The Sixth Way: Desert

Day Six in "The Journey of the Wise Men: Twelve Days and Twelve Ways to Deepen Your Spiritual Practice" So, you're walking now. It's night, and away from the city lights you're more able to perceive the haunting beauty of the landscape around you. As you do, two things begin to happen to you.

First, with each step you take, each day and stage along the way, you sense a growing anticipation rising within you. Deep within there's a growing conviction that you've finally set out on the one journey that truly matters; you're pursuing the Ultimate, the Absolute, the Source and Goal of all life. All you were made for and destined to be lies at the end of this journey, bathed in the pure radiance of the star's bright light.

Second, you notice you've begun to enter a new and strange land you've never seen before. The familiar landmarks are gone. You've moved off the map. You're lost to all except the light of the star. Anticipation emboldens you, but the strangeness of this new land unnerves you.

If you've not known something of this eagerness and nervousness, you've not gone far enough in the spiritual journey; your praying's been too safe.  At some point, all who seek God are carried into some kind of desert experience, for the desert is the furnace of transformation. In the desert, we're stripped of all that is external. The only thing that remains is the nakedness of the heart's pure trust. This is why every spiritual "athlete," from Abraham to Mother Theresa, was pressed by the Holy Spirit into the desert.

Today, I'll acknowledge that the desert frightens me, but I must not avoid it if I'm to find what I'm looking for.

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The Fifth Way: Walking

Day Five in "The Journey of the Wise Men: Twelve Days and Twelve Ways to Deepen Your Spiritual Practice" Most of us live life mostly in our heads, but our thoughts are not where real life is lived. Your thoughts may be memories of real experience, they may imagine experience yet to come, but they're not real experience. They're interpretations of the past and projections of what may come. They're illusions, fantasies. Powerful, to be sure, but not ultimately real.

The only life you can live is the one that's coming to you right now. Jesus said, "Don't worry about tomorrow, tomorrow has enough worries of its own."  You cannot meet God in the past or the future, but only in the present. So, you must find a way to live here, now, "taking every thought captive" as St. Paul taught.

This is why walking is a spiritual practice. When you walk on the earth, your feet touch the ground. You awaken to your senses, and they root to to this moment. But you can't be in this moment when you're galloping along, eyes fixed on the future (or fleeing the past) lost in your anxious, calculating, or ambitious thoughts.

You're a wise woman, a wise man, when you regularly get down off your high horse, get out of your head, and walk the real earth for a while, aware of what's right around you.  The feet of the God you aim to meet walked this earth; yours ought to as well.

Today, I'll take off my shoes and feel the ground beneath my feet. I'll wiggle my toes in the carpet, stroll in a garden or to the kitchen or copier---and pay attention while I'm doing it. Remember, "the place beneath your feet is holy ground" (Exodus 3.5).

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The Fourth Way: Wonder

Day Four in "The Journey of the Wise Men: Twelve Days and Twelve Ways to Deepen Your Spiritual Practice" To live with wonder is to live with awe and reverence. Wonder is childlike---wide-eyed and innocent before a mystery bigger than you are. You don't have to be a child to know wonder, but most of us grown-ups no longer know what it's like to stand wide-eyed and awe-struck before a mystery that's beyond us.

Beauty is the surest way back into a sense of wonder. Beauty renders your mind temporarily dumb, your thoughts overwhelmed by splendor. There are no words, no thoughts that can pull into your mind the beauty that's before you.

Prayer needs beauty like your camel needs water. Not frequently. But here and there, a taste of beauty will carry you a long, long way.

On this journey, your prayers often become more like a supply list of things you'll need to pick up at the next town along the way, or like a to-do list for God. That's understandable. But take care to get yourself out of yourself from time to time, and into something much, much bigger. Wide-eyed and innocent again before beauty. There's no better way to infuse your prayers with wonder and a sense of the Divine.

Silent, still, and awe-struck before beauty---now you're speaking the language of God.

Today, beauty will cross my path, but I'll miss it if I'm preoccupied. I must watch for it. And when it comes, I'll stand silent and still, drinking deep of wonder.

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The Third Way: Companionship

Day Three in "The Journey of the Wise Men: Twelve Days and Twelve Ways to Deepen Your Spiritual Practice" No one can take this journey for you. The journey toward God is yours---start to finish. Setting out has energized you, and following this Star is the one thing you now know you must do. You are afraid of this journey into the unknown, but you fear more staying put, staying here, stuck in the rut that's been your life.

This journey toward God is yours, but that doesn't mean you have to walk it alone, nor should you. You'll need companionship, for this is neither a safe nor an easy journey.

You'll most likely want to choose your own companions. But frankly, those who will help you most aren't the ones you'd choose. So don't go looking for your companions. Instead, keep focused on the Star, the One you seek (Matthew 2.2). Walk in the light that's given you, and remain open to God's mischief along the way. The Holy Spirit will orchestrate surprise meetings with remarkable people traveling the same direction. You'll miss them if you focus on making your own friends. They might not fit in at a dinner party back home, but they are the ones who'll bring you the comfort, humor, wisdom, and safety you'll need on this long journey.

And when the night is darkest and the companions you need are nowhere in sight, here's the best mischief of all . . . the Light you seek at the end of your journey will walk beside you, though you cannot yet see it.

Today I will trust that the companions I need will come; I don't need to find them. I will wait and watch in faith. And when they're given to me, I will listen with my heart for the gifts they bring.

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The Second Way: Leaving

Day Two in "The Journey of the Wise Men: Twelve Days and Twelve Ways to Deepen Your Life of Prayer" There comes a point in each of our lives when we wake up, take a long look at our selves, and wonder what's become of us. We look around ourselves and at the person we've become and realize the life we're living isn't the life we want for ourselves.

There are new questions that old answers don't satisfy.  Tattered relationships. An insane pace. You're medicating your pain with work or sex, or by abusing alcohol or drugs.  Life as it is isn't working for you, but you haven't a clue what to do about it.

You can avoid the crisis that stares at you from the mirror. You can pray for a miracle. You can keep medicating your pain, but that's likely to keep you in this cul-de-sac, terribly broken, or worse, dead. Or you can embrace your crisis as the path of God---as incongruous as that may seem to be.

The sacred text doesn't tell us why the Wise Men left the life they once knew (Matthew 2.1-12). We only know that the light they'd glimpsed in the sky gave them such hope that they left it all behind and set out on a long, arduous, and dangerous journey, not knowing if they'd ever return or what would become of them.

Imagine you're one of them.  You look into your mirror with new eyes---eyes filled with a new and holy light.  Like them, you turn from what is not working---from the frustration and pain, the crushed dreams, the boredom. You watch as you set out on the path your crisis opens up before you.  Someone behind you hollers that you're a fool, but you no longer believe them.  Something else tells you it's the path of wisdom, a path leading to God.

Today, on this second day of Christmas, I will grow still in prayer, taking a long look at myself---no matter how painful that look may be. I'll look long and deep until I see two things about myself: 1. that I am in crisis, and 2. that taking this path may well be the smartest thing I've ever done. Trusting that wisdom, I set out into the unknown.

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