"Ourselves" by John Daniel

Ourselves

When the throaty calls of sandhill cranesecho across the valley, when the rimrock flares incandescent red, and the junipers are flames of green on the shortgrass hills, in that moment of last clear light when the world seems ready to speak its name, meet me in the field alongside the pond...

Without careers for once, without things to do, without dreams or anger or the rattle of fears, we’ll ask how it can be that we walk this ground and know that we walk, alive in a world
that didn’t have to be beautiful, alive in a world that doesn’t have to be...

With no answers, just ourselves and silence, we’ll listen for the song that waits to be learned,
the song that moves through the passing light...
"The journey for the sake of saving our own lives is little by little to cease to live in any sense that really matters, even to ourselves, because it is only by journeying for the world's sake - even when the world bores and sickens and scares you half to death - that little by little we start to come alive." Fredrick Buechner