A Child of These Roads II

Saturday, April 19 ~ Albuquerque, New Mexico

The doorbell rings. It's Stephanie, the woman who owns the house I rent here in Albuquerque.

"Can I talk to you for a minute?" she asks.

"Of course," I say.

"We're thinking of selling the house. If we worked with you, would you be open to leaving before your lease is up?"

Before I can stop my mouth, it says, "Sure."

If you read my most recent newsletter, you know that I had already felt called to leave at the end of the lease -- putting everything in storage and hitting the road...again, on an extended book tour into the midwest and east. (You also know from the newsletter that I only just landed here in late August after 30 months of full-time road travel.)

I hadn't planned to be gone from Albuquerque before summer's end. Frankly, I hadn't planned to resume my road odyssey. But that's the thing about plans. All we can do at the human level is make them, using the limited information available to us. Once we turn those plans over to a higher power (God, Spirit, the Universe, our Higher/God Self), anything can happen...and generally does.

When Stephanie leaves, I start to cry. Not because anything has changed. After all, this only advances my departure by, at most, a few months. No, I'm crying because everything has changed. A vague notion (my eastbound journey) has been validated, solidified and accelerated. Suddenly, it feels real, and a stew of conflicting emotions begins to roil up inside me.

A few hours later, as if to further consolidate the morning's revelations, I surrender to the possibility of (yet again) selling rather than storing many of my belongings.

Will this journey last only the few months I now foresee? Perhaps.

Will it be focused solely on talks, workshops, book-signings and book sales? Probably not.

Will it end, as I've intuited, in southern California? Maybe.

If there's one thing I've learned on my spiritual journey of surrender, it's that the reasons I intuit or make up for why I feel guided to do something rarely cover more than the tiniest surface of an ineffable complexity.

Put another way, my perception is limited to what I can figure out or imagine. Divine design is infinite in its scope and unknowable in its entirety. All I can do is the best I can do with the little I know and trust in the wondrous nature of the invisible.

Some days, that "all" feels like more than I can handle. On those days, I'm grateful for the granite solidity of the Sandia Mountains, which, since my first day in Albuquerque, have always helped ground me through the r-evolutionary changes of these r-evolutionary times.


I close my day with a walk in the Sandia foothills and, once again, know that through all that's asked of me, I'm always loved, protected and supported.

And all is well.

As for my fall tour of classes, workshops, talks and book-signings, I'm open to going anywhere east, north and/or south of here -- in the U.S. and into Canada. I'm also open to traveling into California later this summer. If you have any ideas or suggestions, or if you'd be interested in helping me organize and/or promote something in your area, I'd love to hear from you.

Photos by Mark David Gerson: #1 California SR-167 near Mono Lake; #2-4 Sandia foothills, Albuquerque, New Mexico