How Did I Get Here?

When a spiritual journey covers as much geography as mine has, the traveler accumulates a very diverse group of friends and acquaintances.

For me, the last ten years has been like being thrown from a whitewater raft. Tossed this way and that by cold, rushing water, it has been difficult to keep my bearings, to figure out where I am. And nearly impossible to keep track of my fellow rafters.

Now, admittedly, the metaphor breaks down, because some of the people I've lost track of were friends/acquaintances I met after being tossed from the raft, but no metaphor is perfect.

The point is, I've tossed and tumbled from somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun to somewhere to the left of, well, whoever the lefty equivalent of Mr. Attila is...

And very few of my friends/acquaintances have followed me down this particular river.

How do I explain this journey to my friends from college? How can I tell them how I got here?

I like where I am, and I cannot imagine going back upstream.

The recovering evangelical in me wants to share with them the good news of this spacious home I've found, this wonderful place where it's not about what you believe, it's about supporting each other in the never-ending search for truth and meaning.

But trying to recreate how I got here and why is proving problematic. It's tedious work and I have little patience for it.

I guess the thing is that I didn't so much get where I am by thinking my way here, as by living my way here. Changes as dramatic as I've experienced are not the result of a step-by-step, rational, decision-making process. They are the result of a process of transformation wrought in a painful crucible of estrangement and exile.

All I know is that I made choices, one at a time, each of which had much greater repercussions than I could have imagined. And they have brought me to a wonderful place.

I don't know if there's a more direct route. But if I did know of such a route, would I share it with friends from years past? Who appreciates paradise on the far side of the mountains more--those who followed the Oregon Trail in a Conestoga Wagon, or those who set the cruise in their SUV at 70, while their kids watch DVDs in the back seats?

Here's a grand metaphor mix-up: maybe the folks in the SUV are in their own crucible, bouncing along the river, tossed and tumbled toward their own paradise, here on earth, or later on in "heaven."

Who knows?