A winding road

“Love is a winding road, it’s older than old, and it’s hard to straighten.” Love is the road less traveled. It is the preceding beauty we need. Love is the soft scent of the flower petal, the roar of a rampant lion, the delight of a newborn smile, the leathered stare of a wintered warrior. Love is the lightning strike, and the long-suffering soul; it is the fast, and it is the slow. It is whisper close, the cup of life, the dawning of a day, the calm of the night.

Love is more than we would have it be. Might it be so nice if it were narrow, safe, and orderly? So convenient, forming to fit the containers we wished it would stay. The more control, the more fleeting, slipping further and further away.

The bends, hills, and thickets of this winding road have stops at Mordor, the 100-acre forest, and everything in between. The mission, the journey, at times, are measured by parts of breath and the sliding grip of every steep step. Every road so precious, so holy, each its own; do not join one lightly, do not think yourself a co-traveler because you are hanging around. Where you come alongside another, where you are not like Samwise, you will be, and should be left behind. It’s not your show, that’s not your road. Truly joining someone along their way is a road where few steps have trodden black. We might only join another to the degree we ourselves know who we are, and “how” we are to travel. “Where” is far less important, and considerably less interesting; “How” makes the “where” worth going, and the “when” matter less. Those who truly travel with you are cut from that cloth of no greater love; they are the ones who will be there in the shire, helms deep, and every step between.

Love is the something that will be here when we are old; it is the reaping and the sowing, what we pass along. Ever forward, we press onward, for old age should burn and rave at close of day. It is the journey that continues without end.

Do Justly

Love Mercy

Be Vast