The pilgrim returned home to the people in her village who were eager to know about her travels into the wilderness. But how could she ever find the words to fit the feelings in her heart and soul of what she had experienced? How could she explain the beauty as well as the savagery she encountered on her journey? At first she tried. Using analogies in her descriptions so as to help bridge the world of wonderment she had returned from and the place where the people who love her dwell.......where she too dwells, she began to describe the faces, the places and the holy spaces beyond the horizon. But the bridge wasn't sturdy or wide enough to help them see into this frontier. Her words met with bewilderment.
She said. "You will have to go find out yourselves."
To help guide them, she drew a map of the wilderness on a big piece of paper and included as many details as she could. But no one took her advice. Instead, the villagers gleefully pounced on the map and lovingly framed it to be displayed in their community centre after they made copies for themselves to study. Every person who had the good fortune to have a copy poured over the details of the wild frontier they had never set foot in. However, they became experts. In fact, they learned about every tree, brook, culvert and path to a point where some even began to believe they had been there in person.
Pretty soon, these new experts began to preach about the wilderness, spreading false truths to their neighbours living throughout the countryside. It was then that the pilgrim realized how dangerous it was to draw a map for the people who simply chose to stay within the parameters of the village and never venture out to seek their own answers. They will never really know if there is truth or not. How sad.
12 comments:
beautiful storytelling - i guess the wilderness can be a place of ghosts and lies as well as a place of solitude where we find truth.
i like this a lot
paul...i guess so. my feeling is that we have to sort it out with the gifts God gave us our brains, and our heart.....truth doesn't come easily....never will and the wilderness is full of unknowns and perhaps obstacles like fallen trees we have to deal with.
i'm glad you liked it. she's a feisty pilgrim this one. sassy too i hear.
yes, the more i think about it, the more i wonder if she'll ask for the map to return and take them by the hand out into that wild wonder. ..... i think these villagers need a little life shake rattle and roll.
people can tell us all kinds of things but we never really know unless we go out and experience it for ourselves, perhaps thats why the best stories leave us guessing and tempt us to find out more.
We all need a hand to guide us sometimes, but we have to find our own magic and discover our own path.
Am remembering four girls, a map and a compass on the top of a hill in the peak district trying to find our way back for the evening - it was a good map but we couldn't decide what it was telling us to do!! It was a brilliant adventure though.
katie....i think much of what we dont have is trust in ourselves and in our guides.......we covet the concept of trust, but it's not forthcoming from ourselves. a journey starts with one step....then another......
we so often can't take that first step out of conformity and into the wildnerness where the unknown is part of the adventure. It's easier to remain within the confines of a congregation, being fed by a "leader/pastor/minister/priest" whose interpretations are his/her own and based on the rules imposed on the Good Book. We seem to prefer the spoon feeding process instead of the act of taking part in the preparation of the feast and in serving ourselves!
And yet, how many folks out there are broken more so by the hypocritical, hypercritical slush they have to wade through? So many live with such guilt and such mixed messages on God's love (and all the damn rules some churches seem to apply to this unconditional love concept). It blows my mind.
I have a few drafts I'm working on with respect to this topic.....and will get to writing them up as well.
what is truth?
Good question Dana, I wonder.
Trust is so fragile and has to be gained over time. We trust by testing things out, searching out the weaknesses and learning what or who we can trust, including ourselves. I suppose thats ties in with learning to forgive ourselves aswell as others and seeing everyone as fallible.
I think maybe we only tend to trust others as far as we will trust ourselves.
I'm not sure truth can be served up and just accepted as truth, we don't trust enough to do that, or if we do just accept as served, we haven't explored the nuances of it enough to appreciate it fully and absorb it into our very beings. We have to take it apart, dismantle it, scrutinse it and try and reconstruct it to test it and try and understand it... before we can accept that maybe it was the truth all along, and we all have our own ways, our own journeys to do that on.
I don't know if I'm making sense - am thinking as I'm typing!
I think we have to go out and find truth, we are curious by nature, all of us, wanting to know more.
I think we will keep on searching and questioning and wondering, it truly is a wilderness that throws up many questions.
I would want a guide or someone to walk with me but noone can experience the exact same as someone else, see with their eyes and feel with their heart. Our journeys are individual, so I can't see how we can have a 'one size fits all' mentality, it just doesn't work for me.
I wonder if we ever get to a point where we know truth or if we are always searching.
it will forever be a journey of one. But it can be "one" in an unaware state or "one" who strives for the deeper inner holiness where the heart can connect to God....or at least make a damn fine attempt at it.
I don't think the journey to understanding truth ever concludes. We may get glimpses of this truth's ingredients, but the way i've always looked at my own pursuit, it will take me a lifetime and perhaps beyond to find myself standing somewhere on that right mountain.
Anyone who spews forth unbreakable regimented statements as gospel truth? They are fooling themselves, and frighteningly may be preying on the vulnerable in need of an emotional and spiritual lifeline who will swallow it whole.
Truth is a lonely walk, hop and jump (Does God skip too Paul?) on our own........trusting the gifts we have been given to help figure it out.........our imagination, rationale, leaps of faith, thinking, doing, feeling......
or i could be full of shit.
so could I!
I hope God skips...it's fun.
Is that where our footprints get well and truly mixed up with his? :)
Truth might well be a lonely walk on our own but it's good to see others along the way too searching under a few rocks.
God does skip; I believe He dances too.
Great discussions guys.
I imagine a narrow gate (when we eventually get there), and a voice says "Who is it?" The answer may be - Oh its Bill, I was with Emmanuel church since a boy, used to run the youth choir and I was part of the ministery team - 10 years at the city prayer conference - blah, blah.
"I don't know you".
Or the answer could be - Oh it's ME. "Your right it is, come on in"
We journey alone, together but at the end of the day it is not all about what we have done.
Can I get a hold of that map?
David....Thank you for this. :) Katie, enjoyed the discussion.
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