The spiritual crisis I flailed through a few years ago upturned any clarity I thought I had about my future, a future that had long been set on some sort of Christian vocation.  My future still looks fuzzy, and I’m still trying to put the pieces together of a life that remains orbited around soulful things, but that, as of yet, does not fit comfortably into any one tradition. 

So this is a season of waiting for me.  I’m waiting for the Life that I know is in me to get shaped and formed into something I can actually recognize, and hold, and do things with – vocationally, and otherwise.  I have so many convictions inside, so many observations about life and the holy, so much love I want to share with people, healing and relationships in which I want to participate…

But it all – no, I should rather say a lot of it – feels not quite ripe for happening.  So I wait.  I write my book, and pour into its characters pieces of what I want so much to pour into non-fiction life, once the ripening happens.

At times I feel content.  But at others I’m filled with such a restless longing, such a restless yearning to fly with all I am, fly with all the potentials that are in me for…for what?  This is the question.  This is the baby I’m waiting for.  The thing or things that need to form in me, and can’t be known or predicted quite yet…at least with any accuracy.

“I want to fly,” I told a friend recently.  “I’m tired of flopping around on the ground.”

Jazz pianist Billy Taylor wrote a song years ago that, though surely written for a different context, from a different set of longings and life experiences, speaks well to this yearning I carry around in me, this restlessness I feel to finally fly freely.

I wish I knew how it would feel to be free

I wish I knew how it would feel to be free

I wish I could break all these chains holding me

I wish I could say all the things I should say

Say ‘em loud, say ‘em clear, for the whole world to hear

I wish I could share all the love in my heart

Remove all the bars that still keep us apart

I wish you could know what it means to be me

Then you’d see and agree every man should be free

I wish I could give all I’m longing to give

I wish I could live all I’m longing to live

I wish I could do all the things I can do

Though I’m way overdue I’d be starting anew

I wish I could be like a bird in the sky

How sweet it would be if I found I could fly

I’d soar to the sun and look down at the seas

Then I’d sing cause I’d know how it feels to be free

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 13th, 2005 at 9:51 am and is filed under Books and Art, Healing, Psychology, Religion/Spirituality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.