Declining to serve tea

We walk our tracks over mountains, through vast plains that extend to far horizons; in pastures green and beside still waters, through the rubble of valleys of Baca where we twist our ankles on loose stones and get scratched by the many thistles. The landscape varies, the journey continues; it’s all one, it’s all the way home, we take our way together.

This particular stretch of the journey is proving to be one of the more challenging miles to go. I am having to use all my strategies to calm anxiety, talk myself out of resentment and bitterness, disarm frustration and just darned well keep on going. A journey of a thousand miles is accomplished one step at a time. Peace is every step.

Sometimes in a particular prayer ritual I find a way through to the still small voice, and so I did this morning. I took into my prayer what the psalmist calls “the voice of my complaining”, and laid out my difficulties before almighty God.

Swift as an arrow came the response (as is so often the case, when I bother to ask).

“Let it be where it is,” he said. And I understood what he meant. The things that bother me – let them start where they start, stop where they stop, just don’t take them home, invite them in, feed them up and encourage them to bring their friends home too.

As Suzuki put it, “Let your thoughts come and let them go; just don’t serve them tea.”

This was the beginning to a new constructive strategy. Let’s see how it goes.