The Sauntering Pilgrim

When writer Annie Dillard was a young child, she would hide a precious penny of her own for someone else to find. She’d cradle it in the roots of a tree or a crack in the sidewalk, then with a piece of chalk she’d draw huge arrows leading up to the penny from both directions and label the arrows “surprise ahead” or “money this way.” She never stayed around to see if someone found her gift, if anyone was wealthy enough in spirit to stoop down for a mere penny (from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek).

Jesus played the same game, hiding a precious truth, labeling it so it couldn’t be missed, and leaving it for someone to find. The truth he left was hidden in plain sight, but it was not intended for the crowds, the dabblers who toyed with truth as with a trinket. It was for serious seekers willing to search for it, who would listen and thoughtfully consider what he said. “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven,” he told his disciples, “but to them [i.e., to the crowd] it has not been given” (Matt. 13:11). You must work, perhaps for a lifetime, to find what Jesus meant you to find.

Take this, for example: “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it” (Matt. 10:39). It’s as if he said, if you find the abundant life I came for you to have, you’ll lose it, but if you lose it for the sake of living it fully, you’ll find it. Are you confused yet? I was for most of my life and still am to some degree.

Maybe Jesus meant for us not to become too settled in what we believe we know. Of all the disciples, I feel closest to Thomas, the one who doubted what he heard from others about the resurrection and wanted a first-hand experience of the risen Christ. I confess I’m always a little distrustful of anyone who claims too much certainty about what the scriptures say or what faith is about. But I will share with you some of what I’m growing to believe about the life Jesus offers and about losing and gaining it.

I believe Jesus is not talking here about two different lives that we lose or gain. He’s not talking about giving up or losing one in favor of receiving another. He’s talking about the one single life we’ve been given, the spectacular height and depth and breadth of which we often grasp so late in life, if we grasp it at all. It’s a life we see, in the words of St. Paul, “in a mirror, dimly” (1 Cor. 13:12). Or as Eugene Peterson paraphrased it in The Message, “We’re squinting in a fog, peering [at life] through a mist.”

“If the doors of perception were cleansed,” English poet-painter William Blake wrote, “every thing would appear to [us] as it is, Infinite. For [we have] closed [ourselves] up, till [we see] all things thro’ narrow chinks of [our] cavern” (The Marriage of Heaven and Hell). There will come a time, St. Paul assured us, when we will see life clearly, and we will know fully, even as we have been fully known (1 Cor. 13:12).

“Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement,” Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said, “[to] get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.” Our goal, Joseph Campbell said, is to “actually feel the rapture of being alive” (The Power of Myth).

It was to help us see and experience life that way, and not as a waiting room or proving ground for a life to come, that Jesus came proclaiming the nearness of the kingdom of God. I believe the gospel Jesus proclaimed is this: the life we yearn for most deeply, the life we call the “reign of God” or the “kingdom of heaven,” is spread upon the earth, and we simply don’t see it (Gospel of Thomas, 113). We live it every day and don’t know what we’re living.

Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation, describes life in two halves. In the first half of life, we’re occupied with establishing our identity – climbing, achieving, performing, establishing a career, building a house and family and wealth, gathering experience and reputation. We’re building a container for our life.

In the second half of life, we find the contents the container is meant to hold – meaning, purpose, fulfillment – the perfectly harmonious relationship with God and creation and the cycle of life – that make up the abundant life Jesus offered (John 10:10). The second half of life is difficult or impossible to appreciate or engage when we’re absorbed in the first half. It usually begins when we experience a serious, life-changing acceptance of our own mortality. It’s when we release our will into the will of God.

Same life, different seasons, different tasks, different insights and comprehension. If we try to save our life, if we try to hold on to the first half of life, we never get to see and consciously engage the second half. We live out our days but not in their fullness. We live in the midst of the banquet of heaven and never taste the feast we consume. But if at the right time we gracefully surrender the work of life’s first half, if we surrender the building of a life or the life we have built, we might at last find the life God has given us. I don’t know if that’s what Jesus had in mind, but I’m coming to believe it’s close.

“For all our days pass away under your wrath,” the psalmist sang to God; “our years come to an end like a sigh. The days of our life are seventy years, or perhaps eighty if we are strong; they are soon gone, and we fly away. So teach us the shortness of life, that we may gain wisdom of heart” (Ps. 90:9-12 sel.). Let’s pray for wisdom enough to follow Jesus into the goodness of this life.