A few days ago I was out for my usual early evening walk. The particular circular route I was taking this time started off in a local park then proceeded up a road that goes to the downs and then across a field with horses that leads to a small wood from where it's a mile or so home. I like this walk because of its variety but this day I was feeling the routine and, to be frank, monotony of my daily life more than usual. Many years ago I was told by my teachers that my life must continue in a routine until I left my physical body, and such has been the case up until now. I realise this is necessary, unglamorous as it seems, as a spiritual discipline but sometimes it can become frustrating and on this occasion I was feeling that frustration. The spiritual darkness of the contemporary world was also weighing down on me and I lamented this out loud, asking God and my guides if a little break in the clouds might be possible. Don't be weak, came the response as a thought in my head. You are lucky to be in the position you are in where you can see what you do. When you reject the world you cannot expect worldly reward and satisfaction. When you allow God to work on you, you must be prepared for hardship on the level of the earthly ego. That was all very well, but still I asked for a little light in the darkness.
When these thoughts were going through my head I turned off the road going to the downs and into the field with horses. Luckily I had my phone with me as I was expecting a call from my daughter. I don't usually carry it when I go out. This is what I saw.
8 comments:
@William - Very enjoyable post!
I've never been at all confident as to what that "strait is the gait" verse is supposed to mean (only partly because I am very wary of the accuracy and truth of Matthew's Gospel) - especially, did it refer to the time before the work of Jesus?
Because (unlike now) I don't think it was very rare to attain salvation in the early years of Christianity - in those days people seemed very keen to have eternal resurrected Heavenly life, and (presumably) to do whatever that took.
The 'strait' means narrow (as in the Strait of Gibraltar between Europe and Africa) but is confusing because people think it means straight which would also make some kind of sense but is not what it says. Perhaps Jesus is talking of the path that leads to direct union with God which does require more than simple belief.
Thanks for writing that out William. Resonant.
I'm glad it struck a chord, Colin.
I think I have told you that I am also an evening walker. As it happens, I've also been oppressed by the overfamiliarity of my loops, and by a not entirely nameless foreboding. Your loops appear much nicer than mine, but I think I have made the most of what I have to work with. I tell myself that the most picturesque place would become tedious after a while, but I must say that I would not mind testing that hypothesis. The landscape I pass through is mostly lower middle-class suburbia, and I sometimes think it is the twenty-first century version of the drab city in which C.S. Lewis begins The Great Divorce.
"Evening was just closing in and it was raining. I had been wandering for hours in similar mean streets, always in the rain and always in evening twilight. Time seemed to have paused on that dismal moment when only a few shops have lit up and it is not yet dark enough for their windows to look cheering. And just as the evening never advanced to night, so my walking had never brought me to the better parts of the town. However far I went I found only dingy lodging houses, small tobacconists, hoardings from which posters hung in rags, windowless warehouses, goods stations without trains, and bookshops of the sort that sell The Works of Aristotle."
I suppose the merit of a dreary landscape is that it excites longing for a better place, but this assumes that landscape is not so dreary that one cannot picture a better place. So, I guess I am contented that much on earth is dreary and repellant, but there are here and there enchanting spots of loveliness to give one hope.
I am fortunate that, although I live in a town,. there are several nearby walks that take me through woods, downs and fields. Mind you, I've been here 9 years now and am getting a bit over-familiar with them. But I try to treat walking as a monk would treat perambulating round his cloister and use it as time for meditation.
You are better than me. I usually listen to podcasts as a walk, and so return home physically tired and spiritually agitated.
I have never listened to a podcast!
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