Journey's End, Wielding the Sword

 

On Saturday at 1 a.m., I arrived back “home” in Mali after my sabbatical journey and more normal furlough activities in the US. It is hard to say whether I feel more at home in Mali or in the US.  After 18 years or so of going back and forth, it is almost like slipping back and forth between different realities that are both valid, but very different. When you arrive in one, it’s like putting on an old comfy pair of shorts that fit nicely and feel great. It’s like you never left. And then you go to the other and pull out the clothes that go there and say, “I love the way this sweater feels on a cold day.”

But there is a real sense in which you are never QUITE at home in either one.

I’ve just finished reading a book called, “the Sacred Journey” by Charles Foster, which looks at the ancient Christian practice of pilgrimage. I kind of bought the book on a whim, since I had a few other books in that series, and was about to set off on my bike ride across Oklahoma, which I didn’t think really qualified as a pilgrimage. However, there is much in the book that has rung true with my spiritual journey this last year.

Certainly being on furlough this time was a time of travel. I counted that I had slept in 38 beds over the 8 months I was in the US. I was on the road from March to mid-july, averaging about a week in each place I stayed. My car was so full, it looked like I was someone who had lost his home and was living out of it: summer and winter clothes, two bikes (one for each leg), books, some food, tools, speaking materials. . .

A pilgrim travels light. Jesus sent his followers out two by two and tells them not to take anything for the journey. “Don’t take a walking stick, a traveler’s bag, food, money or even a change of clothes.”

My luggage, the first time I packed it!

Oops! I tend to think I live rather simply compared with what a lot of people have, but I did have to repack my bags both in Denver and in Houston because they were overweight. I ended up with a trunk, a suitcase, a duffel and a carry-on and some hefty excess baggage charges. Now that everything is all unpacked, I wonder if all I brought is really necessary.

Foster says in his book

“We ask Jesus to be realistic in the constraints of the real world. We don’t have the luxury of wandering luggage free around the world.”

Jesus replies:  ‘WHY NOT? Come. I never said it would be easy. Try my system instead. Few ever have.’ ”

Foster argues that pilgrimage helps us leave behind pain, work and the humdrum of life. “It makes us vulnerable and different. Do something heroic and completely empty ourselves. Leaving things behind and discovering things, destroying things. Vomiting out the old!”

For me, this was very much the case on my sabbatical. There was healing of pain, laying aside of work concerns and distractions, and allowing God to speak through the people and places I encountered.

On the road, there is a stripping away of the things you thought you’d need. You find you really can live with a lot less. The things you thought that were a central part of your identity end up being fripperies.

You learn to depend on other people and to accept hospitality. When you are not living somewhere – not settled, you give up a lot of control, about where and when you will sleep, what you will eat, even where you will go to church.

 Jesus was a traveler and asks us to follow him – and not just on twitter. He traveled the margins of society and mingled with the marginal.

Jesus says: “The Kingdom of God is among you. Get up, get out, wake up, walk on, open your eyes. Ask for new eyes: you’ll see it if you are really looking for it… It’s on the road. I’m walking. Walk the road, too, with me. Reclaim the ability to be taken by surprise, and you’ll see it there, glistening, so brightly you will never believe you could have missed it.

The Kingdom of God “is all happening at the edges, in the forgotten places, in the places you can’t get to by car or where your auto insurers wouldn’t let you drive, among the people you’ve put out with the trash.” (Sacred Journey, p. 78).

Foster reminds us, as did Captain Jack Sparrow, that, “It’s not the destination so much as the journey.” Historically pilgrims seldom have epiphanies when they finally get to Jerusalem or Rome or wherever. “If epiphanies happen, they tend to happen in the anonymous no-man’s land en route.”

And then, eventually, you must return home, as I have. This should not be the end of the journey, but a beginning, a time to put into practice what you have learned on the road, to reintegrate that into your life and create something new and better.

RS Thomas says,  

“The point of traveling is not to arrive, but to return home laden with pollen you shall work up into the honey the mind feeds upon.” (p. 178 of Sacred Journey)

Foster tells the story of a man who was given a special sword. It disappeared suddenly and he was sent on a quest. He presumed the point of the quest was to find it, but really it was to get him to the point of asking “What am I going to use my sword for?”
Once you figure that out, THAT is why you have to go back home.

“Get up and go! Come back and wield your sword in the part of the kingdom where you can wield it best.”

This talk of wielding your sword resonates with one of my first blog posts where I wrote about my time in Dallas at the beginning of the journey. I learned that I needed to take time for myself, for reflection and contemplation and planning and rest, so that I could leverage my strengths (my sword) to serve others and advance the work in Mali.

Pray for me as I try to put into practice what I learned on the journey for the daily journey ahead.