15-Jul-2010

The Road Home

Making Peace with the Journey

Over the last few years I’ve spent my summers bouncing up to our home in Oregon--traveling from Los Angeles to the Pacific Northwest. Escaping from the city usually grounds me. However, this past summer I found it difficult to get my bearings. I couldn’t connect with where “home” was for me. Instead of seeing the divine order of my life, I felt split, caught between my two places of residence as well as between who I am and who I was becoming.

On the drive down to L.A. after my last trip of the summer, a peace finally settled over me. The trip took 15 hours with an overnight stay in a Motel 6 in Lodi. These road trips take a toll on my body; but there’s also something so liberating, something that gets freed up inside as I move through the countryside, stopping at little towns and wayside stations along the way.

By the time I pulled up in front of our house in Southern California, I was joyfully exhausted. Of course, I felt a certain amount of triumph in having “gone the distance.” But what was clearly evident was that, somewhere along Hwy 97 or on a stretch of the I-5, a peace had arrived, an understanding about my true home--where I will always belong—a place without a mailing address or a weather forecast. I can’t really put a finger on a particular moment or milepost during that trip where I suddenly shifted from lost to found. Like a poem, peace is a mysterious force that comes to you, reaches down inside you and opens you to an inner truth, to grace.

Hari Bhajan Khalsa
Yogamint Momma, Life Coach, Poet
Author: Life in Two Parts
Recommended Read: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance