A New Level of Commitment

I was raised in a Christian home where we went to church every weekend, confessed and truly felt love for a God that we believed cared for and loved us in return but who was distant and did little to transform our lives. The spirituality of my childhood worked for me for many years until I approached the turbulent teens. It was in those tough moments of change and peer stress that I knew that I needed more than a weekly visit to a far-off God. I needed a God who was up-close and personal in my life and who had a significant impact on who I was trying to become. It was at that moment that I knew that I needed a new level of commitment or I needed to give it up and be done with the whole thing.
I was thinking about this concept of the spiritual walk's periodic demand for new levels of commitment while I was hiking one of my favorite trails on the Oregon Coast. There are many different trails to the top of Cascade Head. My favorite trail begins in dense green ground cover and old-growth timber, includes steep rocky sections, slick muddy sections, the crossing of streams and the maneuvering around giant tree roots. Finally, when it feels like you are going to wander forever through the dense forest, the trail breaks out onto a treeless head. Eventually, you near the edge of the cliff and can see the vast ocean before you, the mouth of the Salmon River to your left, the Cascade Mountains behind you and the high point of the head to your right. From there the trail turns into steep switch-backs that seem to go on forever toward the highest point of the head. Besides the usual challenges of the hike, there is often heavy weather and dense fog to complicate your climb.

On my last trip to the Oregon Coast, as in the spiritual life, I had picked my trail of choice - in truth, like the most of us, I was born onto a trail. I began to follow in the steps of countless feet that had walked before me. I felt committed. I felt like I was doing a good thing. Yet, it was not long before the steepness of the trail and the dense fog made me breathe hard and I had to find a new level of commitment within me to keep moving, buckle down, and move with new energy and determination. This occurred many times on my way toward my goal but I finally reached the edge of the cliff. The thick fog encircled me. There were no breathtaking views. There was only the trail extending on and up to my right - seemingly forever into the fog. Again, I had reached a point where I needed to make a new level of commitment to continue on and up. But, this time, after sitting for a while, I couldn't find what it would take within me and I headed back down the trail.

The analogy of the spiritual life being like a hiking trail breaks down easily when pushed too far, but I believe that it has value. As in hiking, I have reached the point many times in my life where, for one reason or another, my spiritual life no longer worked for me: dark times of illness and depression where I lacked the required level of surrender to a trusted, nurturing God; times of transition where I lacked the grounding in a firm, unwavering God; times of loss where I lacked wisdom to know that what was happening was for the highest good of all involved. Each of these times - it was not God or Source or The Universe that was lacking. The problem always was rooted in my level of commitment, surrender and/or groundedness. Each time, I grew angry. Each time I grew tempted to give up on a Spiritual life. But each time I eventually found my way down to a new level of commitment and thus found a new level of relationship with the Divine that saw me through the fog and on up the trail.

Is your spiritual life working for you today? Does your God feel too small? Does he/she feel too far away? Too powerless to handle what is happening in your life? Check your level of commitment.