Once again embark on our Lenten journey, forty days and forty nights following Jesus on the way to the cross. Lent remembers a real journey Jesus made, but it is also a journey symbolic of our own course through life. We begin, as with any trip, with a sense of excitement and possibility, but with some anxiety because we cannot know for sure what lies ahead and we know any path can be perilous. It's always easier to stay at home and stick with the familiar.
In speaking with several people I have confirmed what I always felt was true. Everyone travels differently. Some folks like to rise at dawn, strap on the sneakers, and with guidebook in hand try to catch every possible sight. Some like to get a later start and stroll around. Some want to see every possible thing. Some want to be sure they actually see the sights they see even if it means they won't see them all. I’ll let you guess whose who in my family.
But one thing I will admit to is that I used to be a notorious over-packer. I spent weeks and weeks combing over my wardrobe making sure that I had just the right things to go with just the right things. I was pretty convinced that accessorizing was a spiritual gift! The way I used to pack, if we were going away for a weekend we could just have easily spent a week and never skipped a beat. And if we were going to be gone for any length of time it would be almost impossible to get our luggage in the car. And it goes without saying that I usually needed to buy a tote bag of some sort to bring all the souvenirs home. I’m glad that I’m getting better about that.
In his little tome The Art of Travel Alain de Botton asserts: "We are inundated with advice on where to travel to, but we hear little of why and how we should go." He tells of two travel narratives from the late 18th century, one by Alexander von Humboldt, who went to South America on a scientific expedition from 1799 to 1804, returned with a boatload of botany samples, and wrote Journey to the Equitorial Regions of the New Continent, and the other by Xavier de Maistre, who wrote Journey around My Bedroom in 1790, followed in 1798 by Nocturnal Journey around My Bedroom. This guy needed to get a life, right? But de Botton writes:
Two approaches to travel: Journey to the Equitorial Regions of the New Continent required ten mules, thirty pieces of luggage, four interpreters, a chronometer, a sextant, two telescopes, a barometer, a compass, a hygrometer, letters of introduction from the king of Spain and a gun; Journey Around My Bedroom required a pair of pink-and-blue cotton pajamas. And yet de Maistre's work sprang from a profound and suggestive insight: the notion that the pleasure we derive from a journey may be dependent more on the mind-set we travel with than on the destination we travel to. Instead of bringing back sixteen thousand new plant species, we might return from our journeys with a collection of small, unfettered but life-enhancing thoughts. There are some who have crossed deserts, floated on ice caps and cut their way through jungles but whose souls we would search in vain for evidence of what they have witnessed. Dressed in pink-and-blue pajamas, satisfied within the confines of his own bedroom, Xavier de Maistre was gently nudging us to try, before taking off for distant hemispheres, to notice what we have already seen.
Jesus made his journey to Jerusalem intentionally, even against the resistance of his disciples, who certainly didn't understand all that would happen in the sacred city but knew it was dangerous to walk into the vortex of Roman and Jewish politics with uncontrollable Jesus at the lead. All the gospels - suggest Jesus was not only intentional about his destination but about the journey itself, not just where but how he went and what he taught and the way he treated people along the way. He urged his disciples likewise to be attentive on three fronts: their constant awareness of God, their compassion for others, and their own growth in spirit. The scripture suggests this is also true about our parallel journey through life, that we should be pilgrims in search of growth and not just tourists in search of comforts.
The two ways of travel are vastly different. The way of the tourist seeks entertainment and pleasure. The way of the pilgrim seeks personal growth and meaning. The way of the tourist sees travel merely as a means to the end; the destination is everything. The way of the pilgrim sees the journey itself as significant, a necessary preparation for the destination. The tourist avoids complication, difficulty, delay, and especially labor. The pilgrim accepts or perhaps even welcomes those obstacles and detours which deepen one's being. For the tourist, the outward journey is everything. For the pilgrim, the inward journey is most important, whatever the outward landscape may be. The tourist wishes to return with a new experience. The pilgrim wishes to return as a new person.
I made another journey not long
ago, one I've made hundreds of times before. I drove to
The journey we are taking these forty
days is like my trip to
This is where the gift of spiritual discipline plays a role. By letting go of some regular habit or taking up some new one, we use these forty days to deepen our journey, to become pilgrims instead of tourists in our lives. Set aside some entangling addiction. Or take up some new form of prayer. Make some daily service to others part of who you are. Open your eyes to what God is doing around you. Have the courage to see yourself as you really are so that you might become something new. The place to start is by evaluating our own lives up `til now, our priorities, our relationships, our service to others. This is hard to do, honestly, and always leads to repentance. We realize we haven't arrived yet. We need some new habits of the heart. Then, God help us, our journey begins. In the next forty days, we may not go anywhere beyond our normal, everyday paths, but we can make a new inward journey, and that journey may teach us new ways to be spiritual pilgrims intentionally and habitually in all our course through life.
Wrote Friedrich Nietzsche:
When we observe how some people know how to manage their experiences - their insignificant, everyday experiences - so that they become an arable soil that bears fruit three times a year, while others - and how many there are! - are driven through surging waves of destiny the most multifarious currents of the times and the nations, and yet always remain on top, bobbing like a cork, then we are in the end tempted to divide (human-)kind into a minority (a minimality) of those who know how to make much of little, and a majority of those who know how to make little of much.
How do we make the most of our Lenten journey? How do we experience the depths of our journey through life? The witness of the word and of generations of saints before us is that Jesus journeys with us. He is our guide and also, our destination. And he gives us each other as a community of sojourners. He will show us where to go and how to go because he came, in the first place, that we might have life - eternal in quantity and abundant in quality. As you go, he is the way to go. So I invite you to listen to him. I invite you to follow him. I invite you to imitate him, even if it means passing through some difficult places, because, what a rich journey you will have. It will make you a new person. In the end, you will get a new life. Traveling mercies, my friends. Bon voyage! Vaya con Dios! Go with God!
May we pray?
O Christ, our pioneer and pathfinder, Guide us as we go. Shape us by our exercise on the trail. Protect us from danger. Encourage us to make the best choices even when they aren't the easiest choices. Make each encounter with another be an exchange of grace. Show us what and who you see. And prepare us for our destination. With humility, penitence, gratitude, and hope, we follow you again to the cross and all that waits beyond. Amen.
Mary Anne Biggs, Pastor
Nekoosa United
Nekoosa