There’s a good chance that a whole lot of people are feeling stuck at the moment. Stuck at home, stuck in a rut, stuck in the time warp of several weeks known collectively as blursday.
And this won’t do. We are far too busy, we have too much to do to be sitting at home. We believe Tom Cochrane when he tells us, “Life is a highway, I want to drive it all night long.”
Of course, if you are like Holly, Michael, and Daryl from “The Office,” or me, or a lot of people, you realize how old that song gets, how old that way of thinking gets, and how easy it is to get “stuck” and restless with that approach to life.
Maybe we needed to pull the car over anyway. And get out and look around. Thomas Merton helps me do that. The photo at the top of the page was taken by Merton in northern California in 1968. I first came across it in an incredible multimedia piece by Emergence Magazine. One of the most calming, soul-opening, wonder-producing things I have ever watched, if you have 11 minutes, this video captures more of how I feel about God, spirituality, solitude, and pilgrimage than just about anything I have found.
I say this frequently, but Merton has been one of the most influential thinkers in my faith walk; he not only speaks to my soul, he often speaks my soul, and sends me into wonder and awe and connection and helps me find my own words for my own journey.
In the film, Merton talks about the metaphor of the journey.
“Going off where God leads you… We’re all on a journey, we’re all going somewhere… The geographic pilgrimage is the symbolic acting out of an inner journey. Every moment and every event of every person’s life on earth plants something in their soul.”
Thomas Merton
In the photo, Merton and company have pulled over. They are out of the car. I think that’s significant. Journeys aren’t always about traveling physical distance; you run the risk of missing what’s going on around you.
Pilgrimage is one of my favorite words. It has been since the first time I heard it–it imprinted on me in a deep way, like it was already waiting in me, just to be woken up, and it may end up as part of a tattoo. Pilgrimage is equal parts an interior word as it is exterior/geographic.
There was a great deal of care and thought given to the house where I live by people who lived here before me. There is a winding path of stepping stones from the back deck, around the yard, to what has become my writing shed/sanctuary. The stones sit above the puddles when rain collects in the yard and it also makes a meditative, mindful, intentional walk in any weather. There are days when I try to make each stone a prayer. Among the stepping stones, there are two with pottery, stones, sea glass, rocks and found objects incorporated into them.
“Living is the constant adjustment of thought to life and life to thought in such a way that we are always growing, always experiencing new things in the old and old things in the new. Thus life is always new.”
Thomas Merton, “Thoughts in Solitude”
If I think about it, a walk across the yard can be a symbolic pilgrimage. It can take me somewhere new, even while taking me to the same place each day.
If I take each step as a prayer…
“God utters me like a word, containing a partial thought of himself. Let me seek then the gift of silence and poverty and solitude, where everything I touch is turned into prayer. Where the sky is my prayer; the birds are my prayer; the wind in the trees is my prayer. For God is all, in all.” (Merton, Emergence video)
At the door to the shed is the second art-dazzled stone. It puts creativity right at the doorstep. The kind of journey, the kind of art we need right now, maybe the kind we always need is the kind that connects us. It’s the art where we can see another and be seen by another, in the truest sense. And it’s a journey into and from our own solitude that shows us how we are connected.
Into our solitude…
“What can we gain by sailing to the moon, if we’re not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery and without it all the rest are not only useless but disastrous.” (Merton, Emergence)
And back out…
“Our task now is to learn that if we can voyage to the ends of the earth, and there find ourselves in the stranger who most differs from ourselves, we will have made a fruitful pilgrimage. This is why pilgrimage is necessary, in some shape or other. Mere sitting at home and meditating on the Divine presence is not enough for our time. We have to come to the end of a long journey and see that the stranger we meet there is none other than ourselves.” (Merton, Emergence)
Pilgrimage, really faith is about transformation. It’s both about finding ourselves, which we have to do first, and then seeing ourselves in others and them in us.
Whether we are at home or when we can get back out into the world, we are on the same journey. And if we want to get the most out of it, we are going to have to get out of the car. We’ll want to meet the strangers. And meet ourselves. Maybe we will come out of this pilgrimage at home finding ourselves more connected than when we started.
Thank you Mike for another perfectly timed message. As we approach the weekend and find our paths are so well worn by the limits placed on us in this pandemic. I keep thinking that we are challenged to see something new in the same space of whatever box we feel we are in. The other day I was feeling really down in the dumps on my daily walk through town. My “walk” friends are working from home and had gone earlier. I decided to take photos of the things I loved so much in Easton and slow down. On the way back down Harrison I heard music- and there was Bruce singing in front of the church, arms outstretched in the middle of the street with his videographer. What perfect timing. Uplifting. A true gift from God in so many ways. Sometimes God puts things right in front of you.