Gus MacLeod writes...
“It may be that when we no longer know which way to go that we have come to our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.”
As so often, I am inspired by Wendell Berry’s words, his ability to get to the heart of something soul-enriching with beautiful poetic language.
Continuing to engage with life
“The mind that is not baffled is not employed”. This speaks eloquently to me of the continuing engagement with life even when it throws up circumstances that are too big to engage with, too confusing, too hurtful. Yet as we engage with them, and allow ourselves to be engaged, we are enlarged in heart even as the circumstances seem greater than us. It speaks of allowing ourselves to open up to a place of living which is larger than that which we can control or make sense of.
And so “The impeded stream is the one that sings”. What a beautiful image of what can arise from obstruction, from what seems to impede life. How amazing if I could allow my soul to sing in each experience of life throwing something in the way.
My experience of the journey of life and faith has for some time been of no longer knowing which way to go. The joy of it is that I’m increasingly comfortable with that. And I’m grateful to the many sages, mystics, wise women and men – Wendell Berry among them – who point the way to the real journey.