, for it seems to me that the perfect time for your journey to begin – is now.

Brief Thoughts (No. 42)

Brief Thoughts

We wander down a path with many twists and turns. We often stop and break down, crying. We’re not adept, especially, at making decisions, so the stopping to consider which turn we should take is often a lengthy and fraught affair.

But so be it. The road winds on, and is waiting for us after our sorrow dries up. We’re still moving forward, and that’s significant in and of itself.

The weather, you know, is a little rough today – a little rainy – but tomorrow, I think, there’ll be sun.

Always Forward, Never Back

Journal & Essays

Sadness, yes. Also quiet. The roots of desire are buried deep.

We walk, we trust. We unburden ourselves by calling out to GOD and hoping that He hears.

We have walked, we have traveled. We have spent ourselves in the search.

But have we found the thing we were seeking? Have we brought ourselves to a place of peace?

We walk on. We breathe. The tiredness is enough to keep us stuck in our ways, but we sally forth anyway, laboring under the strain of our conviction that one must move always forward, never back. So we continue on, counting our fatigue as a sign of our victory in the battle against our lesser ways.

Brief Thoughts (No. 8)

Brief Thoughts

Surely we aren’t meant to be contained – surely we aren’t designed to squeeze into a box and come out looking just like everybody else.

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“Just be patient and accept the journey that you’ve been asked to take.” – Mark Ruffalo.

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You are not called to be less human. Your role is to be fully human – fully alive. Do not mistake the call to holiness for a call to become something you are not – or to forsake that which you truly are.

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A chance encounter: You lost your way among the crowds, but the one you were seeking found you in the commotion, tapped you on the shoulder, took your hand, and led you home.

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