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.