In last week’s Monday Meditation, I mentioned that I sometimes feel like I’m walking in circles:
Sometimes as I walk this path, I feel like I am just going around in circles, always finding myself back where I started with nothing to show for my trouble.
I tend to be such a linear thinker, imagining that this path I’m walking on life’s journey is a straight line, the shortest distance between two points. When I come to a bend or an angle, any slight degree off what I imagine to be the shortest, most economical, most correct way forward, I freak out.
The Worried Way
Instead of taking just that next step, trusting that the way has been laid out before me with precision and care to lead me in the way I should go–instead of walking in the wise way, I walk in the worried way.
I stress. I struggle. I try to somehow make the next step I take straight even though the path I’m walking is not. Suddenly, I’m not participating in the work God is doing by simply showing up and allowing God to do the work. Now I’m the one working hard, all the while rejecting the way forward because it does not fit my limited expectations.
Now I’m striving.
There is no grace in striving. No tenderness, no mercy, no room to begin again as St. Benedict encourages us in his Rule of Life.
This is where the true beauty of the labyrinth practice comes in for me.
Invitation for the Moment
To be continued next week! For now, I invite you to ask yourselves where in your life you are striving right now. Where are you rejecting the way God is inviting you to move forward in your life because it does not fit your expectations?
How might you let go of that expectation and welcome God’s leading in its place?
