Stairing

From RevGals... a most thoughtful Friday Five

Halfway down the stairs
Is a stair
Where I sit.
There isn't any
Other stair
Quite like
It.
I'm not at the bottom,
I'm not at the top;
So this is the stair
Where
I always
Stop.

Halfway up the stairs
Isn't up,
And isn't down.
it isn't in the nursery,
it isn't in the town.
And all sorts of funny thoughts
Run round my head:
"It isn't really
Anywhere!
It's somewhere else
Instead!"

— A. A. Milne
“Halfway Down,” When We Were Very Young

Thinking of your childhood as a stairway, when did you feel (and how did you feel then)

1. at the bottom?

Have to say, I wasn't really aware of being at the bottom. I had no idea what was going on around me, sometimes, but I considered getting out of bed and having a new day ahead of me to read and learn and wonder and explore another stair on the journey. I suppose, though, I felt a certain sense of desperation for that journey. Wanting to experience and know in the bones that what I believed was true--there was more to the world than what I saw and heard around me, that there was a place where I could be and do who and what God had given me as gift and call...and not be alone. There would be others on the staircase with me, to stop sometimes, to look, to comfort and encourage.

2. at the top?

Not there yet--don't expect to be until I'm walking into that most amazing vista with no horizon...

3. halfway?

What a gift! To be able to look back and say wow, I walked THOSE stairs to get here? Those stairs strewn with both obstacles and openings to naviagate? Whoa. To see what I left on those stairs and what/who I brought with me. To be able to look ahead and say WOW! I'm walking those? What will happen? What will I come to know? What views await? What people?

4. At this point in your life, where would you place yourself on your own stairway?

Don't know, really. I'm just walking and looking and saying Wow. A lot. Wow, isn't it amazing and Wow, the tragedy. Stairs don't only go one direction. I know this personally and by familial association.

5. Identify a place for you that "isn't really anywhere" but "somewhere else instead."

Writing, creating, praying space! The loose space where I and the world and God sit together in flow and conversation and being. Love that space.