grasshopper

I have just erected my bivouac tent in a small olive grove. Already a grasshopper has come to visit. It is a small grasshopper and light brown in colour, exactly matching the dried grass. Grasshoppers are strange creatures. Their huge hind legs seem out of proportion to the rest of their body. Of course, it is those powerful legs that allow them to jump.

When a grasshopper jumps it reminds me of those moments on a spiritual journey when we are also required to take a leap, a leap of faith. We come to some precipice, the edge of the map, beyond which terra incognita, the unknown land where there be dragons. We have come to the edge of the known and we stand there petrified, petrified of that unknown darkness that lies ahead. If we are fainthearted we try to turn back, but there is no turning back on the spiritual path. So we stand there for a long time. Then if by chance we find the courage, or that curiosity that can drive us forward, if we are lucky, we take that jump into the unknown. When we do so we are like the grasshopper. For this little creature also takes a leap into the unknown every time it jumps. It knows not where it will land, whether on a grass or a rock. It has no idea. It could jump straight into the mouth of a predator. Every jump could be its last.

And this is something of the feeling of those critical moments on our own journey. It could be our last. That is the feeling: everything is at stake. Do we dare? Do we dare, like the grasshopper, to jump into the unknown, having no idea where we will land, whether we will be consumed? This is what it takes, at the key moments. So let us be a little more like this brave little grasshopper and be prepared to jump, to jump into the unknown.