Prayer #86: Gone Voyage

You know, this all would be much easier if you had just come with me.

I could tell you how I stood among ruins and reached out my hand toward snow-capped peaks, so large and looming they appeared within my grasp.

I could tell you how my legs burned when I clambered up the mountain, how the thin air stole the little breath I had, how soundly I slept in the cold night, five inches from ancient soil.

I could tell you how I bore witness to a world that was nothing like yet exactly the same as the comfortable bubble I left. How I cried with homesickness. How I exhaled in wonder.

But I'm not sure it would mean anything. Odors and movements and sensations don't pack well. And pictures only say so much.

This prayer, then, is for that frustration. It's for when 'wish you were here' becomes 'yes, I was there.' It's for my loneliness in having been there without you.

Prayer #86: Gone Voyage

Lord, why did You put so many wonders in the world, yet not give me the capacity to absorb them?

My body is fighting to regain its footing. My routine is struggling to return. How then, in the midst of such corporeal upheaval, am I expected to deliver on the emotion of all I saw, experienced, and witnessed?

It's all a drop in the bucket to You, I know -- nothing You haven't seen or heard or created before. But for me, it's revelatory. And I need your help in expressing it.

Unknot my stubborn tongue so I can share the stories with others. Relax my tense muscles so I can embrace the events. Lend clarity to my now-memory, and space to my history, so that I can best explain why -- and how -- I changed.

In the name of He who needs no passport to cross the universe --

Amen.