I enjoy hiking. There's just something about being out in nature - the colors, the sounds, the breeze - that clears my head and allows me to breathe a bit easier. Maybe it's the simplicity of it. Only one thing to do: put one foot in front of the other, again and again. Keep your eyes open for the trail signs, and enjoy the journey.

A lot of what you find in the woods looks the same. You see trees - lots of them. Sure, there are the different kinds of trees, some big, some small, smooth trees, gnarly trees. But the farther you walk around the woods, and the more trees you see, the more they start blending together. Eventually, you can tune most of those details out and just focus on the rhythm of walking by itself.

"Journey" is a very common metaphor we use to describe life. And it's a good one, when we apply that image in all of its layers and colors. But if there's one piece or layer of our journey that we seem to like to separate out, it's spirituality. Like it's on a different plane of existence, and it shouldn't have to be affected by the other parts of our lives.

In other words, we treat our spirituality like it is that rhythm of walking during hiking: tune everything else out, get in the right mindset, be disciplined. Then, we think, we'll make progress on the journey - our spiritual walk.

I believe some part of that tendency is from self-protection - we can find it difficult to "allow" God into various parts of our lives, and so we hold all of that at arms length in our psyche. Of course, God does not need permission to gain access, but we dissociate from conscious awareness of his presence when we're focused on all of the other things going on in life.

It's like we try to have two separate experiences: the sacred and the secular. The former seems to require discipline, concentration, and intentionality. The latter simply happens from day to day - we have jobs, we enjoy family, we do activities.

At least some of that concentration on the sacred ends up focused on impacting those other parts of our lives with spiritual truth and reality. Often, though, we ignore the reverse impact: what the rest of our lives brings to our spirituality.

Even in deepest reverie in the woods, the forest finds ways to foist itself into my awareness. Walking through a spider's web. Slipping on a muddy patch. Tripping over stones. All of these things have an effect on the quality of the journey. And that doesn't even count how our choices affect the journey as well, like taking the wrong turn, or eating a bad plant.

We get this kind of victory mindset about us, that our spiritual walk should keep progressing upward through discipleship. And the unspoken message (or sometimes spoken) in many of our churches is that most of our day to day problems should be solvable, if we would just apply the spiritual truths we have learned.

Often, though, that's not how it works. Life has a tree branch in our face. Life leaves a boulder blocking our path. Life can have trails that seem clear and safe at first but lead to seemingly impossible situations. And the answer is not to stomp on the problem with our best verses, pithy sayings, and turns of phrases.

No, the answer is usually to recognize that the various situations and circumstances we find ourselves in are indeed affecting our spiritual walk. Pain does change how we experience God. Anxiety does change how we experience God. Things that happen to us (and things we see happen to others) can change how we experience God.

There's nothing wrong with that. God knows our weakness and our lack of foresight. We're not above the forest, seeing all of the traps and hazards before they befall us. Expecting ourselves to operate as though we were - that's unreasonable. No, no - we're in the forest, trying to follow the trail, and just doing our best to set one foot in front of the other.

References:

• Photo by Matt Lewellyn, in Acadia National Park