Just keep moving through, threading through life, just as a humble needle would in the midst of creating a tapestry. The needle is patient as it cannot see what it is creating like The Maker does, for it exists among the threads that it sows together, within the daily grind of its everyday world. What the needle makes remains for a long time a mystery to it, and yet it keeps moving, up and down—and up and down again—to what seems to it no end. Like how the needle itself does not know of the tapestry it makes, you cannot know for sure how the work of your life will turn out in the midst of the ups and downs of your life. As the noble and diligent ox tows the cart behind it with humility, tow the thread behind you with equal honor and dignity.
To be alive is to keep moving while not having to know for sure the ultimate meaning and results of one’s life. To be dead is to have to know everything and thus lose the will to create, for where there is everything to know, there is nothing to discover. Mystery is the impetus to keep going and growing, even if we do not know exactly where we will go or how we will grow. Mystery is the oxygen that fuels us to create and recreate ourselves, endlessly and patiently as the rhythm of the conscientious needle making microscopic progress.
I find when I am more prideful in my knowledge and sure of how things in my life should turn out, the more anxious I paradoxically grow internally. The desire for my mind to control all the variables in life does not lead to my freedom or power, but instead leads to a life of terror—for a desperate mind believes it must labor to control everything when in reality it cannot. Whenever I am insistent on knowing The Way in life, The Way seems to disappear and become ever more elusive. For the journey of life to keep threading along, it cannot be clung onto with a tight grasp that snuffs out its breath and snaps it. It must have a life of its own that we cannot fully control.
Mystery is my fuel: when I invite mystery into my life, I can let go of control and allow my life to take on its own shape—trust that it takes its own shape. Accepting mystery allows me to keep moving forward without the burden of having to know everything. When I fear mystery, it turns into the opposite of fuel: it becomes an ominous force which grinds me down in my tracks. The omniscient perspective of knowing everything there is to life paradoxically does not bring relief, but instead it makes the minuteness of day-to-day work overwhelming and harrowing to endure.
But if I keep going as lightly and without fuss as a needle does when it creates the tapestry of life, the tapestry grows ever more beautiful and expands ever more widely. How the tapestry grows and expands is not all under my control, as I must let it take on a life on its own. My only job is to make my way through as a needle, one inch at a time, carrying nothing else behind me but the thread of my work.
