Drifter
I am looking forward to drifting for a few days. I have friends in Oregon, and will spend some time with them, but for me there is nothing more fun that just being somewhere with no expectations. When I do that, I catch details that I would otherwise miss. These trips create new mental maps that will come in handy when I am searching for perspectives in other circumstances.
The pace of a wanderer is preferred. It gives you time to experience what is actually there — instead of rushing by in the same trance of your routine world of “too much in too little time.” No one can absorb all of any experience, but fortunately reality is holographic. There is as much to be gained by looking at one flower as to look at a field of them. You just have to slow down to fully appreciate the experience. Any microcosm is as mysterious as the entire macrocosm.
Some of the best moments of my life have been in getting semi-lost on a drive (which is how I found the Very Large Array Telescope in New Mexico, the mountainside entrance into Los Alamos…and a dozens of other mystical scenes and settings).
Predictability has a minor place in life — very minor. It works best in drab bureaucracies. For the rest of life, give me the unexpected. After all, isn’t that what makes dreams so enjoyable. They are beyond mere routine consciousness.
From what I have experienced of reality, it took the Divine to do it. Nothing else would have had the imagination. This galaxy drifts much like the rest of the galaxies in the universe. The ocean currents meander. A single molecule of water can eventually travel the entire planet. Talk about an interesting trip!
I can see why the Lord had the children of Israel drift for forty years in the wilderness and why Jesus would spend forty days roaming the dangerous mountains in his soul-search. To find the promptings of the Spirit, it takes being where you have never been before — and with no other purpose.
