Over Thanksgiving, I was able to walk a Labyrinth. It’s one of those patience-demanding, quiet-inducing sorts of activities; heart-opening, spirit-engaging.
It doesn’t really provide answers as much as it helps to raise questions.
- Where will I be nest year this time? My wife’s family (and I) have (for the last nine years) gathered at the same place for Thanksgiving. What will it be like for me, and for them, next year?
- Coming out is a kind of conversion experience. Another kind of being born again (take that Pat Robertson). The way I look at things, my perspective on things has changed, shifted. How does coming out to myself change the way I relate to the world? Not just people but places and events.
- I’ve had a long history with this place well before I brought family here. I can’t tell you what an important place it is to me. A place where I have on so many occasions wrestled with God. Will that continue? It seems different, now. Less wrestling, more accepting. Yet, more of a distance, but more at peace. O God this is confusing.
- I love this part of the world. Can I continue to live here? Will I have to move to a totally different area? What will the impact of all this be on my relationship with my children?
- I pretty well know that I will not be able to continue in the same place I am now working. But will I be able to continue in the same line of work? It’s the only thing I know. I don’t really want to do anything else.
- Will coming out so completely overshadow everything so that I am unemployable?
Somehow, in the midst of it all, deep inside, with a calm sense of peace, I know that “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” I just don’t know what that will all be like. That’s one bit of control I don’t have.
A professor of mine in grad school paraphrased Rilke in saying “Do not concern yourself with answers, but learn to Love the questions.”
Mind the gap, and mind the bear. Deo gratia.
1 comment:
I love labyrinths! You are going one way, then another, close to the center, then far out on the edge again... but always moving on the path towards the center. If you walk it when friends are on it at the same time, you see them close, then far, moving away or in the opposite direction from you, but still, all moving in the right direction for where they are on their own journey. Not just going in circles, but going ahead in an unexpected way.
Enjoy the trip!
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