Day 10.

There was a place in my heart that I wished her eyes could see but Time had turned love into separation and there, in my heart, it seemed as if life were slain. I moved on from university, we exchanged a few letters. I explained to her why I took up with her best friend, Pauline. She was somebody else’s and Pauline was as close as I could get. She never responded to that. We did however, discuss the meaning and meaningless of life, but love was not possible and our ships sailed in different directions. My bride was an all-absorbing sorrow. It was a love crippled by the thought that we may never anchor in the same harbor ever again. And we have not. With sails full set I awaited the wind. Now it seemed I was on a dark and sunless sea without a shore and that my frail mystic ship would be wrecked on the reef of time. It seemed my life was as water that runs away, and that it could never come back this way. And it never did. The day dream had become dawn’s first tears. Should I say that my day of parting was my day of gathering and should it be said that my eve was in truth my dawn?

There would be others, even an engagement, over the next few years, but her memory would endure them all. As I moved on I again turned to my search for the way to the infinite. I was now 20.

Communion with God comes in the moments we spend alone and soul silence makes more distinct the voice of God. God was leading me, whispering to my heart through the longings of eternity. Here I was again watching the valley come under the shadow of the hills. The coldness bade me go but the evening begged me to stay and talk a little longer. The hills held the last breath of day and the river moved slowly away to the sea. The last bird bid me follow to the covert of heaven and the nest of the almighty. “The glory of the new day was by way of the night” I heard it say. Will there ever be a day when time is gone, where hills never end and flowers never die?

There before me once again were the endless candles in the corridors of darkness. They told me that God does have a path that I must follow. From this palatial mountaintop I felt the calling of my Odyssey’s end. As the warming fingers of the sun caressed the hills once again I realized that I must continue my quest.