August 3, 2012

My Journey to God

Lessons

It seems to me that once given life, we appear in this world fresh and wide eyed—open to soaking it up like a sponge, cared for at first, but soon striking out on our own, adventure upon us.
Autonomy is the lesson.
Flexing and stretching into growth, youth is always looking forward, moving into the stream of it, thinking that it moves in a straight line—or should anyway.
We scramble into it, hungry for experience, for connections and knowledge, for sensuality.
We make assumptions about what is mine and what is yours, assuming how a thing should be done, gathering things, attaching to people, deciding what is important, taking a stand.
The lesson is Mastery.
We think that’s all there is, busy as we are in our own self-defined space.
Sooner or later, the lesson of the circle of life looms in the distance.
Forever bending, always in motion, the lesson of the circle is the constancy of change and the return to the beginning from the beginning.
I did not notice as the circle curved away from life as I knew it and the lesson became Letting Go, and Solitude became my companion.
It was the herky-jerky of slowing down and changing gears like a freight train putting on its brakes that was noticeable.
I began remembering the admonition that Another giveth and taketh away.
What I thought was mine was not, really. My opinion was generally irrelevant. My expectations were the product of my own mind and nothing more. Looking ahead amounted to trying to see in the dark.
I live in the darkness now, yet the motion is there. I feel it. The circle carries me on a return journey back into my own unknowing.
This lesson is about Trust, and I find that I am not alone anymore.
The next lesson may be about unending Love.

By Cindy Leppert

(Cindy Leppert is a member of St. Christopher Parish in Indianapolis.) †

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