Just get lost
One of the pressures faced in workaday life is to provide a calm, assured presence which bespeaks being in control, knowing what’s happening and being prepared for whatever eventuality. A veneer of competence and unruffled professionalism. Bit like a swan. One of my concerns with this stance is that I wonder how open we are to change and development when we position ourselves like that for too long. We can become victims of our own propaganda, so much so that we assume we do know what’s going on and how to respond, deafening ourselves by degrees to disturbing new possibilities and failing to attend to what’s provocatively vital in order to grow. The classic example biblically would I guess be the religious leaders response to Jesus. So how do we avoid hardening into ultra-competent but stunted beings? One thought is by being willing to admit we’re lost more often than we do.
In the middle of the road of my life
I awoke in a dark wood
Where the way was wholly lost.
That’s Dante’s first line in the Divine Comedy according to one translation – lostness is the beginning of the journey for Dante to heaven, and there’s a waking up to lostness which means a fresh start has been made. Recognising lostness is thus a mark of spiritual movement! And isn’t it the case that following our path must mean going off the path if it is genuinely to be our path? This makes sense of experience too – the moments when we’ve been genuinely at sea, in terms of relationship breakdown, career crisis, health issues…. these moments of lostness which are awful at the time might nevertheless be seen, looking back, as times of discovery which we wouldn’t give up for all the world.
I suppose all of this shouldn’t really be surprising – the Judeo-Christian scriptures indicate that God does some of his best work with people who are lost in one way or another. The problem isn’t being lost, it’s pretending we’re not. Once we’ve admitted it we’re open to re-direction and expansion. And Dante has a lot to say about that too, but I guess that’s for another day.










I'm Mike, welcome to a place of rumination and reflection on the Christian way, lots of trial and plenty of error, but nothing ventured.....