I’m listening to Joan Osborne singing one of my favorite songs, “One of Us,” in which she’s asking,

What if God was one of us?
Just a slob like one of us
Just a stranger on a bus
Trying to make his way home
Like a holy rolling stone
Back up to heaven all alone.

I remembered Stephan Gaskin once saying something like this too – saying something like, so you’re enlightened, great, but you still have to mind the store and tend to the little things, that sort of thing. For him, enlightenment was not in itself the end of spiritual striving.

I also thought of the Buddhists and their notion of the Bodhisattva, the person who achieves enlightenment but who stays behind with the rest of us in ordinary reality just as long as there’s anyone left here still unenlightened.

Listening to her sing, I wondered if maybe I was a Bodhisattva, like the God that she was singing about, just a stranger trying to make my way home, like a holy rolling stone. The thing is, even if I am God, even if I am enlightened, it’s not that big a deal. I still have to take care of business. I still have to raise and support my family. I still have to contribute to the general welfare and consciousness.

Maybe this is what I was thinking about when I decided that this time around I wanted to be Wanderer right here in the middle of ordinary, everyday reality. I’ve wandered many lonesome back roads and wild forest trails in my day. I’ve wandered in the darker regions of my soul. I’ve wandered to the higher reaches of Spirit. I’ve seen the Light. But I have never wandered and shared myself in ordinary reality. It’s about time that I do.