Most of us are used thinking of our lives as a linear progression. We’re born, we’re kids, we go to school, we get jobs, we find a partner and maybe have our own kids. We develop our careers, progressing along until it’s time to retire. We get old, and then we die.
But we all know life doesn’t really work that way. Sometimes we have kids, then find a partner. Sometimes, like me, we go to school, have a career, go back to school, have a second career, go back to school and have a third career. Sometimes we find a partner, then we find another one…then another one. Some of us die young. Some of us never leave childhood.
And this is just as true for our spiritual lives. Anticipating that our spirituality will be linear, we expect to continually evolve and grow. We look for answers. We seek “Truth.” (Some of us even get achievement-oriented about our spirituality, as I know from personal experience!)
But in reality, spirituality is more like a giant Slinky. One's spiritual path is much more like a big spiral than a straight line. Sometimes it feels like a circuitous route: two steps forward, one step back. “Haven’t I already learned this lesson?” “I can’t believe I’m finding myself here again….” “I thought I had this figured out….” “What happened to me -- just a year ago I was really connected spiritually and now I feel as spiritually flat as a pancake.”
Sometimes our spiritual Slinkies are lying flat and dormant in the box. We know they’re there, yet we don’t play with them. We aren’t in the mood. They’re not a priority. And so, they gather dust.
Other times, our Slinkies are moving at different speeds. They can be hesitant…in fact, we wonder if they’re going to make that great Slinky leap. And other times, they are hopping out of control… down the stairs… landing with a big splat.
I offer this somewhat ridiculous metaphor to you because I’ve found it helpful to embrace my Spiritual Slinky over the years. Sometimes I experience tremendous growth and opening in my spirituality, while at other times I don’t feel connected to Divinity at all—and this often occurs within the same month!
When my sister called me the other day, I told her that I was going to be giving a talk about our Spiritual Slinkies. She reminded me that a Slinky can’t move on its own, no matter how much it wants to. Our spirituality is a co-creation: between our hearts and our minds; between our souls and our egos; between God—or whatever frame of reference we use—and ourselves.
So, I invite you to let go of striving, of doing, of directing your spirituality. Instead, open yourself up to receiving and to being nourished. Allow yourself to get caught up in your Spiritual Slinkies if you need to. Embrace not knowing. Embrace exploring. Embrace curiosity.
And importantly, embrace playing! Don’t take it all too seriously. Remember the wonder of the Slinky.
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Closing Blessing, by Ted Loder:
"O God, let something essential and joyful happen in me now, something like the blooming of hope and faith, like a grateful heart, like a surge of awareness, of how precious each moment is, that now, not next time, now is the occasion to take off my shoes, to see every bush afire, to leap and whirl with neighbor, to gulp the air as sweet wine until I've drunk enough to dare to speak the tender word: 'Thank you'; 'I love you'; 'You're beautiful'; 'Let's live forever beginning now…' " (1)
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NOTE:
(1) This is slightly adapted from from "Let Something Essential Happen to Me", which is from Guerillas of Grace: Prayers for the Battle, by Ted Loder (Innisfree Press, 1984).