The Way

The other day, I was sitting in my living room writing, when I noticed an unusual sound. It was like a hundred turkeys gobbling in the distance. I wondered what was going on. Had a turkey farm suddenly opened on the next block? I stuck my head out the front door and an icy blast hit my bare neck. I looked up at the gray sky and saw a flock of what I thought were geese flying south for the winter in that indicative V formation. It surprised me how loud it sounded even as they appeared to be thousands of feet in the air. Then I noticed that not all were flying in one direction. Another group circled haphazardly, gobbling in confusion before finally getting themselves somewhat together and flying south in a messy V.

A google search led me to realize these were probably not Canada geese but sandhill cranes in their mass migration to Florida stopping, as they always do, in the Jasper-Pulaski Fish and Wildlife area of Indiana. Through a combination of instinct, light patterns, and magnetic fields, the sandhill cranes predictably know the way, though their chaotic behavior high above made it seem as though they really didn’t know what they were doing.

No shade to the sandhill crane, who I also learned are the oldest living bird species on the planet. I often feel I don’t know what I’m doing or where I’m going. I take comfort in the song we sang in worship on Sunday, we “don’t have to know the way. The way knows the way.” Though I am often riddled with anxiety about the future, for much of my life I have held a deeper knowing that I will be shown the way. When I feel lost and afraid, my most consistent prayer to the Source of Life and Love, is to be guided to the highest good. I work to cultivate faith that, though I don’t always know what the next right action is, if I practice being open to it, that guidance comes. Sometimes guidance is offered in the words of a trusted friend. Sometimes it is offered by way of an obstacle I didn’t want or expect but one that prevents me from going the “wrong” way. Sometimes it is offered by an internal sense, a pull from behind the belly button that lets me know, unmistakably, “this is where you are supposed to be. Here. Now.”

In the words of Wendell Berry, I fear what my life and my children’s lives may be. Like I imagine many of you, I experience the low-level hum of anxiety most of the time about the troubling and uncertain future. And yet, I believe that being in and practicing beloved community helps us to cultivate and check our sense of direction. When we feel lost and cast a prayer out to the universe or fate or chance or god or whatever we might imagine shapes the unfolding reality, a community of people holding in common loving and liberating values can act as thought partners and reality checkers. Beloved Community can ask powerful questions that hone our critical thinking and creative longings.

Wherever we are headed, however haphazardly, I’m grateful to be on the journey with you, letting the way unfold – the way of liberating love – and helping one another to follow it.

Yours in faith and service,

Rev. Eileen