Do not follow blindly, 'cos you'll soon find yourself lost

I was sat with friends enjoying coffee, outside Café Nero, in the early morning sun the other day. I was facing away from the street, a position I don’t usually enjoy; I much prefer to face out, watching the world go by. We were in a positive mood, the beautiful hot weather no doubt playing a major part in this. This was suddenly brought to an abrupt halt. There was some kind of distressed sound from right behind me. We all stood up and turned round. Right there in front of us was the street cleaner with his cart, he had halted and looked shocked. There was also a woman with a baby in a papoose in front of her, she had a black Labrador. The dog was a guide dog as the woman was blind. We were all in shock, not knowing what had happened or what to do. There was the fear the baby was hurt, thankfully the child was not. The woman broke down in tears and was led to sit down. The street cleaner was ok too. Things settled down and all was ok. Folk continued about their business. I returned home a little later. The woman, her baby and guide dog were just behind me and two friends as we walked towards the chapel. I was stood talking with two friends having crossed the road. Molly has learnt not to cross until the green man appears and it begins to beep. I stood talking with the friends on the chapel side of the road. As we were talking we saw the woman, her baby and guide dog safely cross the road. We spoke with her, all was well, and interestingly she was coming to the large schoolroom at the chapel to go to her regular mother and child exercise class. The guide dog knew the way very well.

The whole incident has been on my mind ever since. It certainly awakened my “homiletic consciousness”, which I once heard described as “going through life thinking, “Can I use this in a sermon?” . Any person who uses their own experiences of life to create something for others does the same, such as an artist or poet, a writer, teacher, song writer or storyteller. As you can see this is happening now. It got me thinking about how much the woman has to trust in her guide dog to live freely in the world. How much that incident must have shaken her up. How frightening it must have been not only for her own safety, but also her baby. How whilst we were all shocked, everyone responded in loving and caring ways and just wanted to make sure everyone was ok. How after breaking down the woman picked herself up, dusted herself down and started all over again. She got on with her day, she trusted her dog absolutely and all was well. She knew the path that she must follow, as did the dog and she continued on it.

I was talking about the incident with the friends who were present a few mornings later, trying to make sense of what happened. We hadn’t seen it as it happened. It was the noise and change in atmosphere that caught our attention. We surmised that both parties must have been moving slowly. How did the dog not see what was in front of him? How did the street cleaner not see them? They just slowly walked into each other, like two ships in a fog. We surmised the road cleaner was probably daydreaming and the guide dog got distracted. One friend suggested that perhaps the dog had been distracted by the scent of Molly who is in season. This seems possible, but who knows. It got me thinking and as you can see it awakened my homiletic consciousness.

I’ve never had a great sense of direction and or spatial awareness. My mind does not operate in images. Maybe this is why I rarely if ever remember my dreams or even recall having them. I’m more of a communicator really and mainly through sound and conversation. I can describe to you exactly how things felt that morning, the emotions of the individuals, but the imagery is all a bit vague. I have other friends who will be able to describe who was say where, what people were wearing and what the individuals looked like. We are all different, it is very important to understand this. We truly do not all think alike, although I do like to believe that we can all love alike.

Now while my way of operating has its advantages, there are some disadvantages too. I get lost very easily. This is why since I learnt to drive I have relied on Sat Nav. Moving onto the Waze system in more recent years. It has usually proved reliable. The great thing about it is if you take a wrong turn, it will quickly adjust and direct you back on track. Generally, this has worked out well, but once or twice it has not. Sat Nav is very good but it cannot be relied upon 100%, sometimes it can send you down the wrong path, especially if you follow unquestioningly. Sat nav is a good guide, but you must never stop trusting your eyes, and or common sense. No guide is 100% reliable all the time, even the best trained of guide dogs it seems. We will take knocks, we will get lost on our journeys through life.

Life itself and the spiritual life in particular are often described as a journey. That said it’s not a journey in which we really travel a great distance. As Wendell Berry so beautifully wrote, echoing that great mystic Meister Eckhart, “And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long, but only by a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, by which we arrive at the ground at our feet, and learn to be at home.”

On this journey we often come to forks in the road when we must take decisions on which way we ought to turn. Many times we make wrong decisions, I think we have to get it wrong many times, before we get it right. Many times we get lost too. Many times we take advice from others and follow it blindly. Many times this is helpful but other times it really is not. It can lead us down the wrong path, but that’s ok because we can always get back on track again.

Often this journey is described as a path, I have just done so, and I have heard many say that it gets narrower. I am not convinced of this. If I have learnt anything I have learnt that the spiritual journey is not like a path at all and certainly not a narrow one. In my experience it is broad and rooming all inclusive and welcoming, never exclusive or forbidding and open to all. What in 12 step culture they call “The Broad Highway” and one that allows a great deal of room for error.

I think one of the biggest mistakes we make when we speak of spiritual matters is when we describe them in narrow language. It puts people off, because it sounds too much and beyond us. It should not be like that, there is room for us all and it isn’t so hard to get started, it just requires a slight change in direction.

Let us also remember that the spiritual journey is one of depth and not really distance. Sometimes the biggest mistake we make is that we continue journeying on, head down, not looking all around us, too focused on a perceived goal. This is due, I am sure, to the fear that if we don’t keep on moving we might get lost or that our troubles might catch up with us. I do not believe that this is healthy. In many ways by just marching on ever forward we can become completely lost, in the sense that we lose who we are at the core of ourselves, that sense of belonging here in life, as we are, wanted, needed and loved. Or we walk into something without knowing it is front of us. Anyone can live their life as if they were blind.

These thoughts bring to mind the beautiful poem “Lost” by David Wagoner,

“Lost”

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

by David Wagoner

Sometimes when you feel lost you aren’t as lost as you think. What you are is actually in a place you would rather not be. This is beautifully illustrated in the following bit of wisdom form my old favourite Mulla Nasruddin

Nasruddin was sat on a river bank when someone shouted to him from the opposite side:

“Hey! how do I get to the other side?”
To which Nasruddin replied “You are on the other side!”

We are always on the other side of the river.

Throughout our journeys’ we pass through many stages of our lives and looking back no doubt we can see these staging posts, moments in our lives that have made us who we are, that have deepened our experiences of life and given us wisdom to pass on to others, if they would care to have it.

On our journeys there are not only staging posts, but guide posts and actual guides too, that have helped we pilgrims along the way. Some we have paid heed of, others we have not. Some ancient, some contemporary. Hopefully we have not followed them blindly, but sometimes no doubt we have as we have trusted too implicitly perhaps, a bit like those Sat Nav horror stories we sometime here about of people driving almost blindly into a lake or river. We have to learn to trust our senses as well as the sixth sense too, the inner voice, the inner light that speaks to us when we have ears that can hear.

The ancient stories give many great examples of the different types of journeys, pilgrimages and Odyssey’s that we may undertake. In his meditation “The Spiritual Journey” David O Rankin names a few who have walked courageously through theirs. Stating:

“It is Moses leading the Jews through the desert of Sinai, and Jesus enduring the temptation in the wilderness of Israel, and Buddha seeking enlightenment along the dusty roads of India.

It is the glorious voyage of Odysseus in Homer’s Odyssey, the narrow paths through the circles of hell in Dante’s Inferno, and the confessions of the travellers in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

It is the pilgrims sailing on the Mayflower, the settlers moving westward, being On the Road with Jack Kerouac, and spinning through a black hole in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey”

We are all of us pilgrims on the sacred journey that is life and like so many of the more famous ones we think we have to go someplace else to discover our own Nirvana or to build the New Jerusalem. Just as the pilgrims on the Mayflower did in the seventeenth century, with those words from Hebrews we heard earlier singing in their hearts. They believed that they had to travel a great distance to a new land to create their heaven on earth. Well, I have discovered that this is not necessary. You do not have to travel great distances to experience the beautiful journey and you do not need to travel great distances to build the New Jerusalem, it must be here, in our own hearts or nowhere. The “Kin-dom” of Love has to be built here or nowhere.

I suspect it’s the same about finding ourselves once again when we feel lost. Who or what do we listen to? Well I am learning to listen to that inner voice, that light that shines bright within all of us. That spark of the Divine that is within everything. That which awakens the sense of my senses, that which guides me home no matter how lost I am and that which allows me to be at home wherever my feet are planted. That Kin-dom of Love, within me, within each of you and within everything.

Let love be our navigator it will always lead us home, to the place where we belong.

The problem isn’t getting lost, we all get lost at times. The problem is in losing faith that you cannot find your way again. The key is how we live when we find ourselves lost. Do we close down and get lost deeper in our fear, or do we pause and reach out and ask for help from those loving forces that are all around whether visible or invisible.

I saw a beautiful example of faith and trust the other day sat outside Café Nero. A woman who had experienced a terrifying knock, it must have been an awful shock to her confidence in herself and her guide. She took stock, she accepted help and comfort and then she got up once again, with her baby safe and secure in her papoose, hanging infront of her heart. She trusted her guide dog and she continued on her way with her daily activities. I saw she had absolute trust and no fear as she waited to be guided across the road. What a beautiful example of faith and trust and most of all love.

Thank you

Below is a video devotion based on the material in this "blog spot"