St. David’s United
Rev. Dan Chambers
Exodus 16 (in the wilderness)

Isaiah 40:28-31

The Practice of Getting Lost

We’ve all had experiences of getting lost.  Personally, I usually don’t cherish those moments.  I want to get to my destination as efficiently as possible.  If there’s a shortcut, I’ll look for it.  If there’s a faster route, I’ll take it.  Getting lost is a waste of time.  It’s inconvenient and bad on the nerves. 

I don’t even like the feeling of being lost, which is to be disoriented.  I like to know where I’m going, have a picture of it in my mind with the approximate time of arrival.  Being lost means we no longer know which way is north, south, east or west.  Being disoriented, we’ve lost our sense of direction.  We feel vulnerable and may even have to stop to ask for directions.

This is what I had to do on my way home from the prom, which we had just celebrated at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Los Angeles.  Before high school students were riding to the prom in stretch limousines, I took my date in our Ford Pinto, which I had vacuumed and washed especially for this big occasion.  The drive was about forty-five minutes and though nervous, we made it through the hazards of Los Angeles freeways to the hotel with only one near accident.

        The drive home didn’t go so well.  My friend and his date were in another car and the plan was to go to his house for an after-prom party.  He took an exit, I didn’t.  That was my first mistake.  I thought I knew where I was.  I thought I knew about another exit that would take us home.  That was my second mistake.  Visions of the perfect prom night evaporated as my date fell asleep in the passenger seat as I wandered the freeway system and roads of Los Angeles, city of angels, where I hoped and prayed an angel would come to my rescue.  Well after midnight, utterly disoriented, I had to stop to ask for directions.  Nothing was open at that hour except the occasional 7-11.  Unfortunately, I was not in a safe part of town, especially at night; especially if you were white. 

There were four men sitting outside the 7-ll, drinking something out of a bottle in a brown paper bag.  I wondered what to do: would my date be safe if I went into the store?  Would I be safe? 

By this time she had woken up.  “Where are we?”

“Lock the doors,” I said, as I stepped out of the car wearing my rented prom tux with the ruffled shirt and bow tie.  It was impossible to look tough and I had long lost any pretension of looking cool.

Either there was an angel with us that night, or the guys hanging outside the 7-11 were too busy laughing at us to hassle us. 

We made it home safely, but my enormous plans for a romantic prom night were dashed.  I really don’t like getting lost.

A couple of weeks ago I went to VST to hear Barbara Brown Taylor, an author, preacher, and teacher of international repute.  We referred to her book, An Altar in the World, in our Lenten series this year, and in it she argues that being lost can become a spiritual practice.  Bummer.

And yet as I saw her chapter heading, deep down I knew that many spiritual practices are the kind we resist at first: sitting in silence for long minutes, or hours, or days; fasting; walking slowly around a labyrinth; doing yoga.  So it’s not surprising that I felt resistance at the thought of getting lost as a spiritual practice.  On the other hand, there’s the encouraging fact that I do have a knack at getting lost, so perhaps there’s hope for me as well in this odd spiritual discipline.

When we’re lost, Barbara Brown Taylor observes, we wake up.  We begin to really pay attention to where we are.  We notice things we might not otherwise see – landmarks, street signs, anything that might give us a clue as to where we are. 

Sometimes we know exactly where we are, but still feel lost.  You can feel lost at a party.  You can feel lost while sitting on your couch at home and wondering where your life is going.  You can feel lost when your car breaks down on a dark road.  This happened to Janet before we were married.  She was driving along a highway outside San Francisco when her tire blew.  She steered the wavering car to the side of the road and a lump of anxiety in her throat began to form.  This happened years before cell phones, and there was no pay phone or gas station or sign of help in any direction.  Staying with the practical, she tried to remember everything her father taught her about changing a tire, and got out of the car to see if she had the right equipment.  If you’re a man, you regret this situation.  If you’re a woman, it’s likely you feel even more vulnerable and exposed. 

Looking into the open trunk, she heard the crunch of tires as a car pulled up on the roadside behind her.  “Oh, good!” she thought at first, then, “oh no!”  Who pulled over and why?  A man got out of the car and began walking toward her.  The hair on her neck stood on end, her heart pounded.  In this moment, she felt seriously lost. Then the man who was mostly a silhouette in front of his car’s headlights pulled out something that looked like a badge.  She realized this could be real or this could be a lure to make her drop her defenses.  Was this guy a good Samaritan or a rapist?

Fortunately, he was an off-duty policeman who was genuinely sensitive to her predicament and radioed a tow truck to come and help change the tire.  Janet made it home safely that night, later than she had expected, but safe with the help of an angel flashing a badge.

The irony is that while we’re more vulnerable when we’re lost, we often have to trust the stranger.  Sometimes we’re given no choice and in other circumstances, the person who is giving us directions or putting us up for the night or fixing our car or giving us a lift into town may be the kind of person we’d otherwise never associate with.  And that’s just the point.  Being lost can open us to people we would generally remain closed to out of convenience or bias.  Being lost can be a spiritual practice, because it gives us the opportunity to practice trust.

The practice of getting lost has nothing to do with us wanting to go there. It is something that happens, like it or not.  You lose your job.  Your lover leaves.  The baby dies.  At this level, the advanced practice of being lost consists of consenting to be lost, since you have no other choice.  The consenting itself becomes your choice, as you explore the possibility that life is for you and not against you, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary (BBT, An Altar in the World, p.80).

It’s helpful to practice getting lost in a low-risk way, so that when the winds of life blow you clean off course, you’ll have some practice in managing your panic, marshalling your resources, getting your bearings and noticing what this unexpected situation has to offer you (p.72).

You could try on this spiritual practice by allowing yourself to simply meander from time to time.  Be bold.  Set the to-do list and time schedule aside and go for a walk without a particular destination, turning left to explore the lovely garden, turning right to pet that calico cat sitting so regally by the stone wall.  The French have a wonderful phrase for a person with the ability to wander: flaneur.  A person who is a flaneur saunters.  He explores.  He meanders down a street he’s never walked before, embracing the unfamiliar, following a wonderful smell that takes him to a bakery where he chooses to walk in and buy a cinnamon bun.  With warm bun in hand, he walks out the door to see what else he might discover.

A highly enjoyable way of being lost is traveling in a foreign country.  I find it’s easier to be a flaneur if you’re away from home.  If you don’t speak the language, all the better.  If you live in a foreign country for a while, even better still.  Anything that makes you smack into your cultural assumptions like a bramble of bushes and look at things differently is helpful.  When I lived in Japan, this happened most every day as I awkwardly stumbled through a complex cultural maze.  I was like a young child who depended on the adults around me to survive.  I couldn’t drive, couldn’t speak or read the language, didn’t have a clue how to follow an elaborate social protocol other than “try to be polite,” but even then I failed as I was sometimes rude even as I attempted to mind my manners. 

The first night in the first village I lived for the first year, I was invited to dine at the high school principal’s home.  His wife must have laboured for days preparing an elaborate meal gorgeously presented on the table.  We sat on thin cushions on top of the tatami mat and ate with hashi, chopsticks.  Conversation was limited, as their English was better than my Japanese, but still confined to phrases.  Though surrounded by sumptuous generosity, I felt lost sitting there on the floor in my kimono looking a bit gangly and so obviously Western.

After several dishes of soup and salad and fish and steak and noodles, the mother proudly carried out of the kitchen the pièce de résistance; a whole crab from Hokkaido.  I was already full and wasn’t particularly fond of crab, so I politely, or so I thought, declined with stumbling Japanese, “Ah, domo arigato.  Sugoi desu ne.  Keredemo, mo ippai desu.”  (roughly translated) “Oh, what a beautiful dish.  However, I’m quite full, thank you.” 

The matriarch’s face fell.  She bowed and carried the crab back to the kitchen.  I didn’t know what she was doing.  Perhaps she was cracking open the shell and pulling out the lovely white crab meat.  But minutes later when she returned, there was no crab.  Later I learned that if I as the honoured guest didn’t eat the crab, nobody would.

My friend said, “Japan makes you dumb.”

Another way to put it is that travel is a good way to practice being disoriented from the usual expectations of your life.

In the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, there is a command that runs through Torah like a hymn refrain.  There are many variations on it, given in very many contexts, but the basic gist of it is, “You shall love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”  Those most likely to befriend strangers, in other words, are those who have been strangers themselves.  The best way to grow empathy for those who are lost is to know what it means to be lost yourself (p.83).

            The first disciples of Jesus were lost in a blessed kind of way.  Having just been turned inside out by the Pentecostal wind and fire of the Holy Spirit, they needed to figure out how they would be Church.  They had no road map, no GPS device, no manual to follow.  There was no Church growth consultant and no advisor from the national office who could sweep in with time-tested recommendations.  All they could do was trust each other and God and see what happens.

            In North America and Europe, the Christian Church is going through a lost period of its own.  Along with traditional media such as newspapers and magazines and television, and along with companies like Fannie Mae who are too big to fail and have failed, and along with the US Postal System which teeters on the verge of bankruptcy, and along with universities who are scrambling to find different ways to deliver an education to students, the Church, too, is going through a massive shift.  We’re lost in the sense that no one has an answer to where we’re going and what the Church will look like in 20 years.  Not the Catholics.  Not the Southern Baptists.  Not the Mainline denominations.  No one knows or pretends to know.

            The test for all of us is whether or not we’ll be able to embrace this season of being lost as a spiritual practice.  Having had our lives disoriented by the Spirit, will we manage our panic, be open to strangers, and trust that everything that happens is an opportunity for growth and deepening?  Will we have the eyes to see that the bread of heaven is still available for the picking, and that strangers are often the ones who point out where the manna hides?

            Even when we’re in that meandering, lost state, what we need to keep close at hand is our sense of identity and purpose.  So for the month of June, we’ll have a sermon series on just that: who we are and why, beginning with the 85^th Anniversary of the United Church next Sunday and then rediscovering from our ancestors the five marks of the Church.  There is an African proverb, “You can only see as far into the future as you can see into the past.”  In this spiritual practice of being lost, we reach back to our roots and remember who we are on this journey into the future, ripe with possibility.  Amen.