Wells of Guidance, Healing, Refreshment

There’s an old apocryphal story about a photographer assigned by a national magazine to take pictures of a forest fire. The assignment editor told him a small plane would be waiting at the airport to fly him over the fire. The photographer arrived at the airstrip just an hour before sundown. Sure enough, a small Cessna airplane stood waiting. He jumped in with his equipment and shouted, “Let’s go!” The pilot, a tense-looking man, turned the plane into the wind, and soon they were in the air but flying quite erratically.

Not paying too much attention to how the pilot was flying, the photographer directed him. “Fly over the north side of the fire, and make several low-level passes.” Looking at the smoke and blazing fire, the nervous pilot exclaimed, “Are you sure? Why would you want me to do that?” “Because I’m going to take pictures!” yelled the photographer. “I’m a photographer, and photographers take pictures.” With an even more worried look on his face, the pilot replied, “You mean you’re not the flight instructor?”

The story is funny, and sure enough, there are times in life when we make mistakes. Sometimes grave mistakes. It is in moments like these when the foundation of our faith makes all the difference when what we believe comes to bear. Without faith, we feel lost, without mooring, without guidance.

The poet and philosopher John O’Donahue once said, “…for parenting, for relationships, and for all the domains of our endeavor and work, to have access to a religious tradition is a huge, strengthening, critical resource, which keeps you wide awake and makes you ask yourself the hard questions.”

It can keep you from becoming in-grown and bitter… or cynical and hardened. It can keep you open and generous. And it can keep you from losing your bearings. 

O’Donohue went on to say, “…it is not that our tradition doesn’t have dark passages in it. But, there are also zones of great light and immense wells of refreshment and healing. And it’s a critical question, always, for somebody who wants to have a mature adult faith, to conduct the most vigorous and relentless conversation that you can with your own tradition, to mine and excavate it for the huge reserve of resources of spirit and guidance…”

I pray today that you and I would draw deeply from the immense wells of refreshment, guidance, and healing within our own traditions. And as we do, whether we are facing moments of crisis, danger, loneliness, or despair, or whether we are celebrating or even just muddling through the middles, may we find that our lives are rooted and grounded in the heart and presence of Christ who loves us.

Let us pray: Loving God, create in us the desire to know you more deeply and love you more fully. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.