Lines & Circles

I have often wondered about how it is that we learn the same lessons over and over. I’m not talking about the need to learn from our mistakes so that we don’t repeat them. I’m talking more about the ‘layers’ of life. Think of any principle of life for example. It could be balance or focus or asking for help or … anything really. Now think about this - how many times have you ‘come to the place’ where you have reached a kind of epiphany of sorts (call it a revelation or a breakthrough or whatever) and you understand and you determine to make those needed changes, and maybe you do, but inevitably at some point ‘down the road’ you find yourself almost ‘back at the same place’ again in a kind of sort of way. As you look around you the surroundings are not quite the same, but it’s a kind of eerie feeling almost like you’ve 'been here' before. And it’s like you are relearning the lesson almost. I say almost because, while it seems the same, kind of, it is not quite the same because it seems like it is now at a different level somehow. Understanding seems to work that way. We can understand something but then we can understand it more. And this is a repeating cycle.

We talk about life as a journey and so we tend to think of it in linear terms. But life is not just simply linear. If we look at nature, everything from the forming of galaxies to storm patterns, or even our own bodies from the crown of our heads to the tips of our toes, we see swirling patterns. And so it seems with the journey of life, we have the sense that we are moving forward yet at the same time the sense quite regularly that we have ‘been here before’. The journey of life is multidimensional.

I came across this quote a while back by William Butler Yeats which expresses some of what had often intrigued me about all of this:

“Life is a journey up a spiral staircase; as we grow older we cover the ground we have covered before, only higher up; as we look down the winding stair below us we measure our progress by the number of places where we were but no longer are. The journey is both repetitious and progressive; we go both round and upward.” William Butler Yeats

I was thinking about all of this when I was reading through the travels of Israel in the wilderness. They kind of traveled in circles for forty years but those circles were not without meaning. It wasn’t just a matter of God punishing the people but God teaching the people. There is a world of difference between ‘punishment’ and ‘discipline’. Take a closer look at the passage from Deuteronomy that we looked at two weeks ago. Note how it says that God ‘led’ them ‘all the way’ and that His goal the whole time was to ‘teach’ them.

“Remember how the LORD your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD. Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years. Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the LORD your God disciplines you.” Deuteronomy 8:2-5

As you continue to press forward on your journey, and you have those times when you get that unsettling feeling that ‘I’ve been here before’, don’t get discouraged. True, the surroundings may be very familiar, but YOU are not the same.