Journeys - A Theology of Mobility 8-19-9

Dunbar, Pennsylvania

I am standing outside of a rural Catholic Church on an unusually hot humid afternoon, just south of Pittsburgh. It was not my plan to be here at all; six hundred miles from home. The last thing I was thinking of a few days ago was being here doing this. A funeral has just concluded and a number of families are convening for a catered dinner being organized by the women of the church. I did not know the deceased but this entire town did and this man’s passage was profoundly important to those who made their lives here in southwest Pennsylvania. I learned this father, husband, and community leader was happily married nearly sixty-seven years and spent his entire life in the immediate area. He put down deep roots and made a real difference to a lot of his neighbors, friends, and family.

As five hundred well-wishers paid last respects and signed the guest book, a wisp of thought crept into my consciousness; perhaps one really can find more meaning and contentment in life by staying put and growing a real tap root instead of digging up the plant every few months or years and moving it to another pot.

So often we keep moving on; thinking that the perfect job, the perfect mate, the perfect house, the perfect city, ad infinitum will be found just over the next hill. We become addicted to endless wanderings in our quests to satisfy our wants and instead suffer the ever-escalating side effects of disaffection and alienation. Satisfaction of our affective craving never happens and our deep needs for belonging and connection are truncated or severed every time we uproot our lives and shove on. Many struggle with depression and diverse anxiety disorders as a result. So often we spend life relapsing, starting over dozens of times. Many of us are really little more than professional drifters.

There is dense humidity and countless biting bugs, quite unusual for this region of the world. It feels very much like our southern coastal areas do before the normally refreshing northern air clears out the humidity and dampens the enthusiasm of the insect kingdom for Homo Sapiens. I am standing out here in the sun, miserable in a dark suit and tie because I know virtually no one inside and feel a bit like an imposter at someone else’s party. At some level I don’t feel like I belong here. The only reason I am here is because I can physically drive a van and my wheelchair bound friend cannot. It is a very thin credential I carry for invading the private interior of a large close-knit family’s grief.

Clarifying moments in life are often brought to pass by the sublimely trivial, if we are paying attention. This time the message came to me through four phone calls in succession to my cell phone while I was being buzzed by small wasps and sweat bees in the Pennsylvania countryside.

A dear friend called me from south Florida. He is down there moving his daughter into a new chapter of her life, eight hundred miles from home. He is dealing with empty nest syndrome. Another friend of twenty years called. She was just in New York with her mother who lives here in Pennsylvania and is now overwhelmed with reentry into her difficult daily life in Alabama, a thousand miles from home. Another recent acquaintance called; struggling with letting go of her former married life in New York and Connecticut and embracing a new single life in South Carolina, seven hundred miles from home. She did not feel like she was having any success with the mechanics of this transition. My disabled friend is here, wanting to know that her credentials are still valid for admission to a family that was … once her family, six hundred miles from another life.

I realized with this series of calls that we are all in a race of some kind. We are citizens of the most mobile and disconnected society the world has ever known. We are often running from the traumas of our past or running towards the shimmering mirage of a future where all is well and we want for nothing. I myself have lived in fifty eight places and travelled in fifty countries, never quite reaching the illusion of refreshment. I keep wandering over the fence line looking for greener grass. I have often wanted to flee as well. I have spent a life time shopping for churches, jobs, mates, hobbies; never quite reaching the deep itch in my soul.

Having just been given the opportunity to go anywhere in the world I want to go by virtue of winning the grand prize in an airline sponsored essay contest, I find myself stressed by the prospect of choosing the right place. How do I maximize this opportunity? What do I want to find and where do I think I can find it? Glamour and romance in Rio? Adventure on the Serengeti? History and intrigue in the Valley of the Kings? The call of the wild in the far north? The ultimate finance job in Mumbai? A clean slate in a town where no one knows me? There are as many reasons to choose a place as there are places to select.

The late Henri Nouwen was wildly successful by most measures. He wrote thirty books that were best sellers for decades in his genre. He was sought out for his timeless wisdom by universities, churches, conferences centers, and retreats all over the world. People hung on his every word. He had supportive family and friends and colleagues throughout the world. Nouwen was beloved by the world and still speaks to millions throughout the world fifteen years after his death; because he could speak out loud to the profound sense of homelessness he struggled with all his life. Despite having all the things we think would make life work, Nouwen often felt like he was outside on a hot humid day getting buzzed by small wasps and sweat bees. His life and writings speak to me as if lived and written for me alone.

In our struggles to belong, to connect, to feel good about ourselves, we often drive people away with the neediness that springs from our loneliness, with the hostility generated by our unfulfilled needs, and with the lack of authenticity that come from living in illusion. Nouwen articulates how solitude with it attendant deep contentment can replace the profound loneliness that comes from believing only others can give us a sense of belonging. This wise Dutch priest came to understand that contentment within would free him from the frantic, and often very hostile efforts to get others to meet his deepest needs. Coming to realize that he lived a life of illusions, Nouwen was able to make a transition, albeit often painful, from a life of illusion to one grounded in the reality of communion with God.

The moment of greatest contentment for me on a recent very long journey was lived out alone - sitting in the corner of the elegant Tsar’s Palace restaurant with only the company of a very good book. There is something empowering to the idea of comfortable solitude being a good place to be; not desperately needy for the attentions of others. Free of the desperate neediness that drives me to cross personal boundaries, I am free to see my hostility sublimate into a gracious hospitality; I now have something to give you and no longer need to make a desperate bid to take from you. In the reality of a spiritual life in God, I am no longer tossed to and fro by the changing mores of a fickle secular culture that has me buying into the illusion that fulfilling the requirements of any form of conditional love will make me a better more beloved person.

I can be free of the tyranny that says I will be a better more beloved person if I spend more time on airplanes, covering more distance, taking more pictures, giving more lectures, telling more epic tales. Most of the time, thirsty people just want to know where the nearest faucet is. If I give a cup of cold water in His name, I have moved out of hostility and into hospitality and communion with another and into a true reality of what matters.

When I figure out that I get to go around the world as a gift rather than having to go to satisfy my cravings then I will have really arrived before I ever leave.