A Trail of Two Words

Two words emerged as a refrain last week when I met via Zoom with my spiritual director. The words wove their way through our prayer and conversation, a pair insistent upon staying together and staying in front of us.

My spiritual director introduced the words, or so I thought. “What a brilliant set of words!” I reflected. The perfect pair for prayer.

Later, I realized he had in fact borrowed the words from me! I found them in my previous blogpost and in my journal. “Wow,” I congratulated myself.

Later still, I noticed the two words in the confession our congregation prayed together on Sunday. The pair of words I thought I had come up with were the brilliant creation of a liturgist.

If I were to follow the trail even further, I would find the words elsewhere. I would find them dripping off the pen of a poet, a theologian, and who knows who else. Probably you.

When my spiritual director and I were in prayer and conversation, we moved through the heaviness of the past month: the weight of goodbyes we said to saints who have gone before us, the long and yet lovely stretch of Christmas worship services.

Prayer may be like this for you, too. Moving along in prayer, you find a side road and without even noticing, you follow the side road away from the main road of your prayers. Suddenly you are sunk in a ditch of worry and regrets.

That’s when my spiritual director said two words that I will keep close by in the year ahead. A pair that is perfect for prayer:

Begin again.

The two words are nothing new. The words are so old, in fact, they are ancient.

Begin again.

The trail of these two words reminds me that the wisdom you need most may not be in front of you but behind you. God may have abundantly scattered quiet wisdom in a long-ago moment of hardship, or in a past season of celebration. The forgotten seeds grow in the Spirit’s time, a sign of new life.

Begin again.

You cannot see far into the year ahead, yet you can hold onto wisdom God has already given you in years behind.

Photo by Judy Beth Morris on Unsplash