Ambulation

“A man of understanding walks straight ahead.” – Proverbs 15:21

“For you have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling; I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living.” – Psalm 116:8-9

The first time I saw a labyrinth, I didn’t see the point. It seemed like a lot of moving without going anywhere. But the point is the movement, which I felt again today when I had the chance to walk one. When you walk a labyrinth, you know where you will end up (the center, or back at the entrance point). You know where to place your next step on the path. But there is just enough complexity that you can’t completely trace all the points in between. And what you realize as you walk through it is that you don’t need to. Once you begin to let go of that, and just put one foot in front of the other, you become newly aware of things. Exterior things, like the breeze and the trees, the chirping of birds nearby, the expanse of sky above and the feel of the path below. Interior things, like longings and fears and questions. The steps become a metaphor for the spiritual journey, a way to physically walk out an intention or prayer.

It’s a bit disarming how faraway-clear the goals of my life were in early adulthood. I knew at the age of 14 where I would be when I was 18, and 22, and 26. In medicine, you start preparing for applications four years in advance, study for tests half a year in advance, all the little goals coalescing into bigger goals, never a question really of what you will be doing. Even after training is finished, the tendency is to keep living life from station to station: career advancement, home acquisition, family establishment. 

But this year has brought me to a place unexpectedly out of that mold. I feel like I did in the labyrinth: I know our values and mission and the ultimate end of things that matter, and the next few exploratory steps are concrete enough, but the middle is unclear. There’s no distinct timeline or goal. There’s no knowing what factors will come into play. There’s only one foot in front of the other. 

The kind of understanding that I tend to want is to see all the steps to the end, but sometimes understanding is simply to walk the next step ahead. Not run or skip, not sit or dawdle, but walk: a regular, rhythmic, intentional movement forward one step at a time. When we move like this, we are more able to be present to ourselves and those around us. We are more able to test our hopes and exercise our faith. We are more able to address the questions God really cares about: not, what specific outcome am I going to get? but, what direction is my heart and mind growing towards? “For we are his workmanship,” Paul tells us in Ephesians 2: “created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” Not work in them, but walk in them. He has delivered us and prepared us for this good purpose.