100 Paths

Dear God,

I see what You’re doing. 

I see how You’ve scrubbed away, layer by layer, years of grime and stress. How You’ve gradually helped me unlearn the frenetic lessons of the past few years. How You’ve taken me back in time to an earlier, more sordid remembrance of who I used to be, and then, when I shook in my veins with trepidation, taken me to peace and understanding beyond that…

I see how You’ve removed, day by day, the compulsions, motivations, frustrations, needs, wants, desires, ambitions, dreams, monkey thoughts, distractions, tensions, worries, doubts, fears, insecurities of what my life had become. How you’ve taken me beyond my greatest successes and my worst failures…

I see how You’ve transported me back in time, hour by hour, to a 10-year-old’s passions, when I used to read all day long, even during my meals, deriving such intense joy that I could not perceive doing anything else, EVER. How You’ve removed all certainties and fixed plans, so that I must make peace with living from day to day, the only constant being the people I love…

I see how You’ve then taken me beyond even them, so that I must love myself most of all, and be sure of only who I am, and then taken me beyond that too, so that I cannot be sure of who I am and what I want, and life seems like a fortune-cookie quote that says with an indifferent compassion, “Anything is possible”…

I see how You’re teaching me slowness and freedom and smelling the roses and the dogs, and rolling about on an undone bed in the middle of the day, and taking quiet walks long into the night, and observing my varied thoughts with detachment and awe, and honouring the demands of my body and the seasons, and feeling each feeling to its fullest, and then taking me beyond them too…

I see how You’ve scrubbed me clean and left me with an open slate of an existence, so that there’s no ‘should’ or ‘must’ any more, there is no doing, only being. How You’ve left me empty and whole so that I may in fact do nothing else but what You want me to do, and I may think of nothing else but how wondrous You are and how stunning this life is…

I see what You’re up to…

You attention-seeker, You.