Zk | 53

I had to stop, yesterday. I had to stop writing.

I don’t know why that memory left me in tears, paws shaking too much to write. I don’t even know why I decided to commit that memory to this journal. I started this project with the goal of trying to suss out my thoughts and feelings surrounding Kay, and yet I keep writing about this. I keep writing about God or the Church or leaving Saint John’s. I know that I said I would, yes, but it still somehow feels like a trespass.

I walked around the block afterward, trying to calm down, breathe deeply, be present. I did all the things I tell my patients to do when they panic, and I suppose some of it worked. I was at least able to look at the ground, look at the sky, look at the grass and trees and buildings and not feel this unnamed emotion.

If I had any doubt that Jeremy was right in suggesting journaling, I think it has been well and truly dashed by now.

This feeling, then. It is somewhere between shame and guilt. It has that bitter-savory flavor to it. It makes my fur feel clumped and matted. Why have I changed so much since leaving Saint John’s that I cannot talk with God as I used to? I do not feel forsaken by Him, I really don’t. So why do I feel so much…less in His sight than I did before?

Today, though, I am going for a hike. Kay has a meeting or something at the university¹, so I am taking advantage of her absence to get a bit of walking in by myself, here in a new setting.

It turns out that the house I’m staying in isn’t far from a patch of wilderness. I do not know why it is called the Military Reserve, but I am not going to turn down the chance at walking away from the city. Boise is so much taller, so much louder than Sawtooth, I feel hemmed in here.

It wasn’t quite close enough to walk, but at least there’s ride shares.

It’s strange how easily I fell back into old habits. Perhaps it was the writing I did last night, or perhaps it’s the need to get away that drove me up into the hills, out on a walk, out to blister my feet and talk with God. It didn’t seem to matter how unfamiliar the trail was. I just started walking through that scrub and brush, through all that brown and all that air, and not five minutes in did I feel my mind empty, as always it seemed to. The scrub around me, buffalo grass and sage and yarrow and bitter cherry, gained depth and clarity, stalks and crenelations arching up to me, up to God, assuming that is where the heavens live. The colors called out to me. The scents stung my nose, even the five-and-some feet up from my point of view. Bitter, aspirinic whiffs of yarrow. Stale shortcake grasses. Ungreen, but not unalive. The taste of dust lingering on my tongue, not enough to be gritty but enough to remind me that the earth was the earth and that I was separate from that. The air, the air itself pushed its way nosily through my fur, a breeze from the west, toppling down off the hills. The air and the hard-packed dirt of the trail beneath my feet knocking vibrations up through my shins. Soft padding, soft crunching, soft rustling; wind in fur, air wandering between tussocks; breathing slowing, calming. Rhythms on the scale from footsteps to seasons.

Even writing this, even sitting on a fence rail at the trail head, I can feel it still.

And through it all, the Lord. Through each and every step, dancing along every brittle stem and blade of grass, surrounding every grain of dust in a blanket of the utmost attention. His voice traveled along the breeze, His breath was the bitter yarrow and shortcake grass. And all of it I could feel and all of it I could hear and all of it washed over and through me and I bathed in it. “His light like wine”, I wrote yesterday, and that wine filled me today, and I can still taste it.

There are no conclusions from God. There are no favors that I, a servant, could possibly ask of him. What would He do? Would He tell me what to say to Kay? All He has for me is grace and forgiveness. That is so much more than any other individual could ever offer me.

All the same, I listened for hope, for guidance, for the discernment than hasn’t left me since I left St John’s.

To ask that grace, that breath, that light like wine what it is to do is the wrong question. To ask from Him the worldly answers is to misunderstand the scope of things.

To say that He has no plan for me, no path, however, isn’t correct either. He does, and that’s why I talk with Him. It’s perhaps less than Catholic of me, or at least of a more mystical bent than ought to be expected of me. I’m no Beghard, no Eckhart.

All I know is that sometimes words fail me, and that the Ground does not.

I don’t know if that path leads toward Kay. I just can’t see that far ahead on it. I don’t know if it leads me any further into the Church. That’s around some corner I can’t comprehend. I don’t know anything, it seems, but I needed this. I needed time with myself. I needed this walking conversation, this inside-out hesychasm. I needed out of Boise and away from Kay, away from the scent of her, away from the way she presses against my chest from the inside. I need