Through Stained Glass: Guest Post on Getting Lost

Today's midweek reflection is by First Presbyterian Church member, mother, writer, poet, photographer, adventurer, and whimsical warrior, Kelli Owens. Today's words are inspired by the lessons from the first Sunday of Lent. You can check out more of Kelli's writing at her blog, Chronicles of Grace, by clicking here.

Photo captured by Kelli Owens. 

 If you know me at all, you know I adore being in the woods. Especially in the between seasons like this one, where fresh spring promise fills my lungs with all that is alive while my eyes probe eagerly for the first peeps of green. Winter’s final hurrah clings to chunks of frozen creek while geese return in astounding numbers, attuned to inner clocks. It’s a liminal space. The tension of opposites.

It’s also the perfect time of year to get lost. Well-worn paths and marked trails no longer stand out in their usual stark contrast to summery overgrowth. My boots follow deer tracks and sidestep fallen trees rather than limit themselves by the obviously easy manicured walkway. Even in familiar places, I turn a corner and am suddenly surprised at the face that returns my gaze: the woods I thought I knew, now inside out.

And the thrill of discovery is balanced (if not enhanced) by more than a pinch of anxiety. Will I find my way back without the comfort of known markers? Will I be faced with the prospect of an impossible passage and be forced to do the unthinkable: turn around and retrace my steps? Was that snapping twig just a squirrel or the formidable angry buck whose space I inhabit? What I run into by wandering the woods is more than my love of adventure; I also must confront the less comfortable feelings that accompany the experience of being lost. This is as good a place as any to be honest. Getting lost is, at its roots, a firsthand exercise in relating to the unknown.

If a spiritual practice is, as Barbara Brown Taylor suggests, “anything … you let bring you to your knees and show you what is real, including who you really are, who other people are, and how near God can be,” then perhaps getting lost is medicinal to the soul. Anyone who has lived for any length of time knows there are many real moments of the unknown in even the most average and pedestrian life. Everything from aging to parenting, from calamities to celebrations, we live in a world rife with the unforeseen. There are times when these moments excite and times when they frighten and times when the tension of opposites brings you alive in more ways than you know how to say. Perhaps getting lost with some intentionality is not a bad way to grow accustomed to it. Perhaps in doing so, what we think we know turns inside out and we realize how even uncertainties wear the very face of God. I wonder if this is what it means to be both lost and found.