Who outside this house pointed me in a good direction this year?
Pilgrim, the made-up traveler from the last two weeks, was still in the narrow hallway behind the door marked Purpose. It hadn't gotten any wider. What kept Pilgrim going was the thin line of light far ahead, and the hope underneath it: somewhere at the end of this path was a whole world, where nothing was missing and nothing was broken. From here on, Pilgrim called it the narrow path.
A little way in, something new appeared. Set into the walls on both sides were doors, the same four from the round room, with the same gold letters: Power, Pleasure, Plenty, Pride. At each one, a voice was waiting.
"Wholeness isn't worth all this," said the voice at Pleasure. "You'll never get there anyway. Come in and rest."
"Wholeness means treating everybody else as more important than you," said the voice at Power. "Take control instead."
"Other people are getting more claps than you," said the voice at Pride.
Every voice aimed at Pilgrim's head, trying to make what Pilgrim's heart wanted look foolish.
The walls pressed in, and the bag pulled at Pilgrim's shoulder. At the next Pleasure door, Pilgrim stopped, and then opened it. For one warm minute it was wonderful. Then the floor began to move, faster and faster, and it carried Pilgrim out into the round room, to the very same spot. Every step on the narrow path was gone.
Pilgrim sat there a long time. Then Pilgrim got up, walked past the lamp, still burning, and went through the narrow door again.
Not far in, the voice at Power started up. Pilgrim's hand went to the handle and stopped there. Pilgrim closed both eyes and looked up.
What do I actually want? A minute of being in charge would never be enough. Pilgrim wanted a whole world, and somewhere down this path was the answer to the question from home. I know I want the right thing.
And that door? Pilgrim had already seen where it led. Even if I never reach the end, that door is a waste. I'm on the right path, and I'm going the right direction.
I can't do the whole hallway today. I can do ten more steps.
"Ten more steps," Pilgrim said out loud, then opened both eyes and walked.
Farther on, a new voice spoke from the door marked Plenty: "You're going to need a lot more than that bag." Far ahead, the line of light was a little brighter. Pilgrim stopped, closed both eyes, and paused again.
We'll leave Pilgrim there for now. Pilgrim's story picks up again on December 23.
On Day 1 we saw peace as the destination, where everything is whole. On the way there, peace has a second job: it's the guide. Peace is knowing you want the right thing and you're walking in the right direction. It doesn't mean the pain is gone. It sounds more like this: I don't like this, but it's the right path. I don't know when it ends, but I know I'm headed the right way. That kind of peace comes when heart and head agree.
When they argue, a pause can bring them back together. Pilgrim's pause had three steps.
Alignment. Look up, past the want of the moment, to the deeper desire underneath it. For many people, this is one way to pray when heart and head disagree: bringing the want to God and asking what is actually best.
Discernment. Name the other door for what it is. Pilgrim had already ridden that conveyor belt, so the voice's promise had lost its shine. Most of us know a door or two like that.
Commitment. Choose the next small stretch you can actually do, and say it out loud: ten more steps, five more minutes, one more day.
Afterward the hallway was just as narrow and the bag just as heavy, but Pilgrim kept walking.
Pilgrim worked through those steps alone, but most of us don't have to. Along the way we get help from people outside our house: a friend who points us in the right direction, a coach or teacher who shows us the path by how they live, a coworker who tells us we're on the right track, or someone honest enough to call a door we were about to open a waste.
Who outside your house helped you know you were on the right path this year?
Each person takes one red paper circle.
On the front, write the name of someone outside your house who helped you know you were on the right path this year: a friend, neighbor, teacher, coach, coworker, or grandparent.
On the back, write what they did. "Thank you for telling me the new job was worth the hard first month, when I was ready to quit."
Hang it on the green layer, writing toward the wall.
Red ornaments stay on the tree. Nobody takes them down on December 18.
Kids' story: read "Ten More Steps" from The Overflow Adventure in Wanderful Woods together.
Time: 15 to 20 minutes. The Heart takes about three minutes to read aloud.
With kids: ask, "Why do you think Pilgrim closed both eyes before opening a door? What's something hard you could do ten more steps of?" A child can draw the person who helped them, or tell you what to write.
Try the pause: anyone stuck on a hard choice can try the three steps out loud before bed. What do I really want? Is that other door a waste? What are my ten more steps?
Pilgrim's story: it continues on December 23, Joy week's Day 2.
Hello, my wonderful story friends! Last time, both families had one whole evening together, where nothing was missing and nothing was broken. But when Mr. Monkey looked up through the snow, the little light at the top of Everest’s cliff looked a tiny bit smaller. Today, the friends find out why.
When something is really hard, what helps you keep going? Let’s go see what helps the friends.
In the morning, the wind came. It roared over Lookout Ledge, HWOOOOO, and shook the snow off the treetops in long white streamers, and made the little green pine by the Moose home’s door bow over and stand back up, bow over and stand back up.
Mr. Moose stood in the doorway and looked up at the cliff.
The light at the top was very small now. Just a flicker.
“The candle,” he said. “It’s burning down. It’s been burning for two whole days. If nobody brings a new one, it’ll go out.”
Mr. Monkey looked at the cliff. Then he looked at the wind, pulling at every branch in the woods. “Today?”
“Today,” said Mr. Moose. “Before it’s gone.”
So Mama Moose rolled a new candle, and Ricky brought his jar, and they set off: Mr. Moose and Mr. Monkey, Ricky and Bruno and Hazel and Shiloh. Up the littlest trail, past Mama Hedgehog’s snow lantern, with the new candle tucked safe in Ricky’s jar in Mr. Moose’s sack, and Shiloh’s scarf wrapped around Mr. Moose’s antlers.
The wind followed them the whole way. It pushed at their backs, and then it pushed at their faces. It flapped Bruno’s cheeks, flubba-flubba-flubba, so hard that he looked like he was talking without saying anything.
“Bruno,” said Mr. Monkey, “your face is waving.”
“Flubba,” said Bruno.
“Hee hee hee!” went Mr. Monkey.
Mr. Monkey held on to his yellow hat with one hand, and his tail blew straight out behind him, stiff as a stick. Whichever way the wind blew, his tail pointed. “I’m a weathervane!” he called.
“Ha-ha-ha!” laughed Mr. Moose.
And then they came to the bottom of the ice trail. The big, shiny, fun one. The one that was really a slide.
Hazel stopped. She looked at the slide. She looked up the littlest trail, steep and rocky and full of wind. She looked at the slide again.
“Just one slide,” she said. “Just one. Then I’ll catch up.”
And off she went. WHEEEEEEEEEE, all the way around the hill, faster and faster, and FOOMF into the snowdrift at the very bottom. Right back where they started that morning.
She popped up with snow on her nose. “Hee hee hee… SNORT!” Then she looked up. Everybody was way up the hill now. She had to climb the whole first part all over again.
So she did. All by herself, huffing and puffing, she climbed back up and found them. “That was fun,” she panted. “But it went the wrong way.”
“It always goes the wrong way,” said Ricky.
They kept going. Up the gray wall, on Bruno’s rope. Out onto the long bare ridge. And up there, the wind was the strongest it had ever been. It blew so hard that the friends had to hold on to each other in a line. It blew snow in their eyes. It blew right through their fur.
Mr. Monkey stopped.
He was cold. He was so cold. His fingers hurt, and his toes hurt, and he couldn’t feel the tip of his tail at all. He thought about the Moose home, and the fire, and the soup. He thought about the slide, and how easy it would be to just go back down.
“Mr. Moose,” he said. “Maybe we should go home.”
Mr. Moose didn’t know what to say. He was cold too. His legs were tired too. And he could see the light at the top, flickering, flickering, so small.
Then a small voice spoke up behind them. It was Shiloh, who almost never spoke up about anything.
“Look up,” said Shiloh softly.
Everybody looked at him.
“When I’m scared,” said Shiloh, “my mama says, look up. Look at what you really want.”
So Mr. Monkey looked up. Way up, at the top of the cliff, at that tiny flickering light. What did he really want? He wanted to be warm. But more than that, way more, he wanted Everest’s light to keep shining. He wanted the highest place in the woods to have a light in it on the longest night of the year.
“I want the light to stay on,” said Mr. Monkey.
Mr. Moose thought about the slide. They knew where the slide went. Around and around, and back to the bottom. Going home now would be warm. But it would leave the light to go out.
“Then this is the right path,” said Mr. Moose slowly. “Even if it’s hard. It’s still the right one.”
Mr. Monkey looked at the long ridge ahead. It was so far. He couldn’t do the whole thing. Not all at once.
“I can’t do all of it,” he said. “But I can do ten more steps.”
“Ten more steps,” said Mr. Moose.
They said it out loud, all of them, into the wind:
“Look up! Right path! Ten more steps!”
And they took ten more steps. Then they stopped, and they said it again. “Look up! Right path! Ten more steps!” And they took ten more. Bruno said it loudest, so loud the wind carried it all the way down the ridge. Hazel said it while she walked.
Ricky counted the steps out loud, “One, two, three…”, until Bruno started counting too, “four, five, nine, twelve, ELEVENTY,” and Ricky lost track.
“Haw haw haw!” went Bruno. “That was ten!”
“I don’t know what that was,” said Ricky.
“It was ten and eleventy more,” said Bruno.
Sammy came zipping along the ridge behind them, because Sammy could zip anywhere, even in a windstorm. “Hey! What did the tree say to the wind?” And the wind grabbed her and blew her right back down the hill before she could finish.
From far, far away came her voice: “LEAF ME ALONE!”
“Hee hee hee!” went Mr. Monkey, and that made the next ten steps go faster.
Look up. Right path. Ten more steps. Over and over and over.
And then they were at the top.
The squash lantern sat on the rock beside Everest, just where they had left it. Inside it, the old candle was so short it was almost a puddle, and the little flame was bending and shivering. Everest was sitting right beside it with one great wing held out, trying to keep the wind off the flame.
Mr. Moose took the new candle out of Ricky’s jar and lit it from the very last flicker of the old one, just before it went out. He stood it inside the jar, inside the squash. And the flame stood up straight.
Everest folded his wing. He looked at the friends, and he tipped one wing toward them, slowly, just once.
“That was better than the slide,” said Hazel, puffing, with snow all the way up to her ears. “Way better.”
“It went the right way,” said Ricky.
All the way back down, they could see it behind them, not a flicker anymore, but a steady little light, shining in the wind.
That night, by the little green pine, they painted red circles. Mr. Monkey painted Shiloh on the front, curly and small. On the back, he painted a long windy ridge, a line of friends holding on to each other, and one little sheep at the back, pointing up.
“What a day!” said Mr. Monkey. “The wind made Bruno’s face wave and my tail into a weathervane. Hazel took the slide and had to climb all the way back up. I wanted to go home, but Shiloh said look up. So we said look up, right path, ten more steps, over and over. And the wind blew Sammy away in the middle of her joke.”
Mr. Monkey whistled, and Mr. Moose hummed, and together they sang:
We are better together,
Moose and Monkey forever.
And high above Wanderful Woods, the new candle burned steady inside the jar inside the squash, while a great eagle sat beside it in the dark, watching it shine.