Trackless Solitude IV

Hence all her paths are mystery.
presaging a divine unknown.
Her only light is in the creed
that she is not alone.

The soul that wanders, Spirit led,
becomes, in His transforming shade,
the secret that she was, in God
before the world was made.

The discovery of this “Waylessness of grace” has taken some getting used to. I have had to surrender myself to the truth of Isaiah 55:8  "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways," declares the LORD.  Sometimes, as God reveals things to me, I am stunned by my own naivete. Why is it that I still imagine sometimes that I should be able to anticipate what is coming. While the Word of God directs and guides, it frequently is directing through moral principle, than dictating moment by moment particulars.

So often in the moment by moment experiences of my life, the sensible presence of the Holy Spirit has been absent. I feel nothing. It is not a matter of doubt, or fear, or contempt for the truth, I just don’t really “feel” anything. There is just an endless series of decisions, responsibilities, relationships, and obligations waiting to be executed in a sort of “nothingness.” And then unfortunately I have a tendency to get a little lazy spiritually and have a false sense of self sufficiency which I am ashamed to say can often lend itself to me becoming spiritually lazy and I walk in my flesh.

Sometimes I wander, imagining that I know exactly where I am going, and may be equally convinced that all of my activity is both from and for God. I am ashamed to say that this is a deception that I am particularly vulnerable to. This wandering is not “Spirit led” and it doesn’t lead to the miraculous transforming power of the Holy Spirit.  Instead I am just busy going a lot of places and when I get there I am frustrated, or exhausted and very frequently feeling lonely.

Jessica says as she closes this poem , The soul that wanders, Spirit led, becomes, in His transforming shade, the secret that she was, in God before the world was made. I believe this and it is my hope. I believe in his foreknowledge God’s desire and original design for  me was to be a woman of gentleness, meekness, integrity, love, humility, creativity, holiness, wisdom, mercy and above all full of His life-giving love. It was and still is God’s design for me.

I believe that as I yield to His Spirit, following where ever He leads, unrelenting and unafraid He really will transform me.  I know that following Him is arduous, but I am convinced it is worth every effort and sacrifice. I know my only lasting satisfaction can be found in Him. Sometimes I feel like I get distracted by every flower, butterfly and soda-pop can along the way, but it is the prayer of my heart that I will listen to His whisper and stay with Him in this “Trackless Solitude.”

Trackless Solitude III

Beneath the glistening foliage
the fruit of love hangs always near.
The one immortal fruit: He is

 or, tasted: He is here.

Love leads, and she surrenders to
His will. His waylessness of grace.
She speaks no words save his,
nor moves until he marks the place.

The Waylessness of Grace.  I invite you to pause here. Now reflect on that… The  waylessness of grace…  the first time I read the poem I didn’t even see the phrase, leastwise try to figure out what it meant. Probably I had read the poem 4 or 5 times before my “aha moment” came and its meaning penetrated my consciousness.  So intrigued, I was, about the thought and meaning of the  idea of “trackless solitude” that I didn’t even notice “waylessness of grace”.  Then one day, reading through the poem yet again,  those 3 words resonated with my heart.

There is no Bible verse that clarifies or defines the concept of the “waylessness of grace”. The more I reflected on it, I felt like this idea which had been only a spark burst into a flame! That made sense of something I had experienced but as yet remained dormant. I wanted confirmation, that what Jessica was putting into words, really was my experience so off I went to “google it”!

I did the web search only to discover that the only google references associated with these 3 words are  a whole bunch of links to the poem. Jessica may have actually coined this term itself, and to my knowledge never defined what she meant by it. In the absence of any actual definition of this concept, I have further reflected on it and today I share with you what it has become in my own life and understanding,

After we hear the call of the Spirit and we give our “yes” to Christ, we enter into this journey of discipleship. I thought I had a grasp of what that was, I will summarize in list form for you how I thought the “way of grace” should basically go in my understanding of discipleship.

1. Read your Bible and Pray every day. This is the basis of knowing Gods will.
2. Face the fact that this undertaking will not always be fun… It is a cross we are carrying here. 
3. Although this is a narrow path, don’t worry some really neat people will be there, because even though “few there are that find it” all of the elect should be right there on the path too… because we all know that there is only one way to heaven.  
4. Understand that some of what Christ requires may not make sense to you, but trust and obey anyway. 
5. Submit to your husband, because God says so, so you have to.  
6. Raise your children in the way they should go …. Nurture and admonition of the Lord, so you don’t totally mess them up.  
7. Quit Sinning!  Ok, you can’t totally quit, you are human… but make it your purpose to avoid sin, and you’re not allowed to keep your pet sins alive, because “You can’t help it”.  
8. Spend time in the church, encouraging others and being encouraged.  
9. Forgive jerks… friends too, but especially the jerks because we will be forgiven as we forgive.  
10. Pray for the rapture because getting out of here is our only hope.

I thought that basically, this is what Christ has called us to. I assumed that if you wake up in the morning, spend time in the Word and in prayer, it should all come together pretty much just fine. Then again, sometimes... maybe not so much!
 

Somehow living out of that list, although it is all true, so frequently does not seem to correlate with whether or not everything is going to "go the way that it seems like it should.” I wake up, pray and think that it probably ought to be "going a certain way", and it just doesn’t.  My kids are naughty, my husband acts weird, my friends disappoint me and what I am reading in the the Bible isn’t really saying anything that has to do with all the stuff that has to happen this week.

To me, this muddled mess, (that so often seems to be the state of my life), is the Waylessness of Grace.” I find myself in the midst of the craziness, frustrated, depressed, anxious, confused, or dare I admit it, just plain angry? My spirit cries out “NO WAY!” "This is not working." "I cannot do this, I will not survive this hurt or disappointment." "No Way!" My response isn't because I feel that God has denied me some nicely manicured primrose path. I never was under the impression that discipleship was characterized by a trip of ease where I skip along merrily.But from where I sit...I am in some cold, gloomy pathetic swamp, I'm ankle (or knee or neck deep, depending on the day) in mud I may never get out of. And even if I do, I'm guessing that I am still going to smell for days!!

How is this cold nasty bog discipleship. I look about me, utterly confused,because I was trying to do the right thing... and I am lost. I feel so clueless, where did I lose my way? I scan the horizon for a sign, some way that might seem familiar...I look for a sign, suspecting that I should be seeking a Palestinian footpath, somedusty Jerusalem road! Certain that when I find "the way of grace" it will includes crowds shouting “crucify him" on both sides, and I will be much better off… It's not so much that I imagine that I will “Like the way” but at least I’d recognize it well enough to know I was in the right spot! The certainty of it all would make it more comfortable.

There in my confusion, after I have quit my hysterical sobbing, or wiped my angry tears away, and quieted the incessant murmuring of my heart, when I look right into his eyes,  He meets my gaze and points to the spot.  Gently, He says, “Yes, right here Karina. Right here in this cold, ugly, spot is exactly where I want you today. Lean in to my grace. My grace is right here for you, and it is the way.  The way isn’t the path… the way is actually the grace itself.  My grace… Me… I am the Way.”

Trackless Solitude II

The Spirit lights the way for her;
bramble and bush are pushed apart.
He lures her into wilderness
but to rejoice her heart".

In my Spiritual life, I have been lured into the wilderness, by the Holy Spirit, and if I keep blogging it would probably make a good topic to write about some day. But, in continuing a record of my personal journey, I found myself in a desolate wilderness… but obedience to the Spirit of God wasn’t really how I had gotten there.

In 1993, as I found myself at the bottom of the chasm I had fallen down into, decimated by my own choices, and deluded thinking, desperate for a change, the Spirit whispered my name. I wasn’t sure where I was, I had no idea where I needed to go, but certain that I would do well not to return from where I had been; I turned in the direction of His whisper.  He said my name again, and limping and wounded, I followed him in the dark, never having really experienced Him in this way before, but certain of who He was, and willing to see where he was leading.

I think if I am honest, I would have to say I was not much familiar with the Holy Spirit then. And I would be cautious before making claims of some casual and routine intimacy with Him now. It is mystery, because at that time, on that walk He was Spirit, yet he was so close I felt that I could touch Him. There in the darkness so thick, His presence around me, but unable to see anything but his light leading me out of where I was into a different unknown.
 
He lured me into the wilderness all right, and it was the right place for me at the time.  I was healed there. Not a quick, one shot, miraculous “rise up and walk healing”. It was more of a survey the damage, triage approach. A lengthy assessment of which wound is worst, what needs to be re-broken, “Wow this is pretty bad” approach. He cleaned and dressed my wounds, the water of his love, and antiseptic of truth were accompanied by the soothing ointments of his mercy and grace. He cut away tissue that just wasn’t going to heal, and broke some bones that I had tried to set myself some years before. Pretty much… I couldn’t move.  So Jessica’s phrase “but to rejoice her heart,” well let’s just say, it wasn’t the first trip, and it took a while to get there.

For 4 months, I lived in a stark and barren wilderness. It was a quiet and slow rehab.  I had never really heard of such a thing happening before, I mean to real people in the 20th century.  I thought trips into the wilderness with God only happened to people in the Bible. (Granted, there were quite a few of them, Moses, Rehab, Naomi, David, Elijah, John the Baptist, Jesus, even Paul.)  I don’t know why I would have thought God didn’t do that anymore, but I guess I assumed that, while it was a literal event for them, it was merely to serve as a kind of a literary motif for us. You know, things God needed to have happen so that they could be written about for us in the Bible. But to my mind, that only happened to people in the “robe and scroll dispensation”, and I guess I figured that God didn’t really do that anymore.

Of course, I know now that he does. Short day trips, long weekends, extended periods. He’s even been known to lead me into wilderness and back, in less time than it would take to drink my morning coffee. But I never know when, or why, or for how long.  That was a very special period in my life, it changed me forever.  

Most of the time now, He keeps me on this side of the brambles and the bushes. So much of my time, led by the Spirit, is keeping to the familiar paths of my life, and that is not a bad thing. He can rejoice my heart in any setting, and heaven knows I need the Spirit for that, because I have a heart that is prone to murmur and criticize. Sometimes I feel like it may require more grace and His “anointing” to bring me a spirit of joy when I fold laundry, referee my children, or look at my living room, than it did when He took me into the quiet wilderness and into the closeness of His healing presence.

Trackless Solitude

Deep in the soul the acres lie
of virgin lands of sacred wood
where waits the Spirit.
Each soul bears this
trackless solitude.


The Voice invites, implores in vain
the fearful and the unaware;
but she who heeds and enters in
finds ultimate wisdom there.

How familiar are we with the depths of our soul? I know that I have only re-discovered my own over the last decade or so. I have finally grown secure enough to admit the exterior topography of my life that I had run roughshod over since I had entered high school, was only a part of who I was. Unbeknownst to me I had abandoned whole sectors of my personhood behind, my conscience, my feminine sensitivity, mystical spirituality, because in the social drama that became my life you couldn't attend to all of that and be "cool", successful and popular, at least not in the social circles I wanted to be part of.  The further I went from my interior self, the less I was able to hear the Spirit.

For years of my life, I lived only on the epidermis of who I was.  During my adolescence, I experienced a great deal of rejection, confusion and frustration in my relationships. I began to feel uncertain about who I could trust. People that I thought I could count on disappointed me, my peers were opportunistic and time and again betrayed or took advantage of my naivete. The disillusionment and anxiety that I experienced came to mar and scar the depths of my soul. In an effort to feel better, I abandoned the locale of my deepest hurts. I moved outward to engineer new stronger exterior life where I believed that I would be safer and felt less vulnerable.

  When I was a young adult, I changed environments and structured a world where I was popular and comfortable. I built on the foundations of the faith that I had grown up with:  I studied Scripture, was fully engaged in the activity of my local church, and made time with fellow believers a priority. At the same time though,  I resented its fundamentalist tenets. I felt that life was codified with rules that made unrealistic demands of me and placed limitations on my lifestyle that were "extra-biblical" at best. I chafed at the rules, certain that my baptist"individual soul liberty" entitled me to define my own understanding of how to live my faith. Soon, the surface of my life was also as marred and scarred as the interior life of my youth. This time, however it was not due to circumstances associated with childhood. Now, my by my own inconsistencies, I was actively harming myself, and I adamantly denied how deeply entrenched I was in hypocrisy and pride. Sadly, I was unaware that under the guise of living a libertarian approach to a "good enough Christian life" I was being decimating my spiritual,physical and emotional well-being. In my freedom I lived  deluded by mismanaged relationships, materialism, lust and avoidance of the truth about myself: that I had developed a spirituality based on a false confidence in biblical knowledge and unfortunately,an unfounded self-reliance.  

It took me years before I was able to hear the Spirit calling my name. I assumed that I ought to be able to hear him, because I had been to all of the places that I imagined he was.  I had never quit going to church, never stopped studying the Bible and the people I spent the greatest amount of time with were Christians. His voice may also have been drowned out by a cacophony of 'good things," I suppose. Add to it the clatter of the busy-ness of my life in the foreground, joined by intermittent thunder in the background which accompanied the storm of my hypocrisy,and frequent poor choices. You can add to all of that the painful sound of incredible feedback whenever I would slip into meaningless physical relationships that had become a recurring pattern that I seemed unable to avoid. There was not much chance that I would hear anyone's voice over all of the noise.

As unbelievable as it may sound, I was unaware of just how far away from my own soul and His Spirit I had wandered. I really had convinced myself that I was going to be fine. I imagined that amidst the clamor, if He called, I would hear Him. I didn't want to go to Him, I thought it would all be fine, right where I was, but I couldn't have been more wrong. My personal life would crescendo chaotically and end in a deafening silence when I betrayed a man of integrity, and grace who loved me. In the finale,I found myself falling through an unnoticed fissure in the outer crust of my life. It was a long, hard fall inward.


It was then, desperate, ashamed and alone, in the depths of despair face to face with what little was left of my shredded soul, that I heard in the dark silence, the Spirit's voice whisper my name.