They came upon a clearing, a meadow of open grass on hilltop of ridge above the living shadow of the woods on mountain’s sides. Doves held in the bare winter branches of woods’ edge, gathered to feed on the heads of foxtail winterkilled in the meadow and laying slumped in stalks by the weight of their seeded heads on fine straw stems. The birds flushed in whistle and sweeping dance of flight, circling the meadow and the two before landing again in branches at the meadow’s far end.
Beneath, a stream sounded softly in the shadow of the trees, its song given notes in its fall from stones and over ledges, an eternal wearing on the ancient mountains worn low by winds and water of aeons, but always behind the steady weathering of the stream fed from rising waters of the mountains’ own heart.
They walked together slow, taking in the world as it existed in the living moment: the transfiguration of colors in crepuscule scene, the full wind on open ridge, different when guarded in the cradle and breaks of the lower ridge; the scent of the woods—hickory, oak, cherry, and pine, and the stronger accents of sumac and cedar, the first to grow and reclaim clearings for the woods.
They walked together in easy strides of presence, not of haste, and in contemplation that comes with quietness in the immersion of living Creation, she asked him, “Do you ever think about life’s purpose? Do you think it is a grand secret, or is it so easy that we’ve lost our simplicity to see?”
The western sky burned with setting golden light under rose light and richer reds. The east shone a changing blue, accents of clouds, unseen, painted then in strands of violet undercast edged with flares of pink.
“I do,” he answered, he studying the world around before eyes returning back to her, her winter hair beneath warming cap, sweater and jeans to boots blending in the flax hue of the matted foxtail.
In the high of sky, above glory of setting sun and softer changings of the east, Cosmos began to show: Venus in her near-light glow and greater galaxies that showed as points of single light with all their whirl of holding, ordered chaos of distance and time that can be explained but never understood.
“I think it’s simpler than we sometimes want it to be. Mystery lets us search, keep searching, become lost in ourselves for a meaning that—once found—requires a decision.”
“What’s that?”
“Do we live our purpose, or do we pretend we do not see and return to a restless searching, an active idleness that becomes, to some, a false life-purpose of its own.”
He studied her face as she listened, its slight can’t to side as she considered.
“Is it the same for everyone?”
“I don’t know,” he answered. “I only know myself.”
“Have you found your purpose?” she asked. It was a question that grew in those of their age; an age when one comes into the truth, as sudden and changing as the open clearing where they stood, that the levity of youth is past and that a future of old age—and what to make of one’s self and what life remains—holds vast but vague upon one’s path.
“Have you found yours?” she asked again.
“Maybe mine is nothing more than to be present and to speak the good I see in those I witness in the world. Maybe my purpose is to give the little things–not the grand things we’re told to chase and achieve–to people I pass every day: to appreciate a smile, kindness, small acts of others so easy to dismiss that—in truth—change whole days and lives.”
Above, Cosmos filtered through navy sky adding further feature to dusk’s revelation.
“Maybe we plan too much. Maybe we’re conditioned and taught to want to much, and in our distraction we lose sight of the simplicity—just as you said. Maybe there is a simpler way man has forgotten.”
“What is that?”
“Abandonment to Providence—Divine, if you believe.”
“How do you do that?”
“Worry less, be present, be witness to the signs, and grateful for all that comes. Trust and sense when to act, and do not fret when time or want is not aligned. It is the worry and fret that makes us restless, despair when dwelled upon too strong.”
Her eyes searched forward as they walked. By their movement, the doves holding in the timber edge of the far meadow flushed once more sending soundings of soft whistles through the sky. They watched the birds in dance, and he laughed, reading the signs he spoke on, “Behold the birds of the air, for they neither sow, nor do they reap, nor gather into barns: and your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are we not more than they?
How rich can life be if we are simply present to the opportunities we are given to make a difference in our living, surrounding world? How often do we seek grand causes in which to join and claim a part for which we feel we save the world but, in truth, make it worse, rather than own and live the small and common acts we can all perform by simply being present in our real and small place in world; not a grand, but false, community of which Man, himself, becomes a nothing?”
As sky followed further into crepuscule, when the flame of ending day tempered into different light, together, they held witness to new sign.
“Are you seeing that?” he asked, fixed on where the doves flushed from limbs.
“I am,” she answered.
In the tops of the trees, their grey ash branches held in flame, red-orange embers glowing in the sky, burning but not consumed. A wind changed, and the embers of the branches breathed in glowing fire.
“Maybe the signs never left. Maybe it was us as we lost our Faith to see…”
They stared in amazement at the sight, and when fire and light of sky restored to ash and black, they departed from their clarity in clearing and returned for the sound of stream in descent, once more, into the living shadow of the trees as Cosmos shone through broken, spindled canopy.