Are you in it or not?  It is a line from a poem that I wrote while studying Teresa of Avila’s The Interior Castle.  Are you in it or not?  It is a fierce invitation to life, to the possibility of living in a belly-to-belly relationship with the Beloved and your true self.  Are you in it or not?  I’m not sure that you can ever completely assent—the bidding seems to multiply upon its acceptance—but I’m going to try!

And so I am preparing for a month in the South of France.  Hey, no one said the journey had to be an ascetic one!   All seems madness right now.  Stacks of clothes, books, a bike
helmet, and way too many pairs of shoes attend my suitcase defined by the limits of size and weight.  I fight the compulsion to clean the bugs from the light housing of the shower fan as take-off time approaches.  There is a sense of urgency to household tasks that have lingered for longer than I am willing to admit in public.  It won’t all get done.  Nightmares manifest the hidden panic of what might be birthed in unscheduled time.  I move, suspended between terror and a to-do list.