Tuesday, May 5, 2009

The courage to get lost

I think the world is divided into two groups: those who have a natural sense of direction and those who don't. I am definitely a don't. Which is why Betsy Betros amazes me.Betsy deliberately gets lost and then tries to find her way home. Betsy practices the sport of orienteering, and on any given Saturday, will show up in some woodsy area where participants are handed a map and given an end point, but have no idea how to get there. "You find where you are on the map, then create your own route to the next point. At every point you make a new decision about which way to go until you reach the end," she explains.
It occurs to me that we all do that. In life, we reach this turning point or that,and have to make new decisions about which way to go. I love what Thomas Merton wrote in a prayer, "Ultimately I trust that God will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it."