Ebb and flow

 Friday in the Fifth Week of Lent

 

Let me hear of your loving-kindness in the morning,

for I put my trust in you;

show me the road that I must walk,

for I lift up my soul to you.

Psalm 143:8

 

Today is the calm after the storm. How many times have I experienced such respite? Relief after pain. Rest after exertion. Comfort after grief. It seems as if creation’s design sorts all energy into ebbs and flows.

 

Which makes me think that neither Lent nor life is much of a steady journey, or about progress or even progression. Rather an eddying. Perhaps faith is not so much a road I walk, but a series of streams that simultaneously carry me and compel me to navigate, branching off in possibility again and again.

 

Now I sit, held in the hands of sunlight and birdsong, noticing the vestiges of last night’s deluge trickle through the yard, pulled by the inevitability of gravity and meandering to find the easiest path.