A few hundred feet past the light and down Marion road is a blue and white library sign. Taking the sidewalk to the back parking lot, crossing the spaces and climbing the stone stairs, I reach Highland Court. It’s small, with four driveways and two houses that look onto its asphalt. There are many more chickens and garden beds here than people – farmland in downtown Wareham. Cars must enter and exit from Highland Avenue because it ends at the chain link fence at the top of the stairs – passable on foot and a dead end behind the wheel. It’s a peaceful lane leading to a quiet destination of books and dreaming for cyclers, strollers, and walkers.

Years back, Highland Court was the access road to the elementary school – a place of learning and playing, noisy and busy. Buses and cars drove through an entry now blocked by the fence. When the school burned down, elementary education moved out of town center and the library moved in. Now and back then, it’s mostly children who take this pavement and staircase; once a way to elementary school, now a shortcut to the library. After a good snow, it’s a tiny sliding hill for small children.

I’m here frequently. It’s an integral part of my walking route, leads to the houses of dear friends, and delivers me to the library. Like my life path, it began in elementary learning and no longer concerns itself with the complexity that can dominate life between childhood and grey haired maturity. Fostering green spaces and birds, domestic and wild, is a treasured activity, and it leads to a place of beautiful words and images. When I walk the earth here, I see my life: simple and short, with a beginning and an end. There’s a staircase that takes me beyond it. The way is narrow and I can’t enter weighed down with cars or camels, or troubled by many things. But that’s to be expected – it’s how Jesus sent his disciples into the world. Holy adventures start with empty hands, simple faith, and the willingness to be part of God’s amazing story.

 But there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. (John 21:25, NRSV)

 Question: If we are Christ in this world, then we continue the story. What adventures are found in your life’s chapter?