Getting to Walk

Life’s Path

“If you could do it, I suppose, it would be a good idea to live your life in a straight line—starting, say, in the Dark Wood of Error, and proceeding by logical steps through Hell and Purgatory and into Heaven. Or you could take the King’s Highway past appropriately named dangers, toils, and snares, and finally cross the River of Death and enter the Celestial City. But that’s not the way I have done it, so far.”

Wendell Berry (Jayber Crow, p.133)

          Wendell Berry’s Jayber Crow, published in 2000, is a masterpiece of story writing. And not only a masterpiece of writing, but of watching the development of a soul trying to make its way in this crazy world. In this passage, on page 133, he does perhaps the best job I have ever read of describing the way life takes you by the nape of the neck and shakes you a few times before flinging you on a path of its own choosing. Here’s the way he continues the thought above:

“I am a pilgrim, but my pilgrimage has been wandering and unmarked. Often what has looked like a straight line to me has been a circle or a doubling back. I have been in the Dark Wood of Error any number of times. I have known something of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, but not always in that order. The names of many snares and dangers have been made known to me, but I have seen them only in looking back. Often I have not known where I was going until I was already there. I have had my share of desires and goals, but my life has come to me or I have gone to it mainly by way of mistakes and surprises…”

          Is that not the story of all of us? He goes on to say, “And yet for a long time, looking back, I have been unable to shake off the feeling that I have been led—make of that what you will.” That’s it, isn’t it? We may start out with a plan, a goal, a drive, and then we wake up at forty or so, and realize that we’re in a foreign land and don’t even remember how we got there. But there we are, and now we either move on or make the best of it. Life has a goal too, and usually we only find out what it was after the fact.

          Here’s the deal, though: you can trust life to get you where you need to be even though it’s not what you planned. You will travel some rough terrain, climb a lot of steep hills, traverse a few scary forests, but life will get you there. This is, after all, the Earth School, and we’re here to learn something our soul needs to know. If you walk life’s path with clear-headed consciousness, you’ll sooner or later understand what that mission was. That, I can guarantee.

                                                  In the Spirit,

                                                  Jane