An Opening of the Spirit

After nearly a year of feeling too constrained somehow to post anything, I sense an opening of the spirit, a return to the open road that inspired this blog in the first place.  Afoot and lighthearted, I travel in mind and on electronic wings rather than in body (except around in circles in the valley where I live).  My carved and decorated traveling staff, the one that went with me to interim ministries, rests in the corner of my front room.  It's all good, though I am missing interim ministry big time.

I am in touch with congregations in Montana to get to know them better and maybe knit us together in a network of some kind.  I am in touch with the small congregations office of Pacific Western Region of the Unitarian Universalist Association to see what I can offer in the way of webinars and conference call conversations.  I am still puzzling over what category of Unitarian Universalist Ministers' Association dues I fit into, not wishing to call myself "retired" but also not exactly "unemployed" either. "Retired" will do, I guess. 

Here is the opening stanza, the poem that calls to me, as copied from the American Poetry Foundation's website.

Song of the Open Road

BY WALT WHITMAN

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,

Healthy, free, the world before me,

The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,

Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,

Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,

Strong and content I travel the open road.

The earth, that is sufficient,

I do not want the constellations any nearer,

I know they are very well where they are,

I know they suffice for those who belong to them.

(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens,

I carry them, men and women, I carry them with me wherever I go,

I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them,

I am fill’d with them, and I will fill them in return.)

The poet was entering middle age when he wrote of the open road, and I am settling in on being old.  Still the youth of spirit he was evoking in his mature years springs within me, too. I am grateful. Strong and content, I go traveling.