Bruce Cockburn (prounounced co-burn) is a songwriter out of Canada who over the years has moved me. The song of his most indelibly burned into my mind is called "Pacing the Cage." There are some wonderful images in his text:
"ive proven who I am so many times/ the magnetic strips worn thin/ and each time I was someone else/ and everyone was taken in"
But it's the refrain that in these past few years has come to mean a great deal to me--Pacing the Cage. For a few years now I have lived in Shawnee longer than I've lived in any other location in my life. When that sort of stability emerges in your life there is an internal rythmn disrupted. We no longer find ourselves moving every few years, typical of the college/grad school/early job phase of life. For a very long time my life was predominantly about preparing for what was next. There was always the task of being fully present in the moment, but there was also an escape hatch not too far down the road; the next degree, the next move, the next, the next.
So there is an internal adjustment you have to make when you finally end up in the place where you are going to end up. And every so often you find yourself pacing the cage.
I'm reading through Kathleen Norris' book, Acedia & Me, a series of reflections on the condition that the monastic traditon refers to as acedia. It isn't quite boredom, it isn't quite depression, it isn't quite apathy, but it has an aproximation to all of those things. She reflects on the 4th Century monk Evagrius Ponticus' description of this elusive state:
"...I had discovered a description of something that had plagued me for years but had never been able to name. As any reader of fairy tales can tell you, not knowing the name of your enemy, be it a troll, a demon, or an "issue," puts you at great disadvantage, and learning the name can help to set you free. "He's describing half my life," I thought to myself. To discover and ancient monk's account of accedia that so closely matched an experience I had at the age of fifteen did seem a fairy-tale moment. To find my deliverer, not a knight in shining armor, but a gnarled dessert dweller, as stern as they come, only bolstered my conviction that God is a true comedian."
I'm not experiencing such torpor these days, though I have in the past. My life right now is fomenting with relationships and meaningful work. But I do find myself in an awkward place of not knowing what my life and work will look like in the next few months. I'm finishing up my seminary studies with my Episcopal Diocese and approaching ordination. Where I will be next as a deacon and then a priest is up in the air. It may to continue right where I am, it may be somewhere else. It is a strange kind of limbo where I hold the work of a life-well-lived right where you are planted in tension with the unkown of the near future. It one of those detail-oriented aspects of faith. I'm pretty good with the big aspects of faith, the cosmic ones, I have more trouble with the day to day stuff. But God knows such things and continues to abide regardless.
"ive proven who I am so many times/ the magnetic strips worn thin/ and each time I was someone else/ and everyone was taken in"
I'm not sure if I want to start over. A recalibration always has its advantages, and I know I can muster up the energy to do it. God knows I've made enough msitakes in this town that a fresh invention wouldn't be the worst thing that could happen. But I also know that one of the tenets of monastic commitment is that of stability--obedience, chastity, poverty and stability. Such things often leave us pacing our cages, but they can also reap a reward that only happens over time, an authenticity to relationships that comes only when you push through the torpor, the boredom, the conflict and the depression. It is that kind of life that requires us to surrender our imgaginaitons and wills over to the will of God. And that is the real kind of work that I am called to, God will do the rest.
Sunset is an angel weeping
Holding out a bloody sword
No matter how I squint I cannot
Make out what it's pointing toward
Sometimes you feel like you live too long
Days drip slowly on the page
You catch yourself
Pacing the cage
I've proven who I am so many times
The magnetic strip's worn thin
And each time I was someone else
And every one was taken in
Powers chatter in high places
Stir up eddies in the dust of rage
Set me to pacing the cage
I never knew what you all wanted
So I gave you everything
All that I could pillage
All the spells that I could sing
It's as if the thing were written
In the constitution of the age
Sooner or later you'll wind up
Pacing the cage
Sometimes the best map will not guide you
You can't see what's round the bend
Sometimes the road leads through dark places
Sometimes the darkness is your friend
Today these eyes scan bleached-out land
For the coming of the outbound stage
Pacing the cage
Pacing the cage

