The path has always been
a motif in my life.
When I wrote an historical novel as a teenager, I chose to entitle it Path of Grass after this quote:
“I am not afraid they'll stamp me flat. Grass stamped flat soon becomes a path.”
One reason why I gravitated towards “Path & Ponder” for my blog name was because it encapsulates two ideas that seem to be at tension with each other: being and doing. To be on a path evokes a sense of action and movement. And to ponder suggests quiet stillness and reflection.
It feels like there's an eternal dance of
being and doing.
We're always seeking balance for the exact moment we're experiencing. (Also, it's possible to frame my interest in this paradox because my Saturn is in Pisces.)
Beyond the single question of walking a path and sitting in stillness, I'm drawn to any point where there appears to be tension. I feel at home in the in-between spaces. The liminal point where rationality meets spirituality. The intersection of the human-created world and the universe surrounding us. How one can hold personal agency within a web of interconnectedness.
I'm curious about the questions where there are no pat and easy answers. I ponder the nuance and complexity of what it means to experience this human life.
Learning to sit in the unknown.
Recently I read A Trackless Path by Ken McLeod, which is a really powerful introduction to the ideas of Buddhism. And of course, I was drawn to the book due to its title. The Trackless Path brings in another really important idea for me, which is about learning to sit in the unknown. To be comfortable in the mystery, the nebulous uncertainty, and wait for clarity to emerge.
“For that, I have found that the best way is to open to everything that is calling to me in my life — everything — whether it seems to be important or not. I do not try to sort out the flood of desires, demands, challenges, hopes, fears, aversions, longings and ideals. I just sit in the whole mess, until the direction and next step become clear.”
This is an idea I came to, not through reading, but through experience.
I spent a good deal of my life with a plan.
A clean path laid out on the map before me. I had a clearly defined career. I was married with the perfect white picket fence life. Everything made sense on paper.
Until it didn't.
Then I spent a couple years careening through the unknown as it all started to fall apart. I went from a stable life in the heart of the midwest to driving across the country to Seattle in an attempt to start over. And discovering it was possible to fall even further into uncertainty and disintegration.
And this was when I learned to sit in the darkness. To wait for potential to emerge from the unknown.
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
This quote got me through many dark days. I wrote it on an index card and taped it to my mirror for several years, across all the various places I called home. It was through these experiences that I discovered the unknown is not a place to shun — we only fear it because of the stories we believe about it.
I moved to east Tennessee in early 2025, having no idea where this decision would lead me. A part of my soul was still out in the mossy mountains of the PNW, and it was a bit of a heartsick time as I grappled with many layers of loss.
But what I learned is that when you fall into the unknown, there is something really beautiful and loving there to hold you. I won't constrict this mystery with a name, but if you've been there, you know what you hear in those quiet moments.
“Stillness.
One of the doors into the temple.”
In the last couple years I learned a new way of being. Living from a place of expansion and trust and joy. After everything else fell away, I discovered a path back to my soul. A deeper inner knowing, and paradoxically, a deeper peace in the experience of not-knowing. So I keep pondering the path as it unfolds before me.
