A child stood on his seat in a restaurant,
holding the railing of the chair back
as though to address a courtroom,
“Nobody knows what’s going to happen next.”
Then his turning-slide back down to his food,
relieved and proud to say the truth,
as were we to hear it.
~Colman Barks, “The Railing”

This poem from a book of prayers collected for the arrival of the millennium has swept into my life periodically. It has made me laugh and filled me with hope in its simplicity and its wisdom. The scene is so easy to imagine, isn’t it? And the words of this child saying, as children often do, the most important words that must be said. “Nobody knows what’s going to happen next.” Though we may plan and outline and schedule and decide, anyone who has lived at least a few years knows that those plans often do not play out accordingly. Things happen. Situations change. Life intervenes.

Tomorrow I leave for a pilgrimage I have planned for months. I will be walking a part of the Camino de Santiago…the ancient path walked by pilgrims for more than a thousand years that leads to the cathedral housing the relics of St. James in northern Spain. Having dreamed for several years of making this prayerful walk, the planning and details began in April with the actual training to walk, sometimes as much as 18 miles per day, in May. Maps will be carried, socks have been chosen, hiking boots have been adequately prepared and worn what I hope will be just the right amount to minimize blisters. I have considered many things that could go wrong, what might be needed, what can be left behind.

But the truth of the matter is: “Nobody knows what’s going to happen.” along the way. In any endeavor, our plans only take us so far and then it is up to chance, fate, circumstance, faith and, hopefully, a large dose of grace. Once my traveling companion and I make the first step upon the path, I believe the pilgrimage will have a spirit of its own…one that holds challenges and surprises and gifts we could not plan for or imagine. It will take us to places we have not seen before, asking us to make decisions we could not have planned to make. In this way, the path mirrors life, doesn’t it?

As I have been thinking about not only this poem and the pilgrimage, I have been aware of the people close to me who have been visited by circumstances that they did not see coming. They did not know what was to happen next. They have their lives fully planted in a ‘what has happened’ that has brought them up short and made shifts in plans and hopes and dreams they had created in what now may seem like a very distant past. Their work now is to live into the what next with some measure of kindness and gentleness toward themselves, those that surround them and the world that is now their home. My prayer is that this Spirit of Grace is a constant companion for the journey.

Last week I saw one of the quirky, fun creations of artist Brian Andreas that spoke to this moment in my own journey and perhaps others. His colorful drawings of somewhat formless people doing fanciful acts always bring me joy and are accompanied by a whisp of wisdom that surprises. The drawing read: “There are times when I have no idea what comes next & it’s the thing I’ve come to love most about being alive: Leaning in to hear the invitation of each day & feeling my whole body melt when I say yes, yes, yes.”

As I begin this long planned for journey, I pray that I will have the courage to find joy in the presence of not knowing what will happen next. And with each step may my companion and I lean in to the invitation that is the gift of every new day. And may the word ‘Yes’ be the word we both give ourselves to again, and again and again.