Once I had a compass, in a manner of speaking: it was a figurative one, with a needle that mostly pointed to hope. Not all the time, mind you. Occasionally it pointed in the wrong direction, when I lost my way and ended up trapped in the negative continuum that happens when you make the wrong choice, or otherwise make a life-changing mistake. Takes a long time more often than not to break free and find your way back to a place where you can make a fresh start.

But then you’ve got all that baggage. Even so, when new-beginning time came, my compass was still pretty good at pointing in the direction of hope. I had a strong heart, and I stayed young for a long time: a child of dreams I was, always able to conjure up a new life-vision full of purpose, a new vehicle for my boundless energy; and yes, love.

So, with the compass needle turned to hope again, the journey resumed afresh, as it was seemingly bound to do. I was my never-say-die spirit’s slave. I went the way it took me, over and over again.

And you know what happened, don’t you?

One day, weighed down with regrets, grown old, tired, and at a loss to know which way to turn, I began to think, maybe I should have thrown that compass and its illusion of hope away. 

But then I thought, it brought me to you, my most cherished friend, and to you, my dear children.

And it brought me here, where the spirit of a Great Mystery older than the universe inhabits primeval rock. It had its own journey getting here, carried by walls of ice as deep as an ocean.

So, after all, who am I to say what’s meant to be, or not?

Not that long ago, I found a moss-covered boulder of igneous rock beside the side of the road, but pre-dating it of course by millions, perhaps billions of years, of this little planet, this piece of life-encrusted molten rock orbiting the sun. The sun that so slowly burns itself out with an energy that, after all, is finite.

“Better to have been still,” I wondered, in my foolishness, yet again.

But now, finally, I believe I will bow down in the morning at sunrise before the Mystery; and ask for its blessing before I too become one with the stone and the spirits.