A Song of Ascents

I’ve been here before.

I’ve been to this place before.  The landscape is familiar.  I know there’s a deep valley beyond that gentle, tree-covered rise, and that the path from here to there has several stony places and a muddy spot.  I recognize even the smell of the place.  I’ve been here before, at this place where all seems loss and vague sorrow, lonliness for something I can’t describe, wanting I-know-not-what. 

I know exactly what I’ve done when I’ve been here before.  The wanting sends me searching, and I head across the meadow, into the woods, along the well-worn path over the rise, and then down into the deep, deep valley beyond - the valley that seems so easy to walk down into, but which is such a struggle to get back up out of.   The path down into that deep dark valley is almost a joy to tread.  It’s cut into the steep and cliff-like valley wall, and it seems a great adventure.  Gravity pulls me down, and I walk faster than I think.  I don’t realize how far I’ve descended until I finally turn back and look with dismay at the hilltop so far above, so very tiny.  Have I really come so far already?

And now the wanting that drove me onward has left.  There is no longer a spur for my travels.  The climb back up is no adventure.  It’s hard work.  And fear.  The path that seemed so broad on the way down looks narrow and treacherous on the way back up, the distance nearly too much to contemplate.  Perhaps I’ll just take up residence here in this dark valley – it would be so much easier to live here, perched on the side of this rocky cliff, than to find the strength and will to climb back out.  Why, oh why did I come here? 

If I had known this was my destination, I never would have set out.  Would I?  But there’s the rub.  I’ve been here many times before, but every time is the same – I head down that same familiar path as though the end will turn out differently this time.  Yes – surely it will end well THIS time, surely I'll find what I'm searching for when I descend...  But, no, the end is always pain and sorrow, and a certain confusion at finding myself, again, so far from what I thought I wanted.  

But this time, my visit to this familiar country will be different.  As I look toward the path I know, toward that little rise and the valley beyond, I am remembering the difficulty of the return, the despair of ever leaving that deep, dark place.  The comfort of the familiar path, the feeling of adventure on the way down does not seem so appealing this time. 

I pause.  I consider.  I still want... I-know-not-what.  I’m still feeling lonely and alone with a vague sense of sorrow clinging to me like a fine mist.  I need to do something, ANYTHING, to leave this feeling of unease and unrest behind, but today I think I’ll take another path.  As I pause and gaze about the landscape, I notice the barest hint of a path.  Just a few bent blades of grass, a few tiny spots of bare earth, a path so faint that I’m not sure its really a path and not some random trick of nature. 

Then I lift my eyes and see, in the far distance, a low haze.  What is that?  Looking more carefully, I can begin to make out the rugged shape of mountains, steep and sharp, rising from the earth in the distance.  This faint path, it seems, is heading to those lofty peaks.  To follow this path, however, will be no easy matter of letting gravity take its course.  Although the trail starts gently enough, I know great effort will be required to reach those lofty peaks.  But somehow, strangely, my desire for I-know-not-what grows and strengthens as I gaze at those misty heights in the distance.

Yes - this time, today, I shall set out on a different course.

A Song of Ascents.
I lift up my eyes to the hills.
From where does my help come?
My help comes from the LORD,
who made heaven and earth.
He will not let your foot be moved;
he who keeps you will not slumber.
Behold, he who keeps Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.
The LORD is your keeper;
the LORD is your shade on your right hand.
The sun shall not strike you by day,
nor the moon by night.
The LORD will keep you from all evil;
he will keep your life.
The LORD will keep
your going out and your coming in
from this time forth and forevermore.  (Psalm 121)