The writer Pearl Binder once remarked, ‘I always travel slowly and obscurely, on cargo ships and slow trains. I travel for the sake of what I see on the way.’ Today, however, we seem more concerned with getting as quickly as possible from A to Z. How rarely on a train journey do we put down our mobile phones and look out of the window at the passing scenery?
Month: March 2021
Snakes and ladders
We should not be distressed by lapses from grace. They may well be necessary. We may have been trying too hard, or have become inflated by what we imagine as our progress in the practice of meditation, so that a sudden fall jerks us back to earth. It is like the game of Snakes and Ladders. In our practice we shall, time and again, slide to the bottom of the snake. As Jesus said, ‘No one, having put their hand to the plough and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of Heaven.’ We plod on!