I depart to the lake. Enclosed upon the secret Lake of Timelessness a fog rests above the motionless waters, a fog steady with the airs of permanence. The lake is ridged with mountains and pines, a firm and living stone cup, protective to the point of still waters, broken vessel though it is at the ceramic upper edges. Perhaps I push my craft off the shore at dawn or before, but the fog traps the light to a constant hue and tint. The time remains unrevealed until, you might suppose, the lake pocket will discreetly succumb to darkness. But for now I sit, the paddles occasionally trip the silence into motion with the slightest riffs and drips. As I look out into the fog, time passes, or it doesn’t. Except for the drift and sway of my thoughts, it is impossible to know.

The shards at the ridges remind me of the broken one. The mighty peaks, they invoke the almighty one. The alluring chiseled edges and slopes, how I reach toward them in longing, to touch the smooth or gritty crags, the gentle texture tickling my finger pads. By means of the fog I sit embedded within the object of my longing; it surrounds me, I breathe it in and out.

A singular loon lets loose her wild call in the lake’s still. In my chest it squeezes, as the sudden cold rush of air points to my lungs in a hundred thousand places. Raising me to a new surface of alertness. This cry too often mistaken for insanity, sometimes lament, is merely the honest expression of feeling, powerful, from within. She trembles and keens, she yearns, she gasps. Her sound fills the lake fog with round, growing movement. Her red eyes hint at the eternity of passion somehow enclosed within. An emotion bigger than its source. A meaning that overwhelms its body, frightening to many. Too often is the cry solitary. Yet her rousing cry touches me; I am relieved by means of her free expression. I lift my hand. Perhaps I lift both arms. I may weep for joy. I may sway or even dance. I join her song and celebrate freedom for every round echo reaching upon the stills and against the everlasting shards that bear the whole picture up like a snow globe for a temperate scene.

Though the world beyond the ceramic cup rages, claws and lies, always I can retreat to the everlasting peace within the Lake of Timelessness. For in the Lake of Timelessness the snow globe turns not. The darkness descendeth not.

Psalm 27:4-8

One thing I have desired of the LORD,

 that I will seek:

That I may dwell in the house of the LORD

All the days of my life,

To behold the beauty of the LORD,

And to inquire in His temple.

For in the time of trouble

He shall hide me in His pavilion;

In the secret place of His Tabernacle

He shall hide me;

He shall set me high upon a rock.

And now my head shall be lifted up above

my enemies all around me;

Therefore I will offer sacrifices of joy in His tabernacle;

I will sing, yes, I will sing praises to the Lord.

Hear, O LORD, when I cry with my voice!

Have mercy also upon me, and answer me.

When you said “Seek my face,”

My heart said to you, “Your face, LORD, I will seek.”