land rock

Apparently I have what's called Land Rock. It's been two days now since coming off Cynthia's brother's boat, and I can't quite shake it: the terra firma ain't feeling so firma. The computer screen sways in front of me as I write this.

I had a blast -- see pictures. Sea, sky, autumn air, orcas and salmon and river otters and osprey. My heart, in many ways, is replete. Being on a boat causes one to focus on the moment. There are no distractions (when you're not the captain or the engineer or the chef!), only the journey. Not surprisingly, I slept -- a lot. The motion, the enforced silencing of mundane activities, and the cessation of all things normal was a lullaby and nighty night.

In my more wakeful times, my soul was trailing its fingers in the water as I kayaked and explored the bays we anchored in. Salmon leapt around us everywhere one night, desperately flinging themselves toward the spawn -- the stream where they themselves were hatched. Am I doing that, too? Desperately trying to find, not the metaphor for where my life is headed, but the actual life of which I have come? Out of the heart of God borne, am I finding my way back?

Attraction and response -- the salmon climb the ladders not out of want or preference, they do this because they must. They are attracted -- by what, no one really knows -- to return at whatever their internally appointed time is (when they reach a certain state of maturity in their life cycle) and when that time is now, they respond and go. Upstream. For weeks. They don't eat or linger. They swim and jump and flail until they have returned. And somehow also, they know when they have come back to that place of genesis.

With my soul-fingers in the water, I am listening: what am I incorrigibly attracted to and respond to?

I have a few days at home to let this sit, not so much in my head, but in my belly. I know I can't reason out the answer, can't call upon the Great Magician (i.e. the Analyst) to bail me out this time. I have to stay with the motion of my soul as it rocks upon the waters, even though I am back on hard ground.