The Journey, One Step at a Time

After a lengthy preparation for my on-line seminar last week, it’s nice to be back blogging again. The seminar was about loss as a spiritual journey. But that fits into a bigger framework of life itself being a journey, one step at a time.

It’s always nice when you reach a place where you can look back on where you have been, maybe what lies ahead—a place of perspective, those special times when something has been resolved, completed, or there is more clarity. But that can be short-lived. Something else comes up, and then there you are, in the thick of it again, not knowing at times quite how to respond or what is emerging.

The Journey One Step at a Time

I love the idea of one step at a time and allowing God to lead—especially when emotions rise to surface or the mind becomes murky. I believe that everything happens for a reason. And if you are like me, sometimes the challenges are hard. God never gives us more than what we are capable of, and if we listen to what God is saying, the way is at hand and usually gentle. We rarely, if ever, have to accomplish a spiritual or emotional task all at once. Truly, God will take us by the hand and present many situations, with room to falter. The same lessons can be learned more deeply over a lifetime.

The main thing is to keep stepping, to be an active participant in life, in Partnership with God. God’s voice comes through the moment, arising from within and also from the world around us. God cannot help us, if we don’t listen and respond. When we miss an opportunity, it’s gone. But another one will come along.

No matter how hard the road can be at times, the stepping stones are there. Each step of the way, life opens up. Any problem usually comes from looking too far ahead or assuming where the path leads. What lies ahead on the spiritual journey is quite different from what I expect. That is, the result of following through with this challenge or that and what I learn from it is something I couldn’t have imagined.

I just love the journey, the fact that we can have a journey. That there is always a way to respond to situations that present themselves and expand awareness within ourselves. When there is struggle, I’ll often hear, Don’t give up and other words of encouragement. Lately it seems that I’m coming to a place where the more difficult tests are behind me. Or perhaps it’s only a temporary reprieve. We just don’t know what lies ahead, even though goals help guide. We don’t know the gifts that will be revealed along the way or the nature of having arrived somewhere on the spiritual map. It is a process of discovery, a true adventure!

Excerpt from Freedom to Fall:

Every instant is a possibility, every second a potential, until I respond. Wherever I step, potential becomes reality, the substance of my life.

I can live for yesterday and tomorrow, and that will be my fate. I can release the past without grasping for the future, and that will be my fate. Either way it is a life of my own choosing. I can keep to the path of familiarity, leading nowhere, or I can step to the brink, overlooking the abyss.

How can I choose to live with no knowledge of where I’m headed? What anchors me if not my memories and expectations? I listen. Step this way, now that, trusting the voice within. Leaving behind old themes, I begin to slip into sync.

To follow fate is to recognize that you cannot direct your life. No matter how hard you try, life eludes. You can stop where you are, settling in, or you can keep going, listening and stepping. You have to be willing. You have to be strong and brave. You can’t afford to lose another moment. To strive is meaningless. It is rather the absence of striving and the simple act of living that way.