I’ve spent a few days in the woods of North Carolina with a retired pastor who lives in a simple cabin by a river. We talk about nature, art, spirituality.  We talk about dogs, and walk our dogs for hours in the woods. We talk about Heron Dance, and my ideas about how make it better, and his about how I need to relax into the work and stop trying make it better. “Stop trying so hard. Relax into it,” he says.

He told me a story this morning about a troubled sophomore year in college, and his close relationship with a mentor who had been a chaplain in the Marine Corps during the Pacific campaign in WWII. My friend recounted how, during a particularly troubled time, he had said to his mentor that he had few answers but lots of questions, and the mentor responded,

“God is in the questions, not the answers.”

That is of course the direction I’m wanting to take Heron Dance – journaling questions that I’ve found useful in trying to understand the course of my life, the spiritual current that underlies my life, and how to use that to add to the journeys — the journeys both different from my own or similar to my own — of Heron Dance readers.

Here are some questions I’ve found useful in my journaling:

Who do you serve?

To whose life can I most effectively contribute?

What practice –- meditation, or relaxation practice, or prayer, or time in nature -- whatever brings you peace -– do you follow to build your internal power?

Do you allocate enough time or emphasis to that practice?

There is a time to give and a time to restore. Restorative time is the basis of all worthwhile creative work, and all work that seeks to contribute to the lives of others.

And it gives us patience with our own foibles, and those of others.