WHO ARE YOU?

Which is more profound: starting a new journal with 150 blank pages, or coming upon an old one, every page over flowing with personal witness to spiritual growth?

This past weekend my daughter, granddaughter and I put up 14 quarts of peaches. It only took a few hours, but Sarah even arrived the next day to label the cooled jars. I loved every minute, especially watching her 10-year old fingers learn to skin a peach. I remembered my 6-year old fingers struggling with a crochet hook—a very little one—with my Nana Gert hovering close by. Later I carried the glass jars to the food storage in our garage, but there was another box in the way (so many boxes, so little space), one marked “journals.” I couldn't resist.

This small book has a slice of opal and one purple iris petal on the cover, a picture I pasted there from a gemstone calendar. It is made of study paper with sections of maps on one side, blank on the other. So inviting to a traveling fool like me! The inscription reads: “Planting, weeding, admiring, smelling, worshipping, toiling, moving, touching, harvesting in Gratitude: Seeds of Joy. This book contains the thoughts, worries, meanderings and concerns of one woman loving her family and working in her community during the Summer and early Fall of 1995.”

I open to a page at random (7/6/95). It is a poem by Lala, the 13th century mystic who lived at the intersection of Christian, Muslim and Buddhist communities. I affirm this sentiment today, as I did then. Perhaps even understanding it on a deeper level.

I have not really known myself,
or anyone else.
I've tried to do good, and not just
what the appetites wanted,
but that was all infatuation with
this precious isolated body.
That You and I were constantly joining
I didn't know. I didn't know
that even to ask, “who are you?”
or “who am I?”
breaks the Harmony.

I no longer ask those questions; I see You everywhere. I see me no where, see only Life unfolding before me.