Such is the world that God did create: A world so lovely and so peaceful that when you see it once again you will cry with joy and forget your sadness in an instant. There will be no long remembering of regrets, no feeling badly for all the years in which you saw this not. There will merely be a glad “Aha!” as what was long forgotten is returned to you. You will but smile at the childish games you played, and have no more regrets than you would have for your childhood. Your innocence will stand out clearly here, and never again will you doubt that the world that God created belongs to you and you to it. C:9.47

I returned from California late Friday night. Saturday my grandson Henry spent the day and night. Donny, my husband, got ready Saturday evening for his hunting trip and was gone before Henry or I awoke in the morning. When Henry and I did get up, we prepared for his mom and her fiancé George, who were coming to pick him up. It is George’s birthday and so while Henry decorated the envelope of our card, I put cinnamon rolls in the oven. Hours later I was putting dishes in the sink, washing sheets for one bed and smoothing clean ones over another as I spoke to my mom, who’d taken a fall while I was gone, but managed to do so without breaking any bones. “I’m tired,” she said, and seemed at first to prefer I wait until tomorrow to visit, but then changed her mind.  “I’ll be there in a half hour or so,” I told her, and went down the street to my friend Mary’s who is out of town. There, I fed her three cats, scooped out the cat litter, scratched a few ears and butts, and then was headed to Mom’s. I showed her pictures of my trip, explaining a bit of what I did while gone, and she admired the scenery of the mountain and proclaimed my publisher a “good looking man.” While we talked, I folded her laundry.

On the way home from there I did a quick errand. When I arrived at home, I knew, I wouldn’t want anything to be missing. I wanted everything I needed at hand. And sure enough, as soon as I walked in my front door and stood in the hallway of my quiet house, the sensuous allure of being alone filled all my senses. Still, I waited just a bit before sitting down. Standing in the kitchen, I halved an avocado and scooped it out with a spoon while I put dishes away. Then, satisfied, I approached my laptop.

Me and my laptop. Alone together. The thrill of every natural-born writer and a few contemplative types washed over me like the glad Aha Jesus mentions in ACOL…or at least a glad ahhhh. I felt like a bird back in my nest or bunny in her burrow. As natural as that. As content. As full of nothing to do that felt like anything to do. A squirrel with my acorns surrounding me and water at my side, I began to type what you are reading, to come back, as I do, to what really feeds me.

I’d wondered if it would feel this way when I am, so often these days, alone. My husband works long hours and the kids and grandkids are, for the most part, gone into their own lives. But still the thrill was there, a different thrill than being home alone while Donny works late. A feeling of settling in to my environment once again, an environment changed by my absence. Leaves have fallen and the sights and sounds are different. After an uncharacteristic 80 degree day the leaves shaken loose while I was gone, line the curbs and rattle about. My lone cat, unsettled by my absence, is now as content as me, curled up an inch away on the love seat on which I sit.

From here I do not even welcome the reverie that is sure to come, the review of the events of the past week, the conversations with the wonderful women doing translations of A Course of Love into Spanish and French, the visiting with two ACOL groups meeting in the mountains of northern California, the one-on-one dialogue with a friend and healer, the evaluation of the last year, the envisioning of the new, or the wonder of imaging the best way to see old friends and meet new ones at the ACIM conference still six months away. No, this is time to greet myself again.

It’s late in the day but very similar to the way I feel each morning as I take my time in the cabin. This is where my relationship with God, with the Creator of all, becomes deeply embedded and akin to one-on-one communing. Where the one-on-one relationship is felt, our rhythms get in sync, and we move together as one. Where this becomes, as well, the relationship with the great Oneness. It is the complement to living life in relationship with the “many,” the grace that, for me, lies at the heart of all that is and is to come. From here, I am glad to have gone out and been “in touch” with the world, and glad to have come home. The beauty of it all washes over me and I am at rest…even while with you. Thank you for being with me in this quiet hour.