| For Those Who
Have Far to Travel
"If
you could see the journey whole, you might never undertake it,
might
never dare the first step that propels you from the place you have known
toward the place you know not.
Call
it one of the mercies of the road: that we see it only by stages as it
opens before us, as it comes in to our keeping, step by single step.
There is nothing for it but to go, and by our going take the vows the pilgrim takes:
~to
be faithful to the next step;
to rely on more than the map; to heed
the sign posts of intuition and dream; to follow the star that only you
will recognize;
~
to keep an open eye for the wonders that attend the path; to press on
beyond distractions, beyond fatigue, beyond what would tempt you from
the way.
There
are vows that only you will know: the secret promises for your
particular path and the new ones you will need to make when the road
is
revealed
by turns you could not have foreseen.
Keep
them, break them, make them again; each promise becomes part of the
path, each choice creates the road that will take you to the place where
at last you will kneel to offer the gift
most needed—
the gift that
only you can give—
before turning to go home by another way."
~ Jan Richardson
| 
