A Prayer of Unknowing

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I'm following Your will does not mean that I'm actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please You does in fact please You. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this You will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore, I will trust You always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for You are ever with me, and You will never leave me to face my perils alone. Amen.~Thomas Merton (From Thoughts In Solitude)

People come to the rescue, just in the nick of time. In my mind, I was a woman standing alone by the edge of the sea. The waves an indefatigable soundtrack. Salt crusted on my lips. Seagulls crying overhead. The sky mildly blue. I pondered my life and decisions I needed to make. Then it was as if I turned my head and envisaged two women walking toward me, one a little older, one considerably younger. Beloved women in my life. Wise women who'd recently talked to me, written emails to me filled with their thoughts and powerfully comforting words. I imagined them linking arms with me and saying, "Let's walk." And in this vision, I walked between them. Our bare feet created indentations along the shoreline. Our faces were lit by sunlight. I felt embraced by their unwavering gaze into my eyes. Their understanding. I experienced their acceptance, even when I shared my confusion, my stubborn need to get justice when I sensed repentance was my better choice. 

And without judgment, these two women, filled with the Spirit of Christ, told me this:

When you move a number from one side of an equation to another it is of course called a transposition. I felt like such a number...that I had been transposed. That I had crossed over something unseen and that I would now, somehow, be rearranged. Revalued. And there would be a permutation of elements. I had a vague but not entirely new sense that I had upset the order of things.~Matt Haig (From The Life Impossible)

I sat at the stop light and while I waited, observed a lone shoe sitting in the lane to my right. I could see the familiar white Nike checkmark on its side. Someone would be sorry they'd lost that shoe when they began pawing through their car trying to find it. As I drove away, the word "unyoked" came to mind. Untethered from its shoe mate, from its owner.  

Over the last few days, the image of that lone shoe has stayed with me. I'm taking a class through my church called "The School Of The Heart." The content is like working a math equation that requires transposition--my heart the equation in need of being solved. I feel transposed--my heart crossing over into something unseen where I would somehow be rearranged. Revalued. A permutation of elements radicalized by God's love that's upset the order of things. By becoming more in touch with The Father's love, it's kind of been like finding the other shoe. I've lost shoes in my closet before, and I've felt the glee in finding the other one. "Oh, I've wanted to wear these shoes for a long time. Now I can." And I slip them on. My heart feels like it's been yoked back up with the Father's love in a new way.

And then another image emerged:

Blessed are those whose strength is in you, who have set their hearts on pilgrimage.~Psalm 84:5 (NIV)

This morning I'm mopping in increments. Dividing up the floor space to slide the mop into all the crevices where the dirt has mounded and hidden. In pieces I make progress, the wooden floor like little squares of Scrabble tiles. The task is almost as satisfying as making words when I play that venerated game. Perhaps this is how God works in my life, increment by increment, massaging His oil into my heart, working out the dry, cracked places, creating powerful words of "peace" and "beauty" and "strength" with His Kingdom Scrabble squares.  God, my loving Father, reminds me that my life is not about doubling down to try and figure things out, but rather receiving and absorbing His aromatic love and affection. His light.

I find it difficult to relax. I say so often, "God, it would seem more wholesome to strive, to struggle. That mode feels so much more acceptable, more respectable, more satisfying somehow, than releasing myself to the unconditional validation you have for me. It is difficult to take in that your grace is that broad, that you don't condemn, nor do you browbeat me into compliance."  Yet how can I think that of you?

Just one place is all I need. Somewhere to be at peace.~Michido Aoyama (From What You Are Looking For Is In The Library)

I didn't know what I was looking for until I opened the book. What I was looking for had evaded me for many years. But you find things when you need to. Or maybe when you're ready to.

Books somehow emerge for me when I'm at the library. I believe God sends me books. First, the title intrigued me, because if there's anywhere I feel happy, it's in a library. I love all the shelves of books--their redolent scent. The calm librarians with their smiles as fresh as green ferns. Other people. Tapping on computers. A toddler holding a book close to his chest. Me wandering through the aisles, the books just waiting to be opened. The page a constant friend all these years. 

In the book, What You Are Looking For Is In The Library, I meet Ryo Urase who lives in Tokyo and works for a furniture manufacturing company. He is good at his job, a trustworthy employee. He also has a dream that bloomed into his imagination when he was a teenager and bought a silver spoon in an antique store. He wondered about the spoon. Had it once graced the dining table at a mansion in England? Or had a mother once used the spoon to delicately feed her baby? Or had an elderly woman stirred her tea with the spoon, lost in the nostalgia of younger days? Ryo held on to the spoon for years as a way to remember his dream.

Ryo realizes an unexpected pathway when he meets a man who owns a bookstore where cats roam and tea and coffee are served. Ryo observes, "A cat wanders around my feet. A tabby, with a white stomach and paws. The cats all seem to be extremely relaxed and at home. I gaze around me at the books on display. It feels good to be sitting here drinking coffee and watching cats, surrounded by books. I feel content and relaxed. If I left now, my visit would still have been perfectly satisfactory."

Ryo talks to the owner of the bookstore, Mr. Yasuhara, who has written an article about the beauty of having parallel careers. Ryo asks, "Isn't it hard work to manage a shop and work for a company at the same time? Don't you ever find that either gets too much?" Mr. Yasuhara laughs lightly. "No, I don't. If anything, it's doing both that makes me feel like neither is ever too much of a burden.. Before I had the place, all I ever used to think about was quitting my office job, but now that job is what gives me the means to enjoy running the bookshop. If the bookshop was all I did, however, then I'd spend a lot more time thinking about sales strategies and so on. Which would be far more demanding. And I don't really want that."

Mr. Yasuhara asks Ryo why he wants to open an antique store and he answers, "I want to bring people together with the objects they are meant to meet. Objects that are meant to be passed on, forever, belonging to different people at different points in time. I want to be the intermediary for such encounters.. To provide a space where they might occur."

It was not by their sword that they won the land, nor did their arm bring them victory; it was your hand, your arm, and the light of your face, for you loved them.~Psalm 44:3 (NIV)

The other day I imagined myself inside a fenced-in yard. Green and lush Texas St. Augustine grass covered the area. A wrought iron table and two chairs sat under a shady oak. I sat in one of the chairs and admired a pot of red geraniums sitting on the little table. I thought to myself, "I don't want to stay here all day. There is a lot more to see just outside the gate. And the gate is not locked. All I need to do is push it open and step across the threshold to explore the neighborhood." I rose from my chair to peer through the wooden slats of the fence and I saw slivers of orange and purple flowers in the neighbor's garden. When I looked through a knothole, I observed a cute black and white dog, his tongue lolling out of his mouth, panting. But I couldn't see his whole body. I could only see the outside world in part. Why didn't I simply go over to the gate and push it open?