Manifest Destiny

Tuesday, June 12 ~ I-25 between Albuquerque & Santa Fe, New Mexico

I'm on my way to Santa Fe because Federal Express has delivered two advance copies of The MoonQuest to my mailbox there. (The bulk of the shipment arrives in Albuquerque on June 18.)

As with every aspect of this journey, I'm equal parts excited and scared. And when I get to the UPS Store, I leave the FedEx package until last, opening every other letter and parcel before I rip apart the white padded envelope with its distinctive orange and purple lettering.

Seeing the book in published form takes my breath away. I don't breathe again until, shakily, I leaf all the way through it to be sure that its pages are not only fully present but right-way-up.

When my breath finally returns, it's quavery and teary.

Before I left Flagstaff, Arizona in March for Albuquerque, knowing that I was about to launch the publishing process, I stopped for lunch at a Chinese restaurant. The fortune, which I still carry in my wallet, read, Look for the dream that keeps coming back. It is your destiny.

This dream snuck up on me 13 years ago, when The MoonQuest's first words made their own way onto my blank page (see A Horse or Two of a Different Color). Since then, however long it absented itself from my life, The MoonQuest has always come back. This last time, it insisted that I bring it to completion.

I don't believe in the disempowered choicelessness of most definitions of destiny. As Toshar (The MoonQuest's main character) is constantly reminded on his MoonQuest, there is always a choice. At the same time, a commitment to living the highest possible choice strips us of many other choices and, ultimately, connects us with our heart's desire and soul's passion, which, in the end, is an aspect of destiny.

Why am I crying as I hold the book, my book, this being with its own imperative that birthed through me?

Release and relief, of course. But more than that, I'm crying because I have touched my destiny, a destiny I freed to manifest through me.

They are tears of joy. They are tears of birthing. They are tears of new life -- The MoonQuest's and mine.

• Order your copy of The MoonQuest today -- through www.themoonquest.com or through Amazon.com using this direct link.

Desert Spring

Friday, June 8 ~ Albuquerque, New Mexico

As I amble along a nature path in the foothills of Albuquerque's Sandia Mountains, I feel the stress and high anxiety of the day begin to dissolve.

It began this morning. In fact, I woke with it, with the unsettledness that comes of leaving two and a half months of what passes in my life for domesticity.

Today is the day the (relative) rootedness of a Santa Fe sublet makes way for a return to the mutability of a life in motion.

Today is the day that completes the printing and binding of The MoonQuest.

Today is the day one journey ends and another begins.

It's exciting, of course, but discomfitting too.


And so as my feet touch the feldspar, mica and quartz that comprise Sandia's granite, I'm grateful for the emotional grounding I always feel here. I'm grateful too for the explosions of brilliant color scattered through these desert highlands.

If you've never visited or lived in the desert, you probably think of it as not only dry but barren and colorless. Yet spring here in the high desert -- particularly after a wet winter -- brings with it not only infinite shades of green but the polychromatic splendor of desert flowers in bloom, their intensity heightened by the limited palette New Mexico normally offers.

The new growth and the vividness of the cactus flowers remind me that the same energy of renewal unfolding around me on my Sandia walk is also coming alive within me. Spring is here.

Sandia Photos by Mark David Gerson

Holy Faith I

Tuesday, May 15 ~ Santa Fe, New Mexico

It's Sunday morning. I'm sitting in Santa Fe's Church of Religious Science listening to the service and an image forms in my mind's eye...a series of angles, lines and contours that expresses the energy of Santa Fe and the notion of "holy faith," which is the English translation of the city's name.

I reach for a piece of paper and sketch what I see.

A few hours later, I'm at the dining room table with my colored pencils arrayed before a blank page. Propped up to the side is my rough sketch.

As what takes shape on the page begins to bear less and less resemblance to the sketch, I grow edgy.

Not because of the differences. Many finished drawings veer away from my initial concept.

No, my edginess relates to how much I don't like what is forming on the page. To be blunt, I hate it.

The emergent image, I say to myself, is just not very good. For a few minutes, I consider scrapping the drawing. After all, my judgmental self points out to my creator self, all artists have pieces they abandon. And for good reason.

Then I remember another drawing. Number 15. Titled Stepping into Your Power and Empowerment, I so disliked it that I almost removed it from my catalogue. It was hard to do, though, because people kept buying it. In the end, I didn't delete it.

In that memory, I realize what's going on within me today. My reactions to #15 and what is slated to become #116 (Holy Faith) have nothing to do with esthetics and everything to do with the theme/title of the piece.

In December 2004 I was resisting the next level of my empowerment. Today, as my pencil hesitates over the paper, I am resisting the next level of a faith that Santa Fe always demands.

The first demand on my faith is the drawing itself: Do I have the faith to trust the divine imperative that always guides my hand? Or will I let my judgment (read: fear) overtake my faith?

Faith wins out, as it always does in the end, and I complete the drawing (Holy Faith, pictured above).

Later, a client describes the image as "faith in the midst of chaos," which is perfect. For it's in the midst of (apparent) chaos that we most need our faith.

Demands on my faith in subsequent days, like all such demands, are similar to those I experience with the drawing and ask similar questions: Do I have the faith to trust the divine imperative that always guides my life and choices? Or will I let my fear take precedence?

So many demands on my faith in this city of Holy Faith: they revolve around finances (always a stand-in for deeper fears), around this publishing enterprise I have launched, around The MoonQuest itself, around where I will go when my current sublet runs out in a few weeks, around every aspect of my life that is steeped in transformation and uncertainty. And what aspect isn't, these days?

This morning, a new demand: Even as The MoonQuest has yet to leave its Michigan printing plant, a sensing emerges that its long-stalled sequel, The StarQuest, is calling to me.

If, as I realized in A Stunning One-Liner During Dinner at the Diner, publishing The MoonQuest frees me to move forward and stop wandering, that forward motion now appears to be an acceleration toward The StarQuest. In other words, my wandering will come to an end when it's necessary to complete the next book.

That completion will require all the holy faith that Santa Fe can send my way. Or maybe not. Perhaps all that's required to write the second book is to come to completion on the first, "to fix The MoonQuest on parchment," as the story itself demands.

For now, all I can do is remain grounded in this moment as I anchor all aspects of my beingness in faith -- Holy Faith -- and in that divine imperative that always guides me foward in love.

~ View a larger a copy of Holy Faith (#116) or order your own

~ Listen to a free audio excerpt of The MoonQuest

~ Read about The MoonQuest as a journey of trust

All copies of The MoonQuest ordered before June 11 will be autographed to you (or to whomever you're gifting it) and will get free U.S. shipping. (Normal shipping charges apply as of June 11.)

A Stunning One-Liner During Dinner at the Diner

Tuesday, May 8 ~ Santa Fe, New Mexico

I'm having dinner at Zia Diner here in Santa Fe, telling a new friend about The MoonQuest and about how it has been part of my life through all but the earliest months of my conscious spiritual journey.

"Maybe," he says, "once the book is out you'll be able to stop wandering."

A shiver of such intensity passes through me, I think at first it's the air conditioning.

Then I inventory the past 13 years of my life...

I began writing The MoonQuest within weeks of a move that launched more than a decade of wandering. Within six months of setting my first words to the page, I had sold everything I owned and moved to Nova Scotia. During my 14 months there, I lived in three different places (each hosting a different aspect of my MoonQuest literary journey).

My life has been largely unsettled ever since. Even the seven moves in my six and a half years of marriage could hardly be described as settled.

Then I think of the opening lines of The MoonQuest, which have survived virtually unchanged since the second draft:

Na'an came to me in a dream this night. It was early. I had not been in bed long and the night was newly dark.

"It is time," she said, "time to fix The MoonQuest on parchment."

Toshar, the main character, is then told that until he tells this, his story, he will not be free.

"It is your story to tell. It is for you to fix it in ink, to set the truth down for all to read."

My friend's one-line insight (his name is also Mark, which adds a certain twist: as though the revelation comes from within me!) reverberates through me long past dinner at the diner.

What if I, like Toshar, cannot be free to truly end my MoonQuest until I have shared it with the world? What if my life path will not be fixed until this aspect of its story is fixed in print?

It's a humbling and explosive concept. But it makes sense.

Whether we're writers or not, we're all called to share our stories. We're all called to break through the silence of fear that has stilled our voices.

In the film Catch and Release one character asks the other, "Who do you tell your stories to?"

"I keep them inside," he replies.

By keeping them inside, he keeps everything inside and that's what holds him back.

In Q'ntana, the fear-strangled mythical land in which The MoonQuest is set -- a land where storytelling is banned and storytellers are put to death -- it is said that "all people were bards once upon a time."

One of the purposes of Toshar's quest is to restore that once-upon-a-time to Q'ntana.

Clearly, I carry a similar purpose in a similar time. All the work I've done over the past 13 years -- be it through my words, sounds, art and teaching (writing and otherwise) -- has been about empowering people to experience their highest potential and to share that passion out in the world.

It doesn't have to be through writing, of course. Yet I continue to be amazed by the number of clients, friends and acquaintances who tell me they're feeling called to write a book.

For some, the creative act itself is the release into the new. For me, apparently, the release comes in empowering myself to take the next step by publishing it myself...by doing all that's necessary "to set the truth down for all to read."

Until I do that, I can't move on. Until I do that, I can't take the next step in my writing, teaching and inspiring. Until I do that, I won't be free.

A Horse (or Two) of a Different Color

Tuesday, May 1 ~ Santa Fe, New Mexico

I open my email this morning to a message and image from British artist Courtney Davis. The image is The Chariot card from his sadly out-of-print Celtic Tarot deck. He has sent me a copy so that I can write a caption for an upcoming retrospective of his art.

The card, as I mention on the acknowledgments page of The MoonQuest played a significant role in the book's birth...

It's March 1994. I see The Celtic Tarot in Toronto's Omega Centre bookstore and it so seduces me that I can't not buy it. Days later, I use the deck in a writing class I'm teaching: With eyes closed, each student draws one of the major arcana cards and then, with eyes open to the chosen card, is led through a guided visualization into writing.

Generally when I teach, I don't write. I watch the students and hold space for them.

But this night's group is different. These five women are a subset of a larger University of Toronto class that I have just led through 10 weeks of creative awakening. They don't require my usual overseeing and so, once they're settled into writing, some inner imperative has me draw a card of my own: The Chariot.

That same imperative has me pick up a pen and push it across the blank page. What emerges is the tale of an odd-looking man in an even odder-looking coach that is pulled by two odd-colored horses.

Next morning, I'm drawn back to the story. I add to it. I keep adding to it daily, almost obsessively. And a year later in Amirault's Hill, Nova Scotia, on the anniversary of that Toronto class, I complete my first draft of The MoonQuest.

When I see The Chariot this morning in Santa Fe, for the first time in a decade, I'm startled. Even though the cover designer never saw the tarot card and knows nothing of The Celtic Tarot or how it inspired me, there's a definite connection between the two.

Today, many drafts and many years later, the manuscript is a book. And although the book's opening has changed and the odd-looking man has been superseded in importance by other characters, I realize that The Chariot's inspiration is still evident throughout The MoonQuest.

I no longer own a copy of The Celtic Tarot. I gifted mine to a friend in 1997. And so today, reinspired by its energy, I will scour the internet for a replacement. Maybe its magic is still potent enough to launch The MoonQuest's two projected sequels.

Art: The Chariot tarot card by Courtney Davis; The MoonQuest cover by Angela Farley.

Why Wait?

Thursday, April 19 ~ Santa Fe, New Mexico

When I was a boy growing up in Canada in the 1960s, a cute, animated beaver starred in a series of government-sponsored TV commercials every winter. In each episode, the industrious beaver would work on his dam without waiting for spring thaw.

The message, brought home in the catchy jingle Why wait for spring? Do it now!, was to encourage Canadians to think about launching home improvements during the winter.

Why wait for what appear to be perfect conditions?

Why, indeed?

An inner beaver of my own has been singing his version of that jingle to me for weeks now. It's not about home improvement, and his lyrics don't scan nearly as well as those written by George G. Blackburn for the Canadian Dept. of Labor 40 years ago.

"Why wait for someone else to do it for you?" he sings. "Do it yourself!"

For me, my beaver song has been about The MoonQuest, a profoundly spiritual fantasy novel I began writing 13 years ago. (If truth be told, it began writing me 13 years ago and hasn't let up on me since!)

Now, countless revisions, one screenplay adaptation, one award, one agent, numerous attempts to find publishers, and many close calls (including one involving Conversations with God's Neal Donald Walsh) later, I have heeded my inner beaver and am doing it myself.

The MoonQuest will be in physical, printed and published form later this spring!

Of course, as I pointed out earlier this month in Body Talk II, I'm not doing it myself at all. I have had lots of help: my spirit beavers and other energies/critters, as well as many of you, who have lovingly supported and encouraged me in this process.

And what a process it has been! Through it, I have discovered deep layers of fear I thought had been put to rest long ago. I rediscovered how easily I get overwhelmed. And I am still discovering how empowering it is to take a project to completion myself and not abdicate the final stages to an outside entity.

How often in our lives do we do just that? How often to we abdicate our power to others? How often do we remove ourselves from critical decisions that, truly, are ours to make? How often do we refuse to acknowledge our highest dreams and desires? How often do we walk away from them when they seem impossible?

The old New Age paradigm would have us sit in silent meditation until our dreams were realized. The old human paradigm would have us push, push, push, regardless of any inner imperative.

The new paradigm for this new age is a new balance of inner and outer, of the human and the divine. It calls on us to go within to connect with our highest dreams and desires (not those we think we want but those our soul yearns for (see Manifestation Beyond "The Secret"). Then it calls for us to surrender to the divine imperative that tells us when to wait and when to act.

And when, in timing that can only be divine, it is time to act, we don't wait for spring. We don't wait for someone else to pick up the slack. We don't wait for someone else to do it for us.

We empower ourselves to take responsibility for our own dreams and, with the assistance of all the energies and entities (embodied and disembodied) that want nothing more than for us than to succeed, we take one step, then another, then another and then another...conscious of the ultimate dream but focused on the moment.

That is the only way I'm getting through this publishing adventure: One day at a time. One task at a time. One moment at a time.

It shouldn't surprise me that that's how I'm being guided to proceed. After all, that's one of the many spiritual lessons of The MoonQuest. Apparently, it's one I'm still learning!

~ Listen to a free audio excerpt of The MoonQuest, read live on my 4-16-07 teleconference

The MoonQuest will be available on or before 7-7-07. Reserve your copy today* (why wait!?) and get free shipping** (U.S. only)! Plus I'll autograph the book to you or to whomever you're gifting it. (Advance orders paid by credit card will not be charged until the book goes to the printer in May.)

* If I have your credit information on file, feel free to reserve your copy via e-mail.
** This is a prepublication offer. Normal shipping charges will apply once the book is out.

Body Talk II

Sunday, April 1 ~ Santa Fe, New Mexico

As I lie in bed this morning nursing a cold that I know to be fear-induced, I recall words that first came through me four years ago in the Melchizedek-inspired Book of Messages:

Self-consciousness is your ego mind’s protection against the very force and beauty of your power. So look at those areas in your life where you carry self-consciousness and know that in those areas have you the greatest power.

I think of this as I ponder Batman Begins, the movie I watched last night. In the 2005 film we discover the caped crusader's origins and learn how Bruce Wayne's greatest fear -- of bats -- becomes his greatest strength.

I think too of the unconscious truth I uttered a few days ago when describing my cold to a friend: "It's all in my head," I declared, then laughed, realizing what I'd said.

Both the cold and the fear underlying it are, truly, in my head. As uncomfortably real as the symptoms feel in this moment, they're manifestations of my reluctance to fully embrace my greatest strength and power.

And my greatest desire.

You see, the symptoms kicked in pretty much the moment I arrived back in Santa Fe Wednesday for a projected ten-week stay. The purpose of this sojourn? To launch LightLines Media, my vehicle for publishing and marketing my novel, The MoonQuest (see my 3/27/07 newsletter, Manifestation: Beyond "The Secret").

Yet I don't think I realized just how scared I was until Friday, when it was time to e-mail the manuscript to the designers who will be creating the cover and laying out the book's interior.

In that moment, I knew that however overwhelmed I might feel at the prospect of launching this publishing enterprise alone, the true source of my fear was the same as that of the The MoonQuest's main character.

"It is time," Toshar is told in the book's opening lines, "to set The MoonQuest on parchment...to fix it in ink, to set the truth down for all to read.”

It's funny. Over the years I've sent versions of the manuscript to agents and publishers. I even had an agent for a time who pitched it relentlessly. For a while, I excerpted it for free on my web site and made it available for sale as an eBook. So why be so fearful now?

Two reasons:

• Every other version was subject to change. Revisions were always possible. I could always go back and make it better. Now, as was Toshar, I'm being called to fix it in ink and type, to stop it in time, to say, "This is The MoonQuest in its final form," to give up the illusory goal of making it perfect, to open myself to the judgment (and praise) of the world.

• Every other version was untold steps away from my greatest desire: a final, printed book with the potential to reach, touch and transform many. This process of self-publishing is the closest I have ever come to realizing that goal.

And so the parts of me that fear my power, that fear others' judgment, that are deeply self-conscious of the story that birthed through me and of the particular words that now form that story, is crying out to be noticed, to be reassured, to be loved...and is doing so through yet more body talk.

My call is to not let myself be paralyzed by fear or its physical manifestations. My call is to push ahead despite the doubts and second-guessing, to love all parts of myself through this initiation and to assure them that they are safe, secure and protected.

There is no safety in hiding. There is no security in turning down the wattage of my power and light. There is no protection in the kind of armoring that conceals my truth.

Walk the earth naked, clothed only in your truth.

Those words came to me a decade ago on the rocky shores of Lake Huron's Georgian Bay. Three thousand miles and many lifetimes later, they are as valid here in Santa Fe (a city whose name means Holy Faith), as I launch Lightlines and The MoonQuest.

One final note: When I complained about how overwhelming it felt to be putting The MoonQuest out by myself, a wise friend reminded me that there's no such thing as self-publishing.

"You're co-creating with Spirit all the time!" she rightly insisted.

So I'm dropping the term self-publishing from my vocabulary. The correct term is now Higher Self-Publishing!

And the journey continues.

Car Talk

Friday, March 16 ~ Albuquerque, New Mexico

My car is quiet today. It hasn't said a word since...yesterday.


Over the past week, though, it has been incredibly and disturbingly vocal.

Just as my physical vehicle has been eloquently pointing things out to me in recent weeks (see Body Talk), my automotive vehicle has been similarly insistent.

No more subtle tuggings on the steering wheel, indicating where to go or which way to turn. Either its voice has matured or my intuitive system isn't quite as responsive these days.

It all began a week ago...

With Texas behind me, California beckons. A little R&R by the sea, I think. And after a quick stop in Sedona, I head south and west toward San Diego.

I'm on I-10 when suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, the car begins to rattle. It's one of those frustrating car things: it only rattles when I'm driving but, while driving, I can't tell where the rattle is coming from...other than it seems to be coming from the interior front.

When you drive a minivan filled with most of your worldly goods (some of which occasionally rattle), the first thing to do is secure anything that might be loose.

I do that.

The rattle, just to be contrary, grows louder.

By the time I get to San Diego, I'm rattled, concerned that something is serious wrong with the car.

San Diego, in the throes of March Break Madness, rattles me even more. Neither rested nor relaxed, I leave the next day, determined that if the rattle continues, I'll return to Sedona and have my car-expert friend Larry give it a listen.

It does, and I do.

And then it doesn't.

Once Larry is in the car, my Mercury makes a faint, half-hearted rattle then falls silent, never to rattle again (other than a faint, half-hearted rattle on the way out of Sedona the following day).

I could say that Larry's very presence stilled the rattle. And maybe that's true. He is pretty powerful.

I could also say that the car was making certain I returned to Sedona. Given all the emotional energy I've been working with around my former wife, who lives in Sedona (see Heart Open Wide), I'm guessing that as soon as the car got me to Sedona, it shut up, its primary aim having been achieved.

Once having tasted power, though, my Mercury seems reluctant to give it up.

Cut to yesterday.


I'm heading for Santa Fe after a powerful visit to Chaco Canyon. My plan is to take an indirect, potentially more scenic route and still arrive in Santa Fe in time to pick up my mail.

As I bump along the unpaved road out of the National Park, my Mercury sounds a warning chime. "Check tire pressure," the instrument panel proclaims.

Check tire pressure? These are brand-new tires!

Anxiously, I make my way to a more major road and stop at the first service station. My front passenger tire is low and I refill it.

Nervously, I drive on, watching the instrument panel for a repeat warning. None comes. But when I reach the intersection of Hwy. 550 and Hwy. 96, concerned about driving unpopulated back roads with an iffy tire, I choose the route of caution and take Hwy. 550, the more direct road toward Santa Fe.

Once again, it seems, Auto Knows Best.


As direct as Hwy. 550 is, it takes much longer than I expect (Hwy. 96 would have likely doubled my travel time and returned me long past my UPS Store's closing time). It's also infinitely more stunning than I could have imagined. As well, it carries me past the Sandia Mountains, which have been calling to me in recent days.

I arrive in Santa Fe, refreshed by the beauty, activated by the mountain energies and in plenty of time for mail pickup and dinner.

Truly, Auto Knows Best.

P.S. The tire-pressure warning has not reappeared.

Photos by Mark David Gerson: #1 Near Chaco Canyon, New Mexico; #2 Sandia Mountains, Albuquerque, New Mexico

Body Talk I

Thursday, March 15 ~ US-64, near Farmington, New Mexico


The local NPR station broadcasts a promo for a program segment about spring allergies. They're gonna be bad, the announcer says.

Oh, I say. That's why I've been experiencing such extreme allergic symptoms recently. Sneezing. Sniffles. Scratchy throat. Itchy eyes. Off and on for several weeks. It's been beyond uncomfortable.

And then I remember.

I'm in my hotel room in San Diego last week. I've just come from Sedona, where my allergy symptoms were intense.

Juniper? Well, yes, it is the season.

But it's more complicated than that.

Actually, it's simpler.

You see, as I'm sitting in my hotel room, I remember that my symptoms act up and are at their worst either when I'm in Sedona or when I've been talking to my former wife, who lives in Sedona.

Am I allergic to her?

No, of course not.

But allergies are a function of the immune system, which is designed to kick in when it senses a threat.

Recently, as issues around my ex-wife and our separation have come up for deeper healing (see Heart Open Wide), parts of me are feeling profoundly threatened.

Although from a higher perspective, betrayal does not exist, my human-child self knows only that he has been betrayed and must not trust.

It's not safe!!! he shouts. And feeling endangered, he calls in the troops. Shields up! he cries. Defenses up!

My immune system responds, with sneezes, sniffles, itches and scratches, trying to fight off the danger, as it has done throughout my life.

As a child, my immune system was very active. I had many allergies. I had many fears. The world didn't feel safe, wasn't safe.

Today, that child is once again frightened, once again reluctant to trust.

Today, though, a new strategy is called for. A new defense.

That defense can only come from a place of love, of trust, of forgiveness...all the emotions it feels too dangerous to embrace.

It feels too dangerous. Yet that danger is an illusion. I cannot fear an illusion. I dare not.


Sitting in my San Diego hotel room, the Pacific waves thundering on the beach beyond my window, I offer a new strategy, a new defense.

I open my heart in love, I say.

I open my heart in trust.

I open my heart in forgiveness.

And, finally: It's safe to open my heart...to trust...to forgive.

The symptoms don't dissipate immediately. Many years -- lifetimes, perhaps -- of patterning must dissolve. But as my words remind me of the truth, that truth gains power in my body and in my life.

It is safe. I am safe.

I continue my drive -- deeper into New Mexico, deeper into spring, deeper into allergy season. Deeper into my heart.

Photo by Mark David Gerson: Pacific Beach, San Diego, California

Out of Texas

Sunday, March 4 ~ I-10 near El Paso, Texas


The push to come to Texas was so strong, it's hard to believe my "mission" here (whatever it was) has been accomplished.

In fact, when I woke yesterday morning in Alpine and heard the voice of Spirit state unequivocally, "You're done in Texas," I was surprised and annoyed.

"Done?" I asked. "But what did I do?"

No answer...a reminder that we needn't always know the reason, needn't always have an explanation, needn't always do much other than trust and surrender.

Yet just because we don't need to doesn't mean we don't want to.

Two years ago, on my first visit to Madison, Wisconsin, I found myself on a frustrating, cross-town odyssey as I searched for a place to spend the night. I drove for over an hour, looking at different motels, never finding myself satisfied.

Finally, after checking into a Microtel, I looked at the city map and realized that I had just driven three concentric circles around Madison, starting with several loops around the state Capitol.

I had always suspected that my seemingly random journeying was purposeful, that I was unconsciously carrying out some form of earthwork, gridwork and lightwork. I had suspected it, but was still skeptical.

A large chunk of my skepticism dissolved that day.

Yet I feel some of that same skepticism today as I prepare (I think) to leave Texas. I wonder why, after so much drama, I'll have spent only three nights in a small corner of this huge state.

As I did in Madison, I stop to look at a map. My finger traces my Texas travels...

East from El Paso along Rte 62-180 to Guadalupe Mountains National Park.


South on Rtes 54 and 90 through Van Horn and Marfa to Alpine.


North to Fort Davis and Kent.


West along I-10 to Van Horn (where I spent last night's lunar eclipse) and back to El Paso.


What my finger has traced is an infinity symbol!

I don't know what that means. But I know it's no accident that my travels have carried me along the roads that created that pattern. I know, too, that all I can do in every moment is trust God's GPS to guide me along the highest path -- be it a a physical highway or spiritual one.

Photos by Mark David Gerson: #1 Guadalupe Mountains National Park; #2 Twin Peaks, near Alpine, TX; #3 McDonald Observatory, near Fort Davis, TX; #4 Lunar Eclipse over Van Horn, TX