Walking that Path of Life ~ BitterSweetLife

Saturday, November 04, 2006

Walking that Path of Life

Lately, life has had that dragging weight that we attribute to old junkers. When I walk to class I can hear the rusted-out tailpipe striking sparks on the asphalt. Motivation misfires with that sad pop-popping sound, and I know I’m not running on all eight cylinders. (Yeah, this is a powerful machine we’re talking about.)

Lindsay reminds me that, contrary to the claims of some religions, life is headed toward something, and the something is not a cliff—a plunge into stupid oblivion. No, there is a point on the map, circled in red ink. I find myself thinking about this, relieved that life has a trajectory, a rate of speed, gradations of color and light. Life is not a flat, unrelenting ray, like the dead EKG.

The hallway draws you in and it hurts you, leaves you lost and drawing claustrophobic breaths, then it opens on beauty so all-consuming it removes the need for breathing altogether.

There is a width and depth, a multidimensional significance to living. It’s both elusive and inescapable, the way that our days tend toward an ending, lead forward, move ahead. I try to find a metaphor, and what materializes is a hallway—a narrow corridor with many doors, and with strange, perhaps magical, qualities.

The hallway draws you in and it hurts you, leaves you lost and drawing claustrophobic breaths, then it opens on beauty so all-consuming it removes the need for breathing altogether. If you need a title, a place-name for this phenomenon, here’s one with mythic connotations. Call it the Winnowing Way.

You’re a man with a shorter leg; you’re a wanderer lost in the snow; the north star is clouded over.

As you move further in, you get smaller; part of you gets scraped off on the path, victim to sharp edges and blind corners. Bruised knuckles and swollen eyes are obligatory; this is a toll road. Maybe you wonder about the magical properties of the path? Well, there is the one-way direction of travel. Then there are the doors (as we are looking for satisfaction and the path seems to be narrowing). There are these EXIT signs. Personally, I have tried quite a few.

There are so many doors, and they all open on plains and vistas with an infuriating property of semi-circle-ness. You can’t see it when you walk out there, but the gradual boomerang orbit is inevitable. You’re a man with a shorter leg; you’re a wanderer lost in the snow; the north star clouded is over. You reach a point on the limitless horizon (invisible but fixed) and then complete the slow, foolish arc back to your starting point. Magic?

I realize that there is only one EXIT that beats Ecclesiastes, and he is a person. Christ is the door who slams on futility.

You find yourself stumbling back through a doorway—a different doorway—into the same hallway, the old Winnowing Way. There is a taste of sawdust in your mouth. Turns out a detour really is a detour—even when the detour enjoys the element of surprise. Often, so does the return.

“Surprise, Surprise,” says God. “And welcome back.” Here I stand in that slender corridor again. After 20-some years and dozens of reentries, I realize that there is only one EXIT that beats Ecclesiastes, and he is a person. Christ is the door who slams on futility. I remember Jesus saying something about a hard and narrow path, and I wonder how I am progressing. Am I lashing out in the slender hall, heels drumming on the walls, bitter and angry because I have crawled one step nearer to Only Christ? Spare me that crowning irony.

I am beginning to see how this story concludes, sensing the Great End of the Winnowing Way. The question is whether this will be a shock, a dreadful “ambush” or whether I will have taken God at his word and seen it coming all the time. We’re all walking this path, in a sense. All our roads will arrive at the same Person, the inescapable Jesus. Will the journey redeem or ruin us?

I’ve got to pore over my map in light of the destination.