One of the many things I am drawn to in Zen is the focus on process rather than content. I can spend lots of time talking about content, about how this person drives me crazy or how my organic avocados always seem to be rotten inside. Yes, I can talk about these and many more pieces of content, instead of talking about the process of my irritation, or the process of my disappointment.
Yet, I wonder if process is as easy to make entertaining as content. How could the process of good and evil be as captivating as the content of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy? How can I tell you a story about a major event in my life without the content? Would you still be able to relate?
In early spring of last year I made a choice. I had many choices, but I choose one, because there was only one of me. The choice was for the next step, the next adventure, the next learning experience. The choice was hard. I cried about it. I prayed about it. I worried about it. However, I finally made it. It took fits and starts; choosing one thing and then choosing another. Finally the mental trappings of conditioning let me go enough to say, “Yes, this is what I choose.”
The choice led me down a path that, after four months, I realized was a path I did not want to travel. Yet, this realization did not come slowly, it came quickly, in the matter of just an hour.
See, I had been walking down a hall for months, watching the floor; my one foot in front of the other. Then it happened, my right shoe hit a wall, then the left. I looked up and all I could think was, “There shouldn’t be a wall here.” I stood there for almost a month, angry and confused about the wall. I railed against the surface that had stopped me. I asked experts about it. I cried about the wall. I prayed about the wall. I worried about the wall. Then one night, I realized that the wall didn’t matter. It wasn’t bad. It wasn’t good. It was just a wall. The question then moved from the wall directly to me and my two feet pressed against it. Do I stay or do I go? I left.
Currently, the marketing arm of the United Church of Christ relies heavily on Gracie Allen’s phrase of, “Never place a period where God has placed a comma.” Yet, there are the times when God places a period and the sentence is finished.
