Day 116c: A rainy day Re-Union … (August 23, 2019)
And onward I walked that morning – through Minquadale and then into Manor Park, thankful for the cooler temperatures and the light but steady drizzle of rain that seemed to cleanse both my Heart and the Path before me. I pulled into the Dove Diner after awhile, told the manager (Tricia) there about my Walk and asked to simply sit for a spell out of the now-strengthening storm. She hesitated and frowned slightly but agreed to let me do so, whereupon customer Sumblar (nickname “Sherlock”) and his wife Diane, who had overheard my conversation while waiting to pay for their breakfast, offered to pay for mine. And so it was that I was able to sit comfortably warm & dry as the rains came down and joyfully enjoy my simple stack of pancakes – and so it was that the wait staff on hand (especially Jasmine) and even a few customers were able to ask quite a few questions about The Walk, and be one and all amazed (and possibly inspired) by the same …
“My vision of the gathered church that had come to me and had then been fluidly replaced by a vision of the gathered community. Indeed, what I saw now as I looked about me was a community imperfect and irresolute; held together by the frayed and always fraying, incomplete and yet ever-holding bonds of various sorts of needs or fears or emotional affections. It was (and still remains) a community that is always disappointed in itself, always in some way disappointing its members, always trying to contain its divisions and superficially soothe its meanness, always failing and yet always striving towards a sort of will toward at least an appearance of goodwill. I knew that, in the midst of all this ignorance and error, it was a membership, and yet I also knew that it was a brittle membership – a membership destined to falter & fail. And yet my new vision, my vision of a far different and far greater Community, gathered us all together as it never has been and never will be gathered in this world of time, for the true Community must always be graced by members who are indifferent to their own worries or desires, who are members solely concerned with the peace & joy of the All – never merely the self or those more readily enjoyed or cherished. And it is this Community that can prevail, this community and this community alone that can perfect its members in the glowing crucible of one another’s more perfect Love, one one another’s more unconditional Compassion, of one another’s more stalwart forgiveness. It has been said that we will one day be perfected by Grace. This vision is the Way thereto.” ~ via Wendell Berry
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