The Sauntering Pilgrim

“So do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is” (Ephesians 5:17).

When Alice came to a fork in her road, she asked the Cheshire Cat, “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” The Cat replied, “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.” “I don’t much care where,” said Alice. “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat. But we do care where we get to, so it matters which way we go.

When the Democratic National Convention meets this week, it will, as the Republican National Convention did last month, highlight the critical choice we will make in November’s presidential election, a choice about which way we go as a nation. It will be a choice critical to our future perhaps to a degree not seen in many generations. It’s not too much to say, I believe, that this election could be a singular turning point that determines where we get to and how well, if at all, this fragile experiment in governance as a representative republic survives.

However, that choice pales in comparison to one that, although usually less notable, is even more critical. It’s the life choice set forth in the proverbs of Solomon, to “Lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight” (Prov. 9:6) – the choice to live insightfully. Will we, not only in preparing for November but in the ripening opportunity of every moment, learn how to be wise in the conduct of our lives? “Don’t act thoughtlessly,” Paul admonished the Ephesians, “but try to understand what the Lord wants you to do” (Eph. 5:17 NLT).

The longer I live, the less certain I am that I or anyone will ever truly understand what the Lord wants us to do, “for we walk by faith,” Paul wrote, and “not by sight” (2 Cor. 5:7). Now every time I start to speculate about the will of God, I recall something Lao-tzu, the ancient Chinese teacher, wrote. “Those who know don’t talk. Those who talk don’t know” (Tao Te Ching, 56). And I recall that Job, after thirty-seven chapters of speculating with his friends about God’s will, confessed that God’s will was beyond his understanding (Job 40:2-3).

However, even though we may never understand God’s will, we already embody it. It’s written on our hearts, imprinted in our spiritual DNA. In promising to make a new covenant with us, God said, “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest” (Jer. 31:33-34). Perhaps the main thing we have to do as we grope our way through life, is to conform our lives to God’s will as much as we are able (Rom. 12:1-2).

How do we do that? How do we conform our lives to something we do not, and cannot completely, understand? Recently I heard a lecture by Feryal Özel, an astrophysicist, professor, and department chairperson at the Georgia Institute of Technology School of Physics. She was talking about astrophysics on a scale far beyond my understanding, beyond anything I can imagine, and she left me in awe and wonder about the creation of which we are an infinitesimally small part.

But one thing she said that I did understand. She defined science as “partly what you see and partly formulation of the question about what comes next.” And I thought: what a wonderful definition of theology, of our effort to know God and try to discern God’s will. What a wonderful definition of how to live as people of faith: partly observing what we see and experience, and partly learning how to formulate the next question.

And what an appropriate definition of church, a community in which we observe our lives closely, looking for the traces God leaves in interacting with us, and in which we learn how to ask the next question, the one in which we probe more deeply the great Mystery of life. what do we see and experience that changes our understanding and appreciation of the reality in which we live?

When St. Benedict founded his monastic order 1,500 years ago, he wrote that he wanted “to establish a school for the Lord’s service” (Prologue, The Rule of St. Benedict) – a school or laboratory in which to learn how to discern God’s will, how to “live, and walk in the way of insight” (Prov. 9:6), how to try “to understand what the Lord wants [us] to do” (Eph. 5:17).

That’s really all we’re trying to do: learn to understand what God wants us to do and let our growing understanding govern the way we choose to live. We’re doing it with our kids in Sunday school and confirmation class, in our Monday Morning Bible Study, in this summer’s Front Porch Sittin’ sessions, in the Sunday Roundtable we’ll return to next month, and in the special studies we have scattered throughout the year.

We also do it as we serve – in personal visits to at-home members; as we practice better stewardship in settings here, near, far, and in our environment; as we reach out through the Caribbean Children’s Foundation in Haiti; as we deliver hot meals to neighbors on the streets of Buffalo; as we meet essential classroom needs of the children in School 17; and in the many other ways we participate in the school of the Lord’s service, the laboratory in which we practice what we’re learning about walking in the way of insight and wisdom.

And in all those experiences, we learn how to formulate the questions about what comes next –defining, probing, open-ended, deeply faithful questions – questions we learn to love and live with until, as Rilke wrote, we “gradually, without even noticing it, find [ourselves] experiencing the answer, some distant day” (Letters to a Youn Poet).

So leading up to this November, and in every situation in which we try to “discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom. 12:2), let’s learn to ask the creative next questions, staying open and receptive, not to what political candidates shout but to what God whispers to us. And remember, in being confused and not knowing which way to go, in groping in the darkness as we formulate our next questions together, we have opportunities to grow into full maturity and to taste the abundant life Jesus offered once and offers still. ▪