"The Zig-Zag Path" by Rev. Barbara Merritt

[Memos from Rev. Barbara Merritt and Rev. Tom Schade]

M I N I S T ER’ S  M E M O

“The Zig-Zag Path”

A good friend in Petaluma, California has a very steep hill behind her new
house. I would have looked at that incline and concluded that God didn’t
want me to have a backyard. Instead, my friend (who has among her many
talents the grasp of landscaping architecture) has constructed a series of
six terraces with carefully placed switch-back paths, sturdy
drought-resistant plants and large, colorful ceramic pots. Together all
these elements move the focus of the eye all the way up to the top level
which is an abundant, as well as an esthetically delightful, vegetable
garden. (Whenever I visit California I am constantly amazed to be reminded
that they harvest their vegetables all year long.) The garden created on
this challenging canvas is stunningly beautiful. And the time it takes to
get to the highest terrace is time spent in appreciating lush grasses,
surprising flowers and the sweet smell of lavender.

On my recent visit to perform a wedding in San Francisco, I quite
unexpectedly found myself following a similarly indirect path to my favorite
restaurant in the city, located at Fort Mason. From the hotel room the route
was crystal clear: four blocks west and then three blocks north. Only what I
didn’t know, since I had entered into the hotel through the circuitous path
of an underground garage, was what street and direction the hotel lobby
faced. I thought I knew. But I went four blocks north and then three blocks
east, and then another three blocks east until I discovered I was looking at
the Bay Bridge, not the Golden Gate. Without a map and completely confused,
I re-oriented and like a sailboat, tacked my way down to the water, followed
the coast and finally (an hour and a half later) arrived at Green’s
Restaurant. Even being lost didn’t diminish the fun of a long walk in San
Francisco. The sky was blue, the temperature was 74o and the exercise felt
good. There is more than one way to arrive at your destination.

So when a colleague recently consulted the I Ching, an ancient book of
Taoist wisdom, I was pleasantly surprised that it advised her to follow the
“zig-zag path” as she pursued her goals, her ambitions and her life’s work.
What other path is there?

A lot of us were hoping for short cuts to God, to healthy relationships, to
resolutions of long-standing conflicts. Short cuts are so appealing! Less
effort. . .less time. . .less investment of our attention and resources. But
is a straight road up a steep mountain the best way to go forward? Wouldn’t
we miss quite a lot of what this journey has to teach? If we can see exactly
where we’re going and everything we are likely to encounter along the way,
there would be hardly any sense of adventure. I’m not even sure we’d bother
to make the trip if we knew what would happen before we began.

The zig and the zag, the wandering lost, the going first in one direction
and then in another seems to be imprinted on the human consciousness. Rumi
wrote:
You know how it is. Sometimes
we plan a trip to one place,
but something takes us to another.
God fixes a passionate desire in you,
and then disappoints you.
God does that a hundred times!
God breaks the wings of one intention,
and then gives you another. . .
I shoot an arrow right.
It lands left.
I ride after a deer and find myself chased by a hog.
I plot to get what I want
and end up in prison.
Every detective story takes us up and down one blind alley after another.
Can you imagine how boring a novel would be if, in the opening paragraph,
you were told how the plot would resolve itself?

You can make as many long-range strategic predictions for your life and your
work and your retirement funds as you like. You can Google all kinds of
explicit directions as to how to get from point A to point B. You can
carefully draft plans as to what you want to accomplish, and how and when.

But the road I want to trust is the one that takes me in unexpected
directions. As we “chart our course” we ought to assume there will be
detours, unexpected delays, strong and unpredictable headwinds and
astonishing surprises. Even when we thought we’d be going east (and instead
are going west,) even as we thought we’d be traveling quickly (and are
bewilderingly going slow,) there’s no reason to assume that we are
hopelessly lost.

We are simply following the “zig-zag path.” The natural path. The human
story. The road that will take us where we need to go.










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