if I ventured in the slipstream

The other day I got really high and listened to Van Morrison's Astral Weeks. It was the first time I'd listened to the whole album since last fall. It made me remember the grace I felt like I was experiencing back then. I'd ride around the inlet on my bike, stopping to take pictures of the water, the changing leaves, the animals.

It felt like everything around me was a testimony of God's love. I would go hiking with Evan. He would walk way ahead of me and I would have to stop and take pictures of the way the light danced through the trees and made curving shadows. It was like I was fascinated with literal light. I look back at some of the pictures I took last fall and indeed they record hundreds of variations of the two.

Somehow I have lost this awe, this wonderment, that state I was in-- one of bewilderment even, of infatuation stumbling toward anything and everything I even had the slightest idea might be by or of or for God.

I go to church now pretty faithfully. I love the people there. I usually look forward to going, where before I would often dread it. I sit in the same place every week and know how everything is supposed to go. I know the drill, I guess you could say. I feel comfortable there. But I also feel loved.

Sometimes I even think vaguely about God while I am there.

But I miss that deep sense of breathlessness that I got riding around Priest Point Park, taking big deep gulps of life and knowing they were from God.