“Wise One, drop the reins and let the camel guide you. Follow the rising falling animal in your chest. To be wise, after all, is to be led across the wordless desert of prayer to the birthplace in the valley between breaths where the unspeakable holds silence in a tiny hand...”
I love these words that begin the poem Magi by Alfred Lamotte. As we begin the journey of another year, it is a good reminder for me to drop the reins and allow myself to be led. I long ago gave up making new year's resolutions. Now I set intentions instead – not as hard-edged as resolutions, but still it is good to be reminded to hold my plans loosely and be open to them changing, as the wise men did in the story from Matthew (2:12) “And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way.”
The wise men, being guided by a star and a dream, pay attention to signs, synchronicities, and the workings of the subconscious. On a rather mundane note, in recent years I often dreamed about waking up to find my hair had been cut off, being very upset and feeling, like Samson, that my power had gone with my hair. My Nan used to say, “dreams mean the opposite,” and eventually I realised that the dream was inviting me to reclaim my power. I cut my hair and, far from being upset, I felt liberated.
Some times in life we can all feel that we have lost our way and that can be frightening. In the Sufi story of the stream, the desert, and the wind, the desert told the stream that it would have to become absorbed in the wind in order to journey across the desert, and the stream was afraid of losing its identity, but, arriving safely on the other side, it discovered its true identity.
When we let go of the illusion of control, we can risk being changed. Sometimes we may need to allow ourselves to become lost to find another way. Jesus says twice in the Gospel of Matthew (Matthew 10:39; 16:25), “You must lose your life to find your life.”
What is the life we lose and the life we find in the spiritual journey? The novelist Paulo Coelho wrote, “Maybe the journey isn't so much about becoming anything. Maybe it's about un-becoming everything that isn't really you so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place.”
Richard Rohr describes it thus, “The false self is the disconnected and autonomous self. It is your identity privately concocted by means of culture, education, class, race, family, gender identity, clothes, and money... The True Self is characterized by communion and deep contentment... participating in a Universal Being that is beyond yours... Now, that doesn’t mean you stay in the True Self 24- hours a day. Life is three steps forward and two steps backward. But once you know the big picture, you will never be satisfied with the little picture again.”
As I child I was taught to see time as a straight line – we are born, we grow up, we grow old, we die. Now I see it as a spiral – time moves on, but also round in the circle of the seasons each year, as the earth circles the sun. In life, we move forward, and we also keep circling back to the same things, keep repeating the same patterns. And, at the same time, each moment is new, every day we can look in the mirror and, as R S Thomas wrote in his poem Arrival, “see yourself as you are, a traveller … arrived after long journeying where he began, catching this one truth by surprise - that there is everything to look forward to.”
Every day is a journey of self-discovery, to find the treasure inside that we can share to bless those around us. Shams Tabrizi, Rumi's mentor and spiritual guide, wrote, “Wherever you go, east, west, north or south, think of it as a journey into yourself. The one who travels into themselves travels the world.”
The real treasure is not what we hold in our hands, but what we hold in our hearts, not the material things we have, but the non-material gold, frankincense and myrrh: the memories we hold dear, the people we treasure, the way we live our truth and give our love. The greatest gift we can give others is to make the time and effort to let them love know how much they are loved and valued, the boy did for his teacher in our story, long walk part of gift, and the wise men did for Jesus when “they fell down and worshipped him.” (Matthew 2:11)
The most important journey we will ever make is into our own heart, to discover the shining light of divine love that lives there – the only star we need to follow – if we always follow that star, then we will always be at home, wherever we travel.
The poet Wendell Berry wrote, “And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long, but only by a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, by which we arrive at the ground at our feet, and learn to be at home.” Amen
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