The Gathering

Like strands of yarn or bits of fabric,

We gather now all the various bits and pieces of ourselves into a bundle of being.

We bundle them up, gather them together, hold them within our clumsy embrace.

Clumsy because we are new at this.

Clumsy because our hands are now so full, our sense of ourselves is so volatile,

Changing from one day to the next.

Clumsy because our gathering up continues even when we think

That perhaps we have got it all gathered in,

So busy holding all of these bits and pieces and

Strands interwoven

While at the same time

We continue to come upon more bits, more strands,

And gather them in as well.

And all of this is done in love, so that we become thick with it,

Our eyes moist and our hearts open.

This is done in a quiet imperative of pressures

Unseen, undefined,

But none the less real for us.

We do not slow ourselves in this work of gathering at this time.

If anything, we increase our pace, become ever more aware

Of even the smallest strands and pieces which have not yet been touched,

Gathered in,

Embraced,

Included in the wholeness of our bundled selfhood.

Why? Why do we do this? Why now?

Like peripatetic families we learn to carry all that we

Have and all that we are

More easily with us,

For we are preparing ourselves for a journey.

We will travel swiftly and travel far and we know

Somehow that the time is upon us, the time is now,

And we must prepare for the journeying, prepare for the swiftness

And the distance and the unknowns

Of our becoming.

So we gather all of our parts and pieces, all of our strands and strains of selfhood,

All of our love and all of that which is not yet love which still we have within us

And we bundle it all into a more or less unified selfhood,

A more or less streamlined package,

So that we can go the distance

At a pace

That will

Find us

Where we should be

At the dawning

Of a new Age.