It's the Circle of Life
And it moves us all
Through despair and hope
Through faith and love
Till we find our place
On the path unwinding
In the Circle
The Circle of Life
Elton John from “The Lion King”
As a said a couple of posts ago, in the post called “Geography or Life”, there is a way of viewing many of the processes that we all go on as steps along the pilgrim path to wholeness and maturity as a person. This is not so much a linear process, like a geographical pilgrimage or even a circular one, like the stages in our life cycle from birth to old age and death. It’s more like a spiral, where within any one life event we may come back to a previous step many times before we progress on to “resolve” or “absorb” the event. I gave a hint as to what these “steps” might be, and how they might correspond to the stages of a geographical pilgrimage.
| Geographical | Life Cycle | “Life” |
| Preparing | Childhood | Decisions |
| Leaving | Adolescence | Risk-taking |
| Travelling | 20s/30s | Rhythm |
| Arriving | Middle Age | Closure/Resolution |
| Returning | Empty nest/Midlife Crisis | Change |
| Remembering | Old Age | Learning |
I thought the table might refresh memories and help to make comparisons and correlations.
Decision making is perhaps the fundamental activity which launches the process of change and therefore of growth or lack of growth in our lives. Decisions may be good or bad, may lead to personal growth or stagnation, cannot be taken without considering the effect our decision will have on others (unless we’re totally selfish and self-centred). Any single life event may involve an astonishing array of decisions, some very simple and others incredibly complex. Those of us who pray appreciate the help and guidance we may gain from God as we, as often unconsciously as consciously face the bewildering array of decisions that life brings us.
How do we make decisions, especially the more complex ones? What moral and ethical standards do we apply? Do we seek advice and how do we weigh it? What about the decisions that need to be made in a split second, where we don’t have the luxury of a long process? How does the process of successful prior decision making affect the emergency decisions? And so on…more questions than answers.
And of course, every decision, especially those that require action, open us up to a degree of risk taking…
Pilgrim Traveller 