Punctuation Places

Every so often, we feel that some­thing about our exis­tence begins or ends. There are sev­eral ways of remem­ber­ing those turn­ing points. Reli­gious rit­u­als are ways of recre­at­ing great shifts in the his­tory of a group of peo­ple (Fourth of July) or in God’s inter­ven­tions in his­tory (the Exo­dus, Christ­mas, Easter, Passover, Hanukkah, Com­mu­nion, Bap­tism, etc. in the Judeo-Christian expe­ri­ence). In my per­sonal jour­ney, I mark the episodes with places.

The Grand Canyon is a place where I stand every so many years for a few min­utes and reflect on the past decade or so. It is also the place where I real­ize the great chasms of life — the spaces between want and need or of things sought but not found. The empti­ness beck­ons me on in the mys­tery of the jour­ney. I am due a trip back to the canyon.

The Pacific Ocean is where I yearn for the Infi­nite. For the few min­utes that I stand on one of its shores, I feel so small and insignif­i­cant but real­ize the mir­a­cle of the expe­ri­ence itself. The really major chap­ters of my life seem to begin and end with the sound of the roar of the waves on a lonely Pacific beach.

There are lesser but still impor­tant punc­tu­a­tion points. My trips to Charleston are com­mas in the longer sen­tences of life and work. Trips to places once called “home” are in a cat­e­gory of their own. They are always bit­ter­sweet. Who does not yearn for the sim­plic­i­ties of child­hood mixed with the real­iza­tion that you can never return to it?

When I change planes in Dal­las or Hous­ton, or when I fly over Mem­phis or Okla­homa City, I think of the mini-lifetimes I spent in those places. Those too are sur­real reflec­tions of the per­son I once was. Louisiana is a refuge — a place to recover with the back­ground sights and sounds of New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

Your life story has sen­tences, para­graphs, chap­ters, and even vol­umes. The places you see in your head when things shift are mark­ers in the jour­ney. Reflect on them once in a while. Mental/spiritual cues are many and very diverse. Have some respect for them. Embrace them. No mat­ter how old you are, you are just begin­ning. Never for­get that. There are end­less ways and places yet to be.