This message from Alana Steib came to me today:

“We had our first frost alert of the season yesterday, and I rushed to bring in the final harvest in the garden, and carry in the last large pots of plants that need to be wintered indoors that were still outside. While carrying in the bay tree I heard high overhead the calls of a flock of migrating geese.

Since we share an appreciation of some Elders on the Path ahead of me (Merton, Rumi, Hafiz, etc.) I thought I’d send along a timely poem from another of my lights (and mine) along the way, Wendell Berry.

This steadfast migration of geese, going on for millennia over the same spot I happen to be standing that day, always makes me smile and feel profoundly my tiny part int the Great Circle Of Life.”

I don’t know Alanna, or where she lives, and will probably never meet her. But she seems a kindred spirit to me, she was kindly sharing the same kind of day we had today, the same kind of feeling, the same kind of Lights On The Path, even the same sound of the geese.

Often I feel alone in my life, I have few close friends these days, and feel, as I always have, like a resident outsider, apart from the rest of the world.  It lonely at times, my Lights guide me and point the way.

Letters like this make me realize I have a tribe, after all, just a different kind.

People I will feel but perhaps never know. Or perhaps know them very well without seeing them or meeting them in the flesh. Spiritual is funny like that, there are so many different ways to connect if I am open to them.

Alana is a friend, for sure.

She included a Wendell Berry poem in her message, which was kind of her. How strange, I was just listening to the geese heading South this morning as I worked with Maria to shut down the gardens and move some plants indoors.

“Geese appear high over us, pass, and the sky closes.

Abandon, as in love or sleep, holds them to their way, 

clear in the ancient faith.

What we need is here,

And we pray,

not for new earth or heaven,

but to be quiet in heart, and in eye, clear.

What we need is here.

-Wendell Berry