East of Babylon

" I call this home"

Never quite knowing if it's a pilgrim's pride or an existential quarry, I know it's practiced.  Well practiced.  That peak over there?  I can't exactly name it.  The mountain range behind us?  Can't muster the homage or gravitas befitting a host.  I live under the Big Sky.  And yet in so many aspects, I'm comfortably the foreigner.

Home has never felt so conscientious.  One day I hope, my surroundings will be able to give me a name.  Perhaps the minnow in the brook, the shanty prairie dog, nay the neon chirpy feathered creature, or perhaps the unsuspecting dandelion will attest to my whereabouts these some years and counting.  Be kind and remember me I sometimes think.  Take notes.  Brighten my day Lord.

As pilgrimage goes, lustful tales and testimonies from other places tease the palate.  Which is all to say, virtue of another's peoples beauty and hospitality are more prose than poetry.  I am not eager to make too familiar a friend of this land though, and this is where faith comes in.  To be an inhabitant, is to give a eulogy and I feel I have not lived long enough here.  The hope, a tremendous hope is, the constancy and difficulty in which new life is seeded and birthed.  Lord, can I be the disciple who bears witness to all these redemption stories?  These songs of salvation.  It is the unholy equation my heart and energy longs for- all joy, all the time.  I should pray, being so cozy with the romance and selfishness of such a thought.

Like Abraham, like Joseph, I am a sojourner.  With the zeal and counsel of Jeremiah though, I pray the seeds take.  To live wisely.  To cultivate life.  To live in the glory that shouldn't require exclamation points or caps locks but rather the robust and creative impulse to live everyday life with faithfulness and reverence.

I have known ground zero before.  All to familiar yes.  I have given those places high and low names, decent and not.  I have known the earthiness, the allure, the rich tradition and heritage.  I found a refuge here.  I intend not to be too enamored by this place.  I desire not to be hasty in being the conqueror of peaks and landmarks.  I do not know where the most leisurely recreation is, or the more plentiful bounty is.  I have not been confounded by the awe and sacredness of this place.

Should I be so blessed to live in an exile as beautiful as this.