June 12, 2026

**What a Long Strange Trip It's Been**

**So Far**

An Ode

Wendell Berry ~ The Real Work:

"It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work, and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey."

Looking back, I can now see the pattern ~ a life threaded through with invitations, I barely understood at the time. Synchronicities. Nuanced openings. I was drawn, always drawn, toward writers and teachers and individuals who offered something I couldn't quite name, something that pulled like gravity precisely because it exceeded what my mind could hold.

I was a Seeker. But my seeking was captive to the Temporal Mind ~ the very instrument I was trying to see beyond. The mind that was seeking was the same mind standing in the way.

My Mind ~ It had become my God. And behind it, the heart ~ buried under layers of unknowing, I didn't even know were there. I could see that I wanted love. What I could not see was that I had lost the capacity to give it. Not from hardness. From something more like a long forgetting.

Then came what had to come. A Soul-crushing experience, And beneath that, the utter devastation of addiction ~ a bottom so undeniable, so complete, that for the first time I became willing  to question the very ground I was standing on.

Something cracked open.

I found a mirror that would not flatter me ~ that showed me, not as I wished I were, but as I was. And I found a community of broken people who knew exactly what that felt like. Sick and tired of being sick and tired. No pretense left. Just the willingness ~

I was told something simple and improbable: follow these simple instructions, do what we did, and you will be given back a life ~ not the life you had, but one you cannot yet imagine.

Loved unconditionally in this Community ~ warts, wreckage, and all ~ I slowly found I could begin to love that way myself. Through following suggestions. Through true soul-searching. Through the encouragement of others who had walked it before me.

Slowly, through trial and error ~ ever slowly ~

I was restored.

Not fixed. Restored. Returned to what I always was beneath the noise: a Seeker ~ one who now seeks first, and foremost, with his heart.