AMAZED

Monday, April 27, 2020

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During my walk along this winding path in Elm Grove Cemetery this morning (Delycia decided to do some hills in Mystic), I started thinking about the winding pathways in a maze.

The fact is, I often feel like I’m in a befuddling maze, which is why, perhaps, I often feel a-mazed by everything around me. Like many of us, I enjoy pretending that my life is laid out in well-marked roads, and that I know exactly where I’m going and how to get there, but the truth is that I’ve been in an almost daily maze since November of 1941. Honestly, I still have little or no idea who I am or why things happen or where I should be going, and it is in this sense that I feel almost constantly amazed, as though I’ve been endlessly wandering in a maze for 78 years. Perhaps, though, I should say ‘labyrinth’ instead of maze, for in a labyrinth there is no worry of being lost, since all paths in due course lead to the center and back out. A labyrinth is a light-hearted place to be, because all choices are somehow the right ones, and seeming mistakes end up showing you the way. I guess life, for me, is more and more like a puzzling but relaxing labyrinth. It’s a mystery made for my pleasure and instruction, a place where patience can turn mistakes into miracles, and where, for me, being amazed is as regular as breathing in and breathing out.

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