Beltane Early Growth Moon
I skipped some steps in my life education. And I did that post-college when I was hungry for intellectual stimulation and found the cheapest source for it in seminary. Instead of noticing what had my full attention, studying scripture with the tools of higher criticism, I followed my radical political passions into the ordained ministry.
Following the 60’s slogan, if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem, I embarked on a decades long immersion in political work. I believed and still do believe that political work is important and necessary, a responsibility of a citizenry that would remain free as well as a corrective to social injustice cooked into the current culture.
But. I also believe that when the creative life, the one where the Self you have been granted by the random, but highly particular thrownness you have experienced, finds its highest and best purpose, it equals the level of urgency of political action. Why? Because each of us are precious, unusual, unique and as a result need to offer the world what only we can provide.
This is at best a dilemma, at worst it can create paralysis or misdirection. In my case I followed one path, political action, from college through my early 40’s. That I did this through the church is only a happenstance, a function of the odd synchronicity of my time in Appleton, Wisconsin and a minister there, Curtis Herron, who knew United was, at the time, a politically engaged seminary.
My rationale for being in seminary, drenched in the zeitgeist of the 60’s, led me to pick up on all the threads that led through the labyrinth toward a political minotaur. They were bright threads in those years, the early 70’s, and had the additional compelling flavor of righteousness, a dangerous route to follow, but one I pursued anyhow.
The threads I left lying on the ground, less bright and flavored not with righteousness but with tradition and imagination, came to me as I soaked up literary criticism, the history of the Pentateuch, the redactions of the gospels, the tradition criticism and form criticism so useful in the Hebrew scriptures, even the brief exposures to Hebrew and Greek. Had I stuck with them, followed the literary and creative impulses they roused in me, I might have neglected some political work, but found my way to writing much sooner.
But I didn’t. Now I’m in my late 60’s and, thanks to another lesson I’ve simply refused out of stubbornness and fear to learn, how to sell my finished work, have nothing to show for having finally picked up the threads less bright, yet the ones more in touch with my full Self. Although it may sound like it, I’m not whining here, just observing the length of time I spent on one section of the labyrinth, not because I didn’t have help, but because I couldn’t discern the true help I did need.
Now, finally, I have all the threads in my hand, I’m following them to the end, aware that there is still ahead the Minotaur, a last battle. When will it come? I don’t know. The labyrinth still has turns ahead and the way, the ancientrail, is dimly lit.
