There is something in the nature of returning that speaks to our souls. We witness the daily return of day following night when we return from another world of dreams and images. We return to our homes after time away at work, from a trip or simply from dinner out. Some returns are more grand than others, but it is the ordinary cycles of coming and going that can add depth to our lives; our own small migrations. Bringing awareness to these repetitions can add significantly to a sense of presence in our day-to-day movements. These rhythms of soul, the daily returns, can lend an intimacy with the common happenings that invite us further into the conversation with life.

Finally on my way to yes

I bump into    

all the places

where I said no

to my life

all the untended wounds

the red and purple scars

those hieroglyphs of pain

carved into my skin and bones,

those coded messages

that send me down

the wrong street

again and again

where I find them,

the old wounds

the old misdirections

and I lift them

one by one

close to my heart

and I say    holy

Return implies departure; they are two faces of the one coin. We are living, however, in a time when many things in our world will not return. Their departures create a feeling of emptiness leaving us diminished and depleted. Species are departing and not returning, some small, some large, some never named or known. This past week the Eastern Cougar was placed on the list of extinct species. We are living in a time I call the Great Emptying when aquifers, fisheries, prairies, topsoil, honeybees, languages and cultures are being depleted, perhaps to the point of no return. It is imperative that we register these losses in our hearts, feel the full weight of the grief this entails and howl, wail, weep and do whatever we can to resist this needless emptying of our world. 

What does not return touches us by its absence: Friends move away or die, we say goodbye to parents or to a marriage that fails. We too, age and begin the preparation for the time when we do not return to the daylight, to cool water and the touch of those we love. The final return we make is to the earth itself when we lie down beneath the ground. In the meantime…in the meantime we need to return our thankfulness to the earth for the multiple ways we are gifted; the tanagers, tadpoles, grosbeaks, willows and alders, a good meal. Everything is a gift, a wild and exuberant offering of bounty that is bestowed upon us for no reason. It is simply the offering of the fecund earth and we, the recipients of this richness, must return our gratitude and simply say “thank you.”