At the beginning of the year, I had 99 goals. One was to write what it means to be inductive, for me.

You start writing. You don’t know the last line. You don’t know the next line, often, until is is left behind when your pen moves on across the page.

You know, maybe, what you want to learn about. Your soul, God, fear, doubt, what John the Baptist was thinking. But you don’t know how the answer is going to look.

And then, as you move down a street of thought, looking at trees and houses. You stop at one house, knock at the door. The resident opens the door, invites you in, offers you coffee. You ask a simple question. He talks a bit. He suggests a couple other people down the street you may visit. You look around the house a bit and then walk out to the sidewalk. He leaves the door open: “If you need anything.”

You walk across the street to the neighbor he suggested. She’s not home right now, but the couple sitting on the porch next door invites you up to wait.

As you talk over a cup of tea, you find that they’ve been talking about the very thing you are wondering about. But you never would have met them, without the absent neighbor.

She returns. You talk with her. She sends you back to the first house, on to the fifth house down.

You spend all day talking, listening, asking, waiting. It is a great day. But you still are looking.

At the end of the street you look back. You see the footsteps, back and forth, retraced, jumping. You see a sentence written, a picture painted. You find the summary, the explanation written there.

The headline, at the very end.