Day 09b: To build our Castles of Caring … (04/23/2019)
As a continued to walk along, I approached the town of Haslach and began intermittently alternating between mindfully walking barefoot on the now smoothly paved walkway and limping along in my shoes. The former proved to be so mindful, in fact, that I lost my Way shortly thereafter, and stopped to wonder whether I should backtrack to find where I had strayed from the path or hobble onward in a general southwesterly direction and hope to find it once more up ahead. As it turns out, neither was necessary, for at that point to my right I saw a small stairway made of old pallets leading down into the parking area of a local art workshop — one owned and managed by Gabrielle Schuller (an artist of mild-yet-well-deserved renown), who sat me down in her atelier, gave me a cup of coffee, asked about and then listened intently to the tale of my journey, and then stopped to buy me a large sack of vegan edibles before taking me back to the trail I had previously lost; a trail I almost certainly would not have found had I pressed on blindly on my own; a trail I then slowly hiked up to a low mountain ridge, where I then sat on an incredibly comfortable, sunbeam-warmed wayside bench and thankfully ate the fruits of Gabrielle’s gracious kindness … 🙂
“And this, at the very least, I have learned during my grand experiment: that if one boldly advances in the direction of his or her Soul’s Calling, and endeavors to live a life in harmony with the same, then he or she will inevitably meet with a pronounced success fully unknown in more common hours. For when this far less traveled path is taken, a sort of invisible boundary is traversed, and newly fresh (and in truth far more giving) laws will make themselves evident both within and all about. Indeed, as life simplifies and living deepens, the regulations of the Cosmos become simultaneously less complex and less shallow. Times of solitude are no longer lonely, times of poverty are no longer disquieting, and times of weakness are no longer tiresome. The one who has chosen this path has opened his or her Heart fully, and built castles of caring in the surrounding air, and — far more importantly — spends all his or her available days laying clearly visible & oh so real foundations for the same.” ~ inspired by Henry David Thoreau
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