Mazes

November 2, 2013

I looked up. The symmetrical tops of the corn stalks swayed gently. The breeze carried them left and right in a comforting, consistent rhythm. They stretched several feet above my head, arched towards the wispy clouds. I was surrounded by them with about a two foot wide path to navigate. It weaved this way and that, undulating, full of bends and turns and double backs and dead ends.

The boys had already run ahead, exploring the maze. I let them go. Grateful at once for the time with just them and for the time alone. Lost, for just a moment, but not feeling lost at all, not concerned about the exit or the entrance or the twists and turns. I found satisfaction in the crunching of the fallen stalks beneath my feet, in the intentional and confident steps forward with no worries about direction or destination. I walked and looped and found myself on the same paths many times.

How very much like life that maze was. How very unclear and undulating my journey and path has been. And how, many times, I have not walked it confidently and intentionally, but fraught with fear and loneliness, sadness and anger. The wind swept up my untied hair, and I had to lift my head to the pointed tops of the cornstalks to free my eyes. I again glimpsed the triangles, but this time looking more like arrows directing me straight towards where I needed to focus. Usually I glance around at my life, at the path, at the blended family: the history, the choices, the impulsivity. I examine what doesn’t seem quite right, quite perfect and try to nudge, to force, to handle the present to bend it to my expectations. That bending and nudging is always met with resistance and in turn disappointment.

Faith is messy. For me, as messy as the undulating path of the maze. Not a directional arrow, pointing straight towards the sky in an undeniable sign and unmistakable focus. It’s lingered in the margins, slightly hazy, just out of sight. Walking the maze, broken sun streaming through the stalks and a gentle, encompassing wind swirling around my head, lead me to understand what I’ve been missing in my hopes and expectations for my life and our family. It became a sacred labyrinth, a meditation on faith and living. A pointed arrow towards my faith and how it should operate in my life now as it is.

Maybe that’s what the mazes, the labyrinths, the twisting and undulating journeys in our lives are really for. To give us time and space to come to know ourselves a bit more deeply before pursuing our faith so voraciously. Days, months, or years of allowing the space to question, to falter, to fall knees down in the mud and to look to the sky and wonder why the loneliness; to maybe feel a little betrayed. To reach the dead ends and to find the strength to turn around and face the unknown, the littered paths, the wrong turns instead of furtively pushing against what won’t move.

In her book, Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis, Lauren F. Winner believes it happens like this:

Sometimes the reshaping is not big, not audible; not a move, a marriage, a child, a heroic change of course. Sometimes it is only here inside, how you make sense of things. Sometimes it is only about who you know yourself to be.

So this. This is how I believe it happened in the maze that day: contrary to my impulse and craving for big changes, vast decisions, and large shifts.

Instead: the winnowing wind, the warm sun in the interstices of the cornstalks; God in the interstices of my faith.

Instead: nudged to see myself a bit more clearly, more openly, and more courageously from under the carapace of my fear and hesitancy.

And finally: to accept all that is, that was. And to brave a new faith exploration and communication with God from this middle space of my journey.

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