and the house windows are open. Late August is a taste of fall and even the sunlight seems a little different on a day like today. The seasons seem to be moving, first to harvest, then to sleep, then to rest. Night falls earlier and the last blossoms race for the sun.
There will be no driving down Highway 61 this fall. One more Sunday down and back and then its weekends at home with church just up the road. There is nothing like fall along the northern Mississippi. People come from all over the country just to watch it happen. Yet this fall, the passage between my worlds, the road between life in St. Paul and faith in LaCrosse will vanish. The birds make their way south and I will head against the wind and north seldom to return.
How do you say everything you wish to say? How do you tell people you love them and believe in them and wish them every good thing even as a still small voice tells you is time to leave them? In one way it doesn’t matter. What’s done is done and some tasks will just have to remain incomplete. Yet it may be a while before the urge, the desire to follow the highway to their world, subsides and I relocate my heart where my home is.
Suffice it to say I will miss them and if I only had one sentence to leave them with it would be “God loves you more than you know so don’t ever give up.” You’d have to know them to understand why this makes sense, and I do because a part of me will always be there. From the bottom of my heart I say “Thank you, St. Elias, for everything, the welcome in, the graceful exit, and everything in between.” We can fill in the details as we remember them through the years. Good things are coming for you, I know it, and no matter where I travel you’ll always be close, count on it.
The Beautiful Path 