Can't You Read The Sign?

   

Sign, sign, everywhere a sign
Blockin' out the scenery, breakin' my mind
Do this, don't do that, can't you read the sign?

5 Man Electrical Band 1970

Essential to the El Camino are its signs.

My choice to walk the Camino del Norte only using the signs set out along various places like roads, curbs, walls, buildings, bridges, and trees meant I had to be vigilant.  No map. No GPS.  I wanted to walk like a pilgrim of old, sans tech. There was actually an excitement to intuiting the path 'au naturel' and if necessary, facing the challenge of getting lost!

After 281 KM of this I concluded that when you are consciously watching for signs rather than having a GPS (read: cultural) voice tell you where to go, your skills of 'noticing' become heightened.

We live in a world where others set out signs for us to follow.  Their aim is to prescribe the way you should go.  Political, media, religious, vocational institutions and a host other forces in our lives regularly set out their signs, beckoning us to walk in their stated direction.

People are reading a lot of signs and reacting to them, but I contend we don't 'notice' them very well. Just watch your Facebook feed and the comments section.

To notice is to discern.  Discernment is the process of making careful distinctions in our thinking about the truth of those signs for us.  Discernment asks questions like:

• Is this sign pointing in the general direction of where I want to go?
• Does this sign make any sense being here, now?
• Based on the signs that have brought me to this place, can I trust this sign?
• Do I actually want to go where this sign will direct me?
• Where will I end up if I actually followed this sign?

Unfortunately it's now a rampant habit in our culture to latch on to a position and lock into ways of thinking and looking at the world.  Any signs pointing to potential new ideas, new routes and new ways of thinking/being can't be 'noticed' because our eyes have become unaccustomed to looking at a sign and discerning it's meaning.  Signs are given attention only as far as they fit our existing biases.

How can you 'see' a sign for its own merit and make a decision? Some of my thoughts from following Camino signs:

1. Define the signs you are looking for. Not all signs have to do with you or your journey.  On the Camino it's a yellow arrow.  The arrow exists in a few different formats, but there's a distinctiveness about it you recognize as a pilgrim.  Those arrows (among many other arrows on the route) were the ones that had a reference to my ultimate goal of reaching Santiago de Compostela.   Life is full of signs, but which ones matter to you?  Much depends on your reference points. If your life & goals are ill-defined, any sign will get you somewhere. Reminds me of a quote by Lily Tomlin - "I always wanted to be a somebody.  I just should have been more specific."
2. You can't see if you are not looking! That's a Captain Obvious declaration, but...  Early one morning as I left Lezama, Spain I walked behind a fellow pilgrim who was very agitated. He was on his phone with someone, frustrated he could not see the signs. Somehow he hoped a remote person on the other end of the line could help him see! The comical irony was while on the phone, he was regularly walking past the very signs pointing out his way! The need for speed kills insight, so slow down in order to really see.  My best advice - if you can't find the signs it's time to stop, retreat, and reorient yourself. It may be you have forgotten what signs to look for. In the rush of life, you can only see well when you have silenced your mind and calmed your spirit.
3. Beware the Crowd.  Once while walking through a city I saw a crowd of pilgrims a few blocks in front of me.  So, believing they were on the path I wanted to be on, I lowered my personal sign-seeking vigilance and followed them.  After all, safety in numbers!  In one instance however, that crowd took a collective wrong turn.  If it wasn't for a personal check in at that moment on my commitment to look for the signs for myself, I would have blissfully been wrong with them.  I stopped, saw the sign they missed, and turned. BEWARE. The crowd can be safe and helpful but it can also cause you to pay less attention to the signs laid out for your unique pilgrimage. Crowd-sourcing your direction in life will cause you to lose the awareness and discipline of looking for your signs.  An example from my vocational context is the production and use of commonly themed, large-scale training programs for Christians, and the one-way communicative patterns of most church's' public gatherings.  It can produce a version of 'group-think'.  As a result of the need and desire for orthodoxy (and orthopraxis), the Church inadvertently produces pilgrims who can only walk with the crowd. I see this revealed in the rhetoric of many who can spout off clichés, platitudes and simplistic responses to life issues they commonly learned in these contexts. They have not always learned the discipline of discerning the signs for themselves. Frankly this applies to our politics too. ATTENTION: We each must walk our own journey and make up our own minds. This is not a declaration of independence from human community or absolute truth. However there also exists a walk that is unique to you and Jesus. He will set out the signs for YOU.  Are you building capacity to see His signs for your unique journey?
4. Train your eyes.  You can fall out of the practice of noticing and might even become lazy at looking.  After I had taken a day-long break from walking, on my return to the Camino the next day I struggled for a while to re-adjust my eyes to searching for the signs.  When you stop seeking the signs that point you toward purpose and meaning (and that affirm you are on the right path) your eyes will cloud over and perhaps even become desensitized. A host of avoidable and unavoidable life circumstances will affect our vision.  We all deal at times with  stress, transition, resignation, exhaustion and even just struggling to survive. But if not careful we can become used to not looking for the signs that guide our ultimate journey of life. If you are in a break-time for whatever reason, your vision may be cloudy.  Make the choice to keep looking.  The signs are there.  You just have to see.

Signs, signs, everywhere there's signs,

Blocking out the scenery of your own beautiful life journey,

Breaking your God-given, unique mind!

Don't settle for other's voices of 'do this' or 'don't do that'

Can't you read the signs for your life?  

Harv Matchullis

Kedging For the Modern Man

I am not a sailor, but I am about to ‘kedge’. 

The Royal Navy’s seamanship manual from 1904 describes kedging as a means for maneuvering large engineless ships in and out of tight harbours and tidal river entrances.  Historically it has also been (and still is) a method for sailors whose vessels are being pulled by tides or winds towards destructive shores or reefs. 

Here is how kedging works.  A team of sailors take one of the ship’s anchors and ensure it is attached to lots of rope or cable.  They place it in a small boat and row it out in the direction they want move the ship.  They would drop the anchor when they ran out of rope/cable, return to the ship and proceed to pull the ship up to the anchor’s location.  Repeat.

It is a slow, hard process. 

On occasion kedging was the difference between life and destruction.  If strong winds, tides or currents were pulling a ship in a direction that was going to ground or destroy it, or if the ship was otherwise disabled, you had to kedge to save yourself.

I am kedging to save myself, because the tides are taking me into the rocks.

For those who have been reading my blogs, those written in the past 4 years have held hints that this period has not exactly been the pinnacle of peace in my career or life experience.  Much pain, confusion, & questioning.  I have still managed to work, be creative and (I think) visionary.  Nevertheless, something has happened in those 4 years.  I've pulled anchor and have drifted. The anchors that served to root my life, such as physical disciplines, rituals around how I approach my work, and the relationships that sustain me, have been pulled up into the boat.  Ironically, my faith anchor is the only one in the water.  But as the Scriptures say – faith without works is dead.  And I am heading for death.

Maybe ‘heading for death’ is too melodramatic?  Not really.  There is a ring of truth to it.  When you faithfully do your job as I have, but in other areas of life you let go of the rituals and disciplines that give life to you, you are really dying.  Dead while alive.   I found my 'life' was comprised of only instinctual responses.  But usually our instincts (mine anyway) tend toward laziness, selfishness and whatever feels good to you at the time. 

This is when it is time to kedge to save your life.  How do landlubbers like us, kedge to save our lives?

Acknowledge you are adrift.   Wish I could give you the Three Threats or Seven Signs checklists that would clearly indicate your life is adrift.  It’s never that cut and dried.  I suspect that for most, there is an intuitive sense that above all else, we have lost something of ourselves. Something that was once there is missing or depleted.  What once brought joy and anticipation is lost to us.  The ability (even desire) to look ahead in hope is diminished.

 Stop the Excuses.  Excuses are legion.  We have an incredible capacity for self-delusion and rationalization.  One of the most insidious excuses is: “Well, this is just the way I am”.  That is both true and false.  History writes us, but we also write history.  Genetics, nurture, context and a host of other factors have shaped your historical story.  Yet you have an incredible capacity as a human being to also write your own history.  You can choose.

Tell someone. The attempts to change that are conducted in isolation are, frankly, doomed to fail. Those self-deluded rationalizations are like the proverbial devil on your shoulder. They will always be there to whisper, to keep you from the changes needed to keep your life from hitting the rocks.  You need some other, more positive and supportive voices on your shoulders to counterbalance and overwhelm the negative self-talk. 

Identify the anchors you need.  Of course, our society has self-help anchors galore to sell you via DVD’s, books, seminars, etc.  It is tempting to believe these off the shelf products will do the trick. It would be so much easier. However only you really know what you need and what will work.  IF you will take time to identify them, they will be the anchors that will hold and actually get you to safety.

Start pulling for your life.  There is common wisdom out there about creating change.  What I say here is no different:

• Retreat & Rest – Pull away, walk away, drive away, and get away.  Get out of the dirty water in the fishbowl.  You cannot see clearly from there because you don’t even know the environment you are in is clouded.  Find a place of contrast, but also of rest.  Brain science supports that when we change environments, it helps us become more creative and make connections we otherwise might not make.

• Realistic Future– Just be honest and ask yourself one key question:  If I did nothing about this, who will I be in 3 years?

• Ritual – Kedging means you have taken an anchor, placed it out farther from where you currently are and then you start pulling toward it.  Create some rituals to ensure that happens. So, a few simple yet profound observations:
• What are the specific anchors you need to help save yourself (physical, relational, spiritual, emotional etc.)?
• What will you do to start pulling your life toward them?  This is the plan/ritual part of the equation.  Intentions change no one.  Rituals/Disciplines/Plans do.

If you can see the rocks, get out the anchors and start kedging.