For Contentedness

from "for that unsettled feeling" by Kate Bowler

...ours is not a story built on emotion.
Sometimes we will feel 
the truth of your love,
our purpose, our intense belongingness,
and the rest of the time
we will have to shrug
and wait for any settled feeling to return.

Our feelings come and go
but your stubborn love
remains.
Your hope stays.
Your peace, when we reach for it,
will be placed in our hands
like a dove.

Settle me.
Slow my unsteady pulse.
Remind me that, even if I were to have
every "perfect" feeling,
the sheer face that nothing lasts
is an enormous comfort right now.
This ache will pass.
You're here.
You're here.

After last week’s labyrinth walk reflection, a dear friend shared with me that another way of seeing this experience is to envision the journey inward from the perspective of release, the space in the middle as the moment to receive, and the journey back out as the opportunity to return." Release, receive, return.

I’ve thought every day since of this perspective and wondered over it. What is the release from? What is it that might be received? And to what might I return?

I found myself walking the winter wooded paths around my house this past week wondering and listening for an answer. I imagined the ancient paths my boots tread and felt like I’d created my own kind of labyrinth, not circular, but marked and worn into a predictable inward and outward journey by my own treading.