I grew up in a little village not far from Exmoor and the coast. The air was different not close enough to smell the salt but with plenty of room to roam. I would wander the lanes with friends, kicking about with nothing in particular to do. Every now and then a car would pull up visitors or Grockals as they are known in Devon, the days before phones and sat nav they came with maps half-folded, asking the way to somewhere or other.

And we, being kids, thought we were hilarious. We’d send them on “the scenic route,” which was really a long circle of narrow lanes that led eventually back to where they’d started. Fifteen minutes later we’d be leaning against the gatepost, waving as they reappeared looking slightly more puzzled, slightly less polite. We didn’t mean harm, just mischief. Even as write it now I chuckle at the memory, I’m fascinated by the circularity of it, the traveller earnestly trying to get somewhere while being guided by someone who didn’t really know where they were heading in the bigger scheme of life either.It strikes me that this is how the church sometimes behaves. We’re asked for direction, to meaning, to community, to hope in a tangled world, but too often we send people down the same old lanes. We wave cheerfully, even triumphantly, when they come back round to where they started. All the while the scenery may shift a little, but the map the assumptions, the systems, the stories we cling to stays the same. Our other favourite thing to say to these earnest travellers is “well I wouldn’t start from here”.

In *Hospicing?Modernity*, Vanessa?Machado?de?Oliveira talks about tending to a dying way of knowing the world. She says we need to hospice not fix or glorify, what can no longer sustain life. Perhaps that’s what we’re called to now in the church: to stop waving from the gatepost, pretending we know the route. Recognise that realistically we shouldn’t be starting from here, not really understanding how modernity has bought us here anyway. Instead we need to attend, with love and honesty, to the dying illusions of control and certainty we’ve been peddling.

Maybe our task is not to keep the old roads open, but to walk with people into the woods, where the maps fall apart and new ways of seeing might take root. To recognise that transformation won’t come from clever shortcuts but from learning to grieve what’s ending, to compost our worn-out certainties, and to listen again to the land and to each other.

If we do that, if we dare to step off the loop, then perhaps the next time someone stops to ask for direction, we’ll point not down the lane but toward a horizon and travel there together.

if you’re interested in a Tricksters approach to systems and want to break out of the same old circles check out https://alchemyedge.co.uk/#what-we-offer-individuals