rowing on the lakes of Canada

Every song by The Innocence Mission is familiar to my heart- as if a brilliant person observed the moments (significant and seemingly not) and captured them perfectly.

Tonight my soul is wandering through forest of thoughts, I do not want to be tamed... llingering on faces that have meant something (significant and seemingly not), but always skipping or stumbling forward.

Those foreign lands call, away from this home I've already lost to my nomadic heart-- to a heavenly city. It calls like a ship coming into harbor, growing bigger (and more forbearing) as it nears this shore. Just a short time away. It is nearing and I stand watching, longing to breathe that ocean air, and secretly wondering about this trust- this love- that calls for abandon, for pursuit, to night after night drown in those waves and be baptized so He can rise in me.

I met a young man recently, a sailor on that sea, and I could hear in his voice the ache of a stranger, of a man who has no home but "seeks a better country." And it made my heart beat. to join him. to taste. to see. and it skipped, to run, to tremble before this burden. But, I could hear in his voice, what only those who journey discover, the deepest mysteries of Glory. And I was ruined for it.

Someday, someday... how the waiting stretches over me- sometimes suffocating, sometimes security.

but this says it all:

Walking in the circle of a flashlight
someone starts to sing, to join in.
Talk of loneliness in quiet voices.
I am shy but you can reach me.
Rowing on the lakes of Canada,
rowing on the lakes of Canada.