Home By Another Way
Something unexpected, unplanned for, comes along and sweeps us off the path, and leaves us choosing another way home.
They went home by another way.
For me, it’s the best and shiniest part of the Christmas story. And, yes, I know, it sounds like I just dissed the baby Jesus, but I think he will understand.
In the first Christmas story, wisemen, scholars and seers from a far off land, come to see and celebrate the baby Jesus and his family, and “being warned in a dream not to return the way they came”, they go home by another way.
Just writing those words makes me pause and I can feel grateful tears rising.
Because I have spent most of my life going home by another way.
Not the predictable way.
Certainly not the easy way.
And certainly, and sometimes sadly, not the way I came.
I keep finding myself going home by another way.
You know that cultural pattern everyone follows – married in their twenties, kids in their thirties, mortgage, two cars – I went home by another way. Not but choice, but because untreated mental illness swept me off the path.
I come from a strict, fundamentalist culture that valued obedience over relationship – and when I began to gain some mental and emotional health, I knew I couldn’t go back the way I had come, I would need to choose another way.
In my fifties, with my mental health, an education, and a vision of what I want to make of my life, I should be fully focused on building that dream… but needing to care for an elderly parent, I am once again (or still) going home by another way.
What’s comforting about that is… so are you.
So is everyone.
Divorce.
Cancer.
Loss.
Grief.
Failure.
Death.
Something unexpected, unplanned for, comes along and sweeps us off the path, and leaves us with choosing another way home or the paralysis of demanding that we go back to what no longer exists or is no longer a choice fitting to our lives.
What has helped me not only go home by another way but be curious about and occasionally celebrate these new paths is mindfulness. Living a mindful life means making the intentional, active choice to be in this moment, now, not living in regret and pining for the way I did not or could not take. Not lost in what ifs and whys, but fully and gratefully present here and now.
Eckhart Tolle so wisely said, “Acceptance means for now, this is what this situation, this moment requires me to do, and I do so willingly.”
That might seem obvious.
Or ridiculous.
But what it is, is transformative.
So many people I know wake up every morning and grudgingly get out of bed, they get dressed and head off to work with an attitude blaring, ‘I’m doing this because I have to, not because I want to’ to everyone around them. They tolerate their co-workers. Complain about their work. They bemoan the demands of marriage or parenthood, or the realities of an empty nest or singleness.*
For so many people, life is lived reticently, reluctantly, resentfully – but almost never willingly.
For so many people, the thought of living willingly in the moment feels like capitulating their wants and desires.
But nothing could be farther from the truth.
Living willingly in the moment does not mean ‘sucking it up’ and ‘taking’ whatever happens.
It does not mean putting on some plastic Pollyanna smile and pretending that everything is what and how we want it to be.
What living willingly does mean is befriending what is real. Befriending this moment.
It means going home by another way – willingly.
It means being willing to enter the loss, to feel the disappointment, to bear the grief, willingly because they are what the moment holds.
It means being willing to move beyond the loss into curiosity and hope for what the new path may hold, and to appreciate the beauty of the moment on the way.
It means getting out of bed willingly, being in traffic willingly, doing the work in front of us willingly, making breakfast, coffee, or dinner willingly. It means choosing to be present in this moment – reading, writing, talking, listening, walking, sitting, sleeping by an intentional and free and purposeful act of choice.
It’s a simple discipline. When I find myself ‘going home by another way’ and feeling reluctant or even resentful, I intentionally choose the thing I am doing or feeling. (It helps to actually say these words out loud.)
I choose to peel these potatoes.
I choose to feel and befriend this grief.
I choose to be in this traffic.
I choose to write this blog.
I choose to be married, dating, single, widowed.
I choose to be in this moment willingly – which often means going home by another way than what I thought I wanted.
That little, seemingly meaningless detail – that the wisemen went home by another way – has survived 2000 years despite the fact that it doesn’t seem at all necessary to the overall Christmas story, and in 58 years of religious practice and observance, I have yet to hear or read a sermon or message or essay or article on that line.
I believe that that one little detail survived all these centuries because like the wisemen, we are all asked, over and over, to go home by another way.
The choice we have is whether we will go willingly or dragging the weight of our resentments of the day and of the task and of the path.
We are all going home by another way again and again and again.
It is an easier journey to go willingly and mindfully.
*I want to be very clear that this act of willingly choosing the moment DOES NOT apply in an abusive relationship.