Travel

Home just over a week now, I'm thinking a lot about the places I've been and what these experiences over the past five months have meant -- and will mean -- to me, and to the way I live my life and practice my ministry. St. Augustine is reported to have said, "The world is a book. Those who don't travel read only one page." (I can't find the reference, but it's all over the web so it must be true. HA!) It sounds good anyway. And that's the way I've tried to live: I want to read the whole book. And in fact, there's something about the experiential nature of travel for those who are fortunate enough to be able to do it that adds yet another dimension than reading alone can do. If reading engages the imagination and the intellect at a deeper level, travel can actually add muscle memory to it.

Before I left on my sabbatical, Courtney Davis Shoemaker gave me a poem called "For the Traveler" which upon reading it again now that I'm home feels so perfect. Here it is:

For the Traveler

Every time you leave home,
Another road takes you
Into a world you were never in.

New strangers on other paths await.
New places that have never seen you
Will startle a little at your entry.
Old places that know you well
Will pretend nothing
Changed since your last visit.

When you travel, you find yourself
Alone in a different way,
More attentive now
To the self you bring along,
Your more subtle eye watching
You abroad; and how what meets you
Touches that part of the heart
That lies low at home:

How you unexpectedly attune
To the timbre in some voice,
Opening in conversation
You want to take in
To where your longing
Has pressed hard enough
Inward, on some unsaid dark,
To create a crystal of insight
You could not have known
You needed
To illuminate
Your way.

When you travel,
A new silence
Goes with you,
And if you listen,
You will hear
What your heart would
Love to say.

A journey can become a sacred thing:
Make sure, before you go,
To take the time
To bless your going forth,
To free your heart of ballast
So that the compass of your soul
Might direct you toward
The territories of spirit
Where you will discover
More of your hidden life,
And the urgencies
That deserve to claim you.

May you travel in an awakened way,
Gathered wisely into your inner ground;
That you may not waste the invitations
Which wait along the way to transform you.

May you travel safely, arrive refreshed,
And live your time away to its fullest;
Return home more enriched, and free
To balance the gift of days which call you.

~ John O'Donohue ~


(To Bless the Space Between Us)