We have not been this way before...

1 Corinthians 2:9-10

“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him”— these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.

"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” 
― Rainer Maria Rilke

As the Path of Renewal Pilot Project gets underway, it seems like we're having to wind everything back. To navigate a course for which no map has been drawn and to discover, not answers, but the questions that we should be asking. That demands a huge adjustment for folk used to initiating and driving. Our default mode is to get things up and running, to step out hoping that others will follow in our wake.

But being involved in the Mission of God, requires, above all, discernment. The kind of discernment that involves stepping back, listening carefully and waiting. Not an easy place to be, not a comfortable environment from which to invite others to join us.

Once again, we find inspiration, community and encouragement in stories.

Stories of the people of God throughout the ages who embarked on journeys to destinations they could only dream about along paths they had yet to discover. 

Stories of the unlikely companions Jesus invited to accompany him on a journey and the surprising encounters they had on the way.

And stories of our communities, places where we see God already at work and the excitement of discerning God's spirit in people and in places we could never have imagined.

The story is still being written, questions still being formed as the Spirit weaves a new narrative, forging an intricate pattern of mystery and intrigue, of daring and invitation, a call to lay down our sat navs so that we can be diverted from our pre conceived notions into a whole new realm of possibility.

We have not been this way before so we make space to listen to the voice of God's spirit who greets us in stillness and sits with us awhile until we have gleaned the first steps of the new path and, above all, have tuned in to the slow work of love and of grace, markers for journey ahead.