Life ebbs and flows. It is not for ever, or ever predictable. Plans may be thwarted by all sorts of adventure or misadventure. Sometimes we move into challenges willingly, but mostly we are beset by them, often at times when we feel least prepared…

Don’t make the mistake of thinking me wise or well regulated in my own encounter with the vicissitudes of life. Last year was one of the hardest I can remember, for reasons not always clear. The darkness of winter entered my soul and clawed at me from the inside and in my pain I was painful to be with. In hindsight it would be tempting to claim this as some kind of winnowing from which I emerged like a brand new butterfly into a new season of life but this would be bullshit. Rather, I survived by licking my wounds until they were only scars.

I say this not because I do not believe in change – clearly it is what I hope for both for myself and for the world – but rather because I think we need to be honest with ourselves about how this happens. Change is often raw and ugly but neverthless is is both necessary and inevitable.

Does it have to be this way? Of course not. We can all fondly recall those moments in an autumn forest when the dancing leaves turned sepia, or that deep joy in the first blush of bright green in spring. So it is with life. There are times to embrace the passion of the new as well as those times when just brace ourselves to survive. Both will shape and form us for good or ill, but we do have some control over what happens afterwards, in terms of what we do with our new season.

If I have any wisdom at all, it is this – watch for the season and wait for the seasoning.

Don’t expect it to be tidy or linear, but when there is a road ahead, walk it as well as you can with as much love and integrity as you can bring to bear. It is as simple (and as complicated) as that.

Recently we took some steps into a new season. I have no idea where it will lead, or what seasoning it will bring into my life, but it feels right and so that is enough to make me keep walking in the way of it. We became associate members of the Iona Community.

This may seem like a small thing, but I have have not ‘joined’ anything for years. In fact, I consider myself to have developed an aversion to membership or obgligation after living/working so much within institutions for much of my life. I can only desctibe the change like this. I was coming into a new season, and then I had an encounter with something both old and familliar and at the same time vitalising and new.

In a previous post I put it like this;

I took the photo above a week ago, on our way into the abbey on Iona to attend a service led by members of the Iona community. This service, and the one the next morning, had a profound effect on both of us. It was simple, unflashy, with dirge-like hymns. We sat in the cold and damp of the old abbey and I wept.

Why did I find this service so moving? It was the welcome, the sense of deliberate inclusivity, the freedom to make and take whatever I needed from the gathering with no expectations, no narrow hoops to jump through. Then there was the liturgy, skewed towards justice and grace. (It feels like a long time since I did not have to grit my teeth through at least some parts of a communion service.) Then there was the companionship, which included people from all over the world. A mental health social worker from Philadelphia wondering if she could keep going. A group of muslims from Bradford. All of us gathered around the same table which belonged to none of us and all of us at the same time.

It was like coming home.

I could say a lot more about our decision to join, and how long it took for us to make it, but we will save this for another time.

The point here is not that we should all join a community. Rather that as seasons turn, new roads will open to us. Trust this my friends, right the way through. Not just when we are fit and fighting, but even in the darkest winter.

As children of the great spirit who made the world and holds everything together, the roads we choose should sing in our souls. Lets walk on together.