As the year starts to draw to a close, I can be swamped with thoughts of what I did not get done, goals that slipped away, wonder at how fast another year is passing. But the wonder is usually outgunned by the critical voices, the deadline critters, those useful but seldom satisfied parts.

The need to achieve progress slips all too easily into our spiritual lives: where are my big leaps, growth spurts, lessons learned and integrated? I know in my gut that this is not how God measures things, but the mind can get carried away, thinking size matters.

That is why I am so fond of this poem by Wendell Berry. He gets the size thing right:

A Spiritual  Journey

And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long, but only by a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, by which we arrive at the ground at our feet, and learn to be at home.

One inch! Yes, and it's often an astoundingly wild and hard and surprising inch. Each of you knows something about this measurement. Many of you may be wrestling with that small step this very week. Resist the temptation to diminish or be impatient with all you are doing, all the brave moves and shifts you are juggling or trying to imagine taking on. Trust the home ground that awaits you.

Years ago, I taught a class based on a classic book by Episcopal laywoman Avery Brooke. The book is "Christian Meditation," and she outlines a powerful method that mainly involves being with a text, or an object in nature, for a long, contemplative time and seeing whether some insight or sense of God's direction comes from this meditation time. Often it does, and often, the urge is surprising.

Then she adds the kicker: Don't just close your prayer time quietly noting what floated up--the equivalent of putting it back in the drawer. She stresses the need to incarnate what you heard, to take the "token step" in the direction that seems right. For example, if you got the realization you need to make amends with someone you haven't spoken to years, you don't necessarily pick up the phone right away, but you find out where they now live and what the new number is. You move in some way... some inch of ground is traveled.

This coming week, especially this coming week of thanksgiving, reflection, and possible travel, think of the inches and the token steps you are traversing these days. Give thanks for them, ask for help with them, trust them. They are sacred ground.