You Make the Path by Walking
You Make the Path by Walking Thursday of the First Week of Lent – March 5, 2020 There is no single way to live the spiritual life. We have centuries of clues, passed down to us through the centuries by those who have sought a deeper connection with God and who lived meaningful in the world. But in many ways, we follow their clues in order to find our own way more fully. While some versions of Christianity promise to lead us into more and more certainty (and call it, “faith”), the contemplative spiritual tradition tends to lead us deeper and deeper into mystery and the unknown. We enter into a “cloud of unknowing” . . . we experience the “dark night of the soul.” There is no single template for journeying in this cloud or dark night. I’m drawn to the image of journey to describe the nature of contemplative spirituality, and I often think that the journey is mostly uncharted. In one of his poems, Antonio Machado says that we make the path by walking. Why should we call these...