Like the doe that saunters from the woods to feed at our crabapple tree, I hunger to know what lies before me. Will my last season on this earth begin with feasting but end in famine? Will the wholly universal spirit take a notion to greet me as if I were a tiny raindrop falling into the ocean?
I used to go to church, where I sat in the congregation, sang the hymns, shouted my praise and “thank-you’s,” and every once in a while took some bread in hand and then washed it down with a song and a prayer. But this communion was by rote, as the crusty host never showed his face.
I decided to seek the iSoul in the verdant river valley, on the highest windswept peak, and in the piedmont where one can easily see both hill and dell. I look and listen for the kindred spirit in the mountain waterfall and in the ocean waves that rise, curl and break on the sand at my bare feet.
In the light of day, I celebrate the beauty of the universe with my fading eyesight and cloth-eared hearing. In the darkness of my chamber at night, I reimagine all that I have ever seen and heard under the sun; I consider my deer friend, the doe; and I dream of another day I may never know.