Having recently finished one book, I perused my bookshelf looking for the next thing to read, or re-read. No matter how many times I read it I always identify with the opening paragraph from Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies. It is so chock-full of truths:
“My coming to faith did not start with a leap but rather a series of staggers from what seemed like one safe place to another. Like lily pads, round and green, these places summoned and then held me up while I grew. Each prepared me for the next leaf on which I would land, and in this way I moved across the swamp of doubt and fear. When I look back at these early resting places…I can see how flimsy and indirect a path they made. Yet each step brought me closer to the verdant path of faith on which I somehow stay afloat today.”
It occurs to me that “coming to faith” is, for many if not most, not so much as a “leap” as “a series of staggers.” “Leap” seemingly implies a purposeful path precisely from Point A to an intended, exact Point B. I suppose that happens with some people, but it has not been, is not, my experience. No, Lamott’s “series of staggers” seems more appropriate as it implies a meandering journey filled with somewhat equal parts well-intentioned purposefulness and pure dumb “luck” (or what was perceived as “luck”) seasoned heavily with grace and forgiveness. And then there is the “”what seemed like one safe place to another.” “Seemed like” is the key language there for me. As I “stagger” it is not always abundantly clear what is or is not a/the next “safe place.” Often I stand at the decision point fork long enough to feel like the traveler in Robert Frost’s poem The Road Not Taken, not quite sure which path to take – though I have not always taken the road less traveled.
It occurs to me... 