What am I going to do next?

Life is more and more having its way with me.

I’m sitting at the 11:15 Jubilee Sunday service (roughly 300 folks at each of the two services), wondering what I’m going to do when it’s over. Across the big room, I see a couple of guys with whom I sometimes go for coffee. Will I again go out with them? I don’t know – part of me wants to and part not. Why not? I’m not sure, it’s just so.

But more true still is that I really have no idea what I’m going to do next. I can make myself anxious by trying, now, to figure it out. I can make myself tense and tight by, in this moment, deciding a path and determining to make it happen. In this way, I can cut myself off from whatever feelings, impulses and aversions might bubble up in me between now and the end of the service. Making decisions is way over-rated.

It feels soothing, in this moment, to remind myself that I don’t know, in this moment, which path will nurture my spirit more. More even than that, I really, really don’t know what I will do. To tell myself that I do know is just a useless conceit.

How will I know? I will really know only when that after-service moment arrives. I will know only when I see – just see – where, in that moment, my feet take me.

A few weeks ago, a good friend came up to me during the noisy exchange-the-peace part of the service and asked me what I was doing afterwards. It was really kind of thrilling to announce out loud – and to have it witnessed by a close friend – that I just didn’t know. I literally told her that I wouldn’t know until I see where my feet take me. Geez, it was fun to say that!

She seemed a little surprised. I imagine she was in that little bubble of thinking that we choose these things. I was in a different bubble – or maybe out of the bubble – where choice is not as important as consciously surrendering to life, and knowing that it will have its way with me whether I like it or not.