The sun has fallen behind the trees as my Gay Old Soulmate and I sit here on the deck in our little queer retreat cottage. If all goes well, we soon will leave behind the house we have lived in for twenty-seven years in the city we have lived in for thirty-two. We will move to a different house in a different town a few miles away from where we sit now.

Only an occasional bird call or distant dog’s bark breaks the silence. My soul has lived in unsettled quiet for some time now.

Stuck in a low-energy, uninspired place. Too quiet. As much as I feel satisfied contentment in the city, I have lost spiritual energy. In our decision to move geographically, I detect a bed-rock spiritual movement rising in me once again. I sense possibilities and inspirations shaking loose. I have blocked those possibilities and inspirations for a long time with many good things: sensibility about my health, noble responsibilities to church, maintaining close proximity to friends I love, familiar exercise of necessary tasks, and reliance on known resources.

I have long resisted the latent insight that spiritual growth may require letting go of good things. Too long, I have refused to do what I so often tell others is necessary: to move into the unknown.

I feel slightly disingenuous writing of this as a move into “the unknown.” Vermont has been part of our lives since we first traveled here in Fall 1986. We got soaked by rains at a state-park campground and stumbled into a long-since-closed gay bar in the small town where we now plan to live. We have visited regularly ever since. We know the area and some individuals quite well.

Yet I do not know how to live here, to move here, to have my being here. Spiritually, I will be mostly new here. And I need new challenges. I need new contexts. I need to wake up to a new morning that pulls me beyond simply “doing what needs to be done” through the daze of a familiar soul slumber.

In our new home in our new town, I anticipate developing some new habits of mind and body and spirit and soul. As we shape our new space, I see myself reshaping my inner self. As I walk the wooded paths just steps from our new front door, I imagine bumping into the Spirit unexpectedly. As I enter new social connections and take part in local actions new to me, I expect to exercise new (or long-dormant) gifts.

I hope that when I return to visit old friends in my old city, or welcome them in our new home, I will have new energy to offer our friendship. I hope to gain new insight into the love of friends as we maintain our connections in new ways. And I hope to bring new friends into a circle of community that will become geographically wider and experientially deeper.

In terms of age and life, my Gay Old Soulmate and I have reached an evening. Simultaneously, we appear to be moving into an unfolding day. May allowing ourselves to turn with the world away from the nurturing sun of one good day into night enable us to emerge into a beautiful unknown morning. May that morning be full of possibilities that we can only vaguely imagine as we sit here, under this evening sky, in anticipation together.