"When the cloud was taken up from above the tabernacle,
the children of Israel went onward in all their journeys."
-Exodus 40:36
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"The woods are lovely, dark, and deep..." is what Frost wrote, an eloquent word picture of what this Life so often looks like...
I'm not sure how "lovely" I think it all is.....sometimes it just feels "dark and deep" and not so lovely, not at all.....sometimes it just feels menacing, unending, oppressive.....sometimes I feel closed in and claustrophobic, barely seeing the hand in front of my face, holding to the tiniest thread and semblance of a path......Could this really be The Path?
I want meadows, and clearings, wide-open spaces and lookouts that let me see for miles......not this plodding, this panting, this praying for daylight.......
I long for Frost's "Lovely"......I tire of "Dark and Deep".........but he tells me the two are not mutually exclusive......the paradox of "Lovely" and "Dark and Deep", paired, purposely, quite purposely, like a chess move playing out, plotting itself, into my Path. And the thought comes that perhaps, perhaps, all this "Dark and Deep" belies something extraordinarily, exquisitely, and unexpectedly "Lovely", which, though hidden, pervades the Whole. Perhaps, without "Dark and Deep", there is no "Lovely"....not the lasting kind of "Lovely" anyway......
....I want the Lasting Kind. For myself, and for all others who will follow in my footsteps, the ones who will come behind, who will also lay Lovely ground...
So if "Dark and Deep" must coincide with "Lovely", if they are the inseparable companions Frost made them out to be, and if embracing dark and deep means I will also hold in my arms Lovely, for a world who is starving for Lovely, then Let It Be.....And with Isaiah, regarding these Woods, this Life, I say, "Here am I, Send me."...
...Bring on the Dark. Bring on the Deep.
Bring on the Lovely.
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"I am dark, but lovely, oh daughters of Jerusalem,
like the tents of Kedar, like the curtains of Solomon."
-Song of Solomon 1:5
