Becoming passers-by on the incomprehensible road of life

Along every step of this directionless path we must remember not to remember where we were the step before, or we will remain on that step, even though we think we are moving still further. To look back, is to go back. To look forward is to lose ourselves, and to become ourselves at every moment.

As another bard, James Taylor, wrote in the lyrics for his song Walking Man, "The walking man walks, doesn't know nothing at all. Another man stops and talks, but the walking man walks ...walks on by."

We see that the essence of the journey, whether it be as a short walk, or as a metaphor for life, is to continually look forward, without trying to hold onto 'what was', and so to never look back.

Christ addresses this motif, when, in the Gospel of Thomas, he tells his disciples simply to, "Become passers-by". And in another saying regarded as his, which is found carved above the threshold of a temple in India, he says, "The world is a bridge, cross over, but build no house upon it."

All of these statements are pointing to the necessity of embracing the ephemerality of all life, and so allowing it to be the free flowing, unclogged movement of mystery which it is.

Mirabai, also from ancient India, told of her uncertain and true way, as she sang: "I simply follow my incomprehensible road."^[22]

Such is the openness and acceptance of faith; it is to not be worried, expectant, or concerned with what lies beyond the next corner, or what tomorrow brings, for faith knows that 'the wonders of today are sufficient unto themselves'.

"And when old words die out on the tongue," offers Rabidrinath Tagore, "new melodies break forth from the heart; and where the old tracks are lost, new country is revealed with its wonders." (Gitanjali, XXXVII)

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These excerpts on following the heart and aimless wandering are taken from unpublished chapters of THE WAY OF WONDER, by Jack Haas