In Christine's invitation she writes, "This week I invite you to celebrate your own ancestors, either as a group, or dedicate your poem to a particular person (human or animal in nature). For this week’s party, I also invite you to email me a photo of this person (if you have one) to accompany your poem.This photo was taken last March in a cemetery in Ipswich, Massachusetts when I traveled back to trace some of my maternal ancestors.
North Shore
Today rather than people or places or pets, I'm stepping back to honor one of my own previous lives, still wondering how the crooked path got to this current here and where. Not that Ipswich, Massachusetts was quite point of origin, but for those years going up the shore at first from Boston and later from Salem on a summer Sunday afternoon, stopping at the Clam Box for fried clams and simply being stripped clean and purified by salty Atlantic air meant going home renewed and hopeful. During Holy Week before Robert and I were leaving the East Coast for the Left, senior pastor of the congregation I'd been serving took me to lunch at the Clam Box. I almost never regret any of the big choices I've made for longer than a split second, yet what could I have done differently that would yielded the life of service I prepared for? I don't know, yet I do know "these things" don't happen in 1st or 2nd world countries. So I dedicate this paragraph to Boston's North Shore and commit myself to making at very least a virtual pilgrimage back, and filled with the bright hope of Atlantic sea air to retrace, refine and reinvent my own journey.
1 comment:
a beautiful reflection Leah, places are such important touchstones for our journeys. when I was back on the east coast earlier this year I could feel the impact of standing on that ground connecting me to parts of myself I had forgotten. Thanks so much for sharing this.
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