The Forgotten Land

I am not around much as of late, in more ways than one. I have just had a dear friend visit for 3 days, enough time to process all of the joys and sorrows since we parted nearly two years ago in Phnom Penh. Enough time to catch up, but it's still a sharp sorrow that she is not part of my Everyday. And tomorrow I will take a bus to visit another dear friend. My parents' visits and now these times with old friends has been rather like awakening--since my grandmother's death I have been slipping softly into solitude, finding my own company simpler than that of new friends. My own company and worlds of narrative--books or films. I tend to let myself grieve however I need to grieve. But it does trouble me that I am so disinclined to meditate and pray as of late--so I went back and found this poem this morning.

The Forgotten Land
We do not have to discover the world of faith;
we only have to recover it. It is not a terra incognita,
an unknown land; it is a forgotten land. Rabbi Heschel

A forgotten land, where once I dwelled,
like the world I walk in dreams,
vast and wild, with high seas
and steep cliffs, where I am often
running but occasionally fly. To
recover faith, like a ring lost in a
pocket, like a baby wrapped in too
much swaddling cloth---unwind her
layer by layer by layer, she is not
unknown, she is loved and dear,
but you have somehow forgotten her face.
Recover the terrain, take the maps, the
compass, set out on foot, under the stars,
under the meteors burning in the galaxy
we will never reach until our bodies
turn to light and God
whistles us home.

The Murle did not believe in
heaven, or at least not for humans.
Humans passed on to live in caves
beneath the earth, one-eyed, one-handed,
tending tiny herds of cattle. Recover the
terrain—their faith is in cattle. Is mine in
chariots, in horses? God calls us
to throw down that which we love and go
empty handed into the wilderness,
the forgotten land.