'Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path.' Psalm 119:105. Often we don’t know where we are going. This Psalm, in fact, seems to suggest that our true path is not clearly marked or easy to locate. So should we know clearly where we are going?

Forest

In the middle of the road of my life I awoke in a dark wood where the true way was wholly lost.The Divine Comedy, Dante

Often we don’t know where we are going. This Psalm, in fact, seems to suggest that our true path is not clearly marked or easy to locate. So should we know clearly where we are going? Do we believe respect from others comes from our knowing, and being able to express, what's going on in and around us? Do we think our credibility comes from knowing fully and confidently at all times where we are going? Is the energy and head space this requires a reasonable expenditure? In our Two Halves of Life group one person remarked: 'I'm not lost but neither do I know where I am going.' That sums it up pretty well to me. What is faith if not in part uncertainty, a walk into darkness? And in that darkness a strange rest.

Go without a way the narrow foot-path, then you will succeed in finding the desert. Granum Sinapis, anon

(Here, for the writer, desert means luminous space, the transformative meeting with God.)