Finding Our Compass Points

The world ceases to exist when someone we love dies. The center no longer holds. The future is scrambled, and we no longer know what direction to head.

I’ve carried a quote by Thomas Merton with me since high school. I was riding my bike from Minnesota across Wisconsin, wanted something to read, and found Merton’s slim book Thoughts In Solitude in a convenience store:

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.”

            Before I married Evelyn, I seriously debated whether I wanted to be a monk or a husband, which was a curious dilemma because I’m not Catholic. She wondered about this, too. I made my choice and married her on the day in December that Merton made his vows to be a monk. 

            Eighteen years later, and fourteen months after Ev died, I arrived at Gethsemani Monastery in Kentucky and stood where Merton wrote these words. I went because I didn’t know what I was supposed to do with my life without Evelyn.

            Every couple of hours for a week, I went to worship services that began at 3 a.m. I walked through the fields and woods that Merton walked, and considered again the idea of becoming a monk. Being at the monastery centered me.

            Every evening, as the black and white-robed monks sang Compline, the last service of the day, they wrapped my heart in hope and presence: “Before the ending of the day / creator of the world we pray / that with thy gracious favour thou / wouldst be our guard and keeper now.”

            I didn’t find any answers, or even a direction for my future, but I realized that I felt more alive in the woods than inside the monastery looking at icons and singing Gregorian chant, as beautiful and as moving as they were. I was more John Muir than Thomas Merton.

            I returned home to California and my beloved Yosemite. As I hiked alone through the monastery of the mountains, I worked my way through grief and rejoined the living. Fifteen years later, I still don’t have a vision for the future, and I may never have one. But I learned one thing.

            It’s not what I do in life that matters. It’s how I live each day.

            I do not need to know where I will end up. I only need to know how I want to go through this day. I only need to be faithful to a guiding principle, whether this is compassion, social justice, creativity, or challenging the boundaries that hold people back from caring for each other. I don’t even need to know how I will accomplish this. Every morning I just need to get up and ask, “How can I be part of this journey today?” Then say yes to what shows up.

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            If grief is part of your journey, then you will live in a desert for a time and face its mind-numbing despair and chaos. Do not give in to the alluring melancholy of death. We are more than our sorrow. We are more than our loneliness and bitterness and anger. There is a community of support around us, even if that community is scattered around the country.

            If we can cry when people are hurting, laugh when they are happy, and if we aren’t too proud to ask for help when we are faltering, then we will be okay. 

            Do not close yourself inside a hard, protective shell. Stay open to wonder and to the surprise that lives in others. Head in the direction brings you life. Death can take care of itself.