To Choose What is Difficult

Living the spiritual life is volunteering for an assignment filled with the danger of unknowing. It is to always risk the struggle with one's self and the world with no guarantees that what rises up from inside you or what the world has to offer will be sunshine and hugs.  This is not to say that life is an endless anxiety about frightful things in the shadows, but that we enter in faith, in trust that both light and shadow are part of the journey, not that the momentary experience is the whole of the journey.

Faith is not a momentary feeling, but a struggle against the discouragement that threatens us every time we meet with resistance.  - Bakole wa Ilunga, Catholic Bishop, Zaire

To choose the spiritual life is to intentionally choose a difficult trail, not a smooth path.  How well prepared are you for the journey?  Are you able to see the unforeseen hard places to navigate as the way the trail is? And yet, still enjoy the beauty of the trail, the sights, the sounds, the smells, the effort, the air, the wind, the rain, the walk, your companions? Or is it only a difficult trail?  

To choose what is difficult all one's days as if it were easy, that is faith.   - W. H. Auden

I have chosen this trail. I will keep hiking.  I am on a pilgrimage.

Staying Put

I feel like I'm being called to remain in a difficult place. I don't like it.  I've never been much good with this type of thing.  It's time for a pilgrimage, but the saintly remains and shrine are only going to be found by staying home this time.  Plans change.

A friend sent me an email yesterday containing a lengthy quote from one of my favorite Unitarian ministers. It was meant as a pick me up through a desert time.  I don't know if my friend remembered that this same quote was a reading at my installation as pastor at the church where I am now.  Maybe? Maybe that's why it was chosen.  Either way, it was a spirit filled moment.

I received a letter from an old friend yesterday. I very dear friend and honest to goodness real snail mail letter. He wrote that he sensed I was facing challenges.  Too intuitive.  Another tap on my shoulder.

Something seems to be nipping at my heels, tapping my shoulder, tugging on my T-shirt.  Should I stay or should I go now?

A New Rule of Life

I have some daily spiritual practices.  I sit and meditate every morning.  I do spiritual reading. Most days I also walk, often without my iPod now, paying attention to the divine expression of the world around me.  I am exploring with adding more to personal daily and weekly practice.  I do not end the day regularly.  Sometimes, I do not make sure I get enough sleep. Often, I let the day zip by me without stopping during the course of my business, my ministry, my meetings, my work, my writing, to see just what is going on; to remember that God is.

I am a heretic by formal affiliation, being a Unitarian Universalist, and have always been one ready to break rules in the name of justice and so on, but here I am now realizing I just may need some new rules. Something else may fit. What? I don't know.  I thought fasting was a Gandhian exercise that had nothing for me, but when I stopped to think about it, I realized that I'd joined weight watchers.

Oh, and God is okay with me. God was cool with Channing and Ballou and James Luther Adams and also with me.  I don't talk a lot about that here in a UU church in Texas and I am certain my idea of God is very different from the prevailing concept of deity I will encounter should I strike up a conversation at the gym tomorrow, but there it is, or there She is or He is.

I've started a course or program in spiritual direction. Eventually, I can see myself being a spiritual director. First, comes going through my own soul on pilgrimage.  A lot miles will be done in silence and in stillness, thus the title of the new blog: Still Pilgrimage.  Yes, it's an obvious play on words. I'm still on pilgrimage and my own journey will involve a lot of being quiet and being, well, still.  Journaling with actual pen and paper will become a part of my life again, but blogging has become a spiritual exercise for me as well.  I may not write on the blog what I write in the journal, but it will be another way to reflect on the journey, which at times may get unsettled too, I'm sure.