"I will give you what no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, what no hand has touched, what has not arisen in the human heart." Jesus, in the Gospel of Thomas

I get a little pensive usually, on the day after Christmas, but today is worse than usual. I trudge through Santa Fe this afternoon, bundled up in my down coat, wool hat pulled down nearly to my eyes, cranky that I'm at work and not at home with the rest of my family and the horses, amazed at all the tourists gleefully sloshing through the mud and snow, still buying things.

And I'll have to admit, I do peer, kind of half-interested, kind of partially out of habit, kind of bored, into a couple of store windows decorated with big red ribbons on my way to the sandwich shop to see if there are any really good deals I can't live without. Even here, in the middle of the oldest city in the continental U.S. (now don't laugh, you Europeans with your ancient stone castles), in the midst of all of this beauty and art, at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, I am overwhelmed by a sense of plastic, of the candy-apple-red, electronic-singing-Santa-Clause variety.

And I realize that I'm lost.

It's like that time Dennis and I came down from the Trail Rider's Wall way up in the Pecos, and found ourselves in an alpine meadow with the grass nearly up to the horse's bellies, somewhere above Beatty's cabin. Quite frankly, we didn't know where we were exactly. The trail had ended, disappeared right into the ether, I swear, and he just made his best call about which direction we should head home in (although he only told me about that part later, after we were safely off the mountain), all the time with the sun racing towards the horizon.

I start thinking about how far removed I can get from where I want to go. This journey I endeavor. What the heck was yesterday all about, I ask myself, as we all seem to be back to business as usual? Bah. I say. Humbug.

I feel my eyelids getting heavier. The lenses of my perception clouding like the fake snow on the store windows. The made-in-China Santa Claus with his fire-engine red cheeks is holding his big jelly belly and jeering at me through the snowflakes. All these people I don't know are crowding around me clasping their plastic. They are the same as me. They are me. And then I remember.

Don't go away, come near.
Don't be faithless, be faithful.
Find the antidote in the venom.
Come to the root of the root of yourself.

Molded of clay, yet kneaded
from the substance of certainty,
a guard at the Treasury of Holy Light --
come, return to the root of the root of your Self.

Once you get hold of selflessness,
You'll be dragged from your ego
and freed from many traps.
Come, return to the root of the root of your Self.

You are born from the children of God's creation,
but you have fixed your sight too low.
How can you be happy?
Come, return to the root of the root of your Self.

You were born from a ray of God's majesty
and have the blessings of a good star.
Why suffer at the hands of things that don't exist?
Come, return to the root of the root of your Self.

You are a ruby embedded in granite.
How long will you pretend it's not true?
We can see it in your eyes.
Come to the root of the root of your Self.

You came here from the presence of that fine Friend,
a little drunk, but gentle, stealing our hearts
with that look so full of fire; so,
come, return to the root of the root of your Self.

Our master and host, Shamsi Tabrizi,
has put the eternal cup before you.
Glory be to God, what a rare wine!
So come, return to the root of the root of your Self.