"...not a way but a place"

There is a day
when the road neither
comes nor goes, and the way
is not a way but a place.
(Wendell Berry, "1997: VII" from A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997)

For those of us who still wander in time and space, the idea of home is inseparable from the experience of a journey, or, for some, a pilgrimage toward something sacred.  Concepts of place and journey, movement and stability shift and slip.  Wendell Berry imagines our ultimate hope in terms of our journey ending: the transformation of a time-bound journey into an eternal home.  But "There is a day"--a Sabbath--in which we can find ourselves at home even as we wander, quest, or climb. 

This Sunday, I traveled out of town with my friends Wyatt and Katie.  Wyatt was preaching at the country church where he works as youth minister, and after worship, we three spent the afternoon losing ourselves at a nearby state park. 

Mother Neff State Park, Texas

We found a path and followed it, walking and resting and enjoying the brilliant Texas wildflowers.  It was a very Sunday sort of walk: no hurry, no schedule, no destination beyond a return to where we began.  We were talking and taking pictures the whole way, at home in our good company as much as if we had been settled in our houses. 

Mother Neff State Park, Texas

No matter how far we walk, we will never, in this world, find a place that satisfies our desire for home in any settled or lasting way.  Instead, we find our tastes of that satisfaction in the moments when eternity slips into time: in returning seasons, consecrated hours, traditions, habits, and Sabbaths. 

"There is a day...."