“The pilgrim is a poetic traveler, one who believes that there is poetry on the road, at the heart of everything.”(Philip Cousineau in The Art of Pilgrimage: The Seeker’s Guide to Making Travel Sacred)
There are many metaphors to describe the human adventure of existence or what people of faith might call the spiritual life. One age-old image is that of the journey. Examples abound: from Homer’s Odyssey to Moses leading the Israelites through the desert to Huckleberry Finn and Jim floating down the Mississippi.
The main difference between a trip and a journey is that in a journey something is at stake or more accurately everything is at stake. Our life is at stake. Whereas a trip can be made in a day, a journey may take years and ultimately takes a lifetime. “The longest journey/” wrote Dag Hammarskjold, “Is the journey inwards/ Of him who has chosen his destiny.” For those who wander with intention, quest with commitment, and explore with courage, the sacred journey is always an inner journey.
A trip is about going somewhere, whereas a journey is about becoming someone. A trip is geographical (with the exception of one induced by psychotropic drugs); a journey (even one that involves physical travel) is inner, exploratory, spiritual, and self-implicating. In the end, this is what is at stake: have we become ourselves, have we blossomed in the fullness of our humanity which is not a given but a pilgrimage, a gift requiring intentionality, commitment, and courage. A quest is the conscious embodiment of ultimate questions. Have we consciously moved toward our destiny? Will we dare to be not only “pilgrims of the Absolute (Charles Peguy),” but also pilgrims of our truest, most abundant selves? On the sacred journey they are one and the same.
I suppose the simplest (and most likely simplistic) answer to the three letter crossword puzzle question regarding what makes the journey sacred is G-O-D, but it is a lot more nuanced and numinous than that and no quest that goes by the name sacred is reducible to letters of the alphabet, even letters that presume to name the ineffable. The journey is sacred because we do it with intention (whether excited or terrified or both) acknowledging that something is asked of us by virtue of our humanity, by virtue of our existence. We do it because we have heard that still small voice summoning us in inaudibly audible ways and not to respond is not only to miss the adventure of a lifetime (literally) but more significantly to miss the meaning of our existence or, more aptly, the existence of our meaning.
Perhaps the journey is sacred because we have a sense that we are “going with the flow,” that we a part of something bigger and more powerful than anything we could imagine or name or because we have a sense of being accompanied by the felt presence of an invisible reality – a Someone or something, or because (in a fleeting but clarifying moment) we “see” that we have been fleeing from something or Someone who is in pursuit of us whether to turn us around and embrace us with the extravagant embrace or to maul us and that, in either case, not to stop is to risk existing but never to be consumed. “I am God’s wheat ground fine by the lion’s teeth to be made purest bread for Christ,” said the 2nd century martyr St. Ignatius of Antioch before going to his death as a result of pursuing his life. Said in a less graphic way (although graphic is good), not to make the journey is not only to sadden God but also to refuse the greatest gift of our humanity – the journey itself and in the end to have lived an unlived life, to have been created as bread but never to have fed.
In this spirit, Dawna Markova vows
I will not die an unlived life.
I will not live in fear
of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible,
to loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance,
to live so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom,
and that which came to me as blossom,
goes on as fruit.[1]
Unlike returning from a trip, one never returns from a journey the same. Once embarked on, the journey has changed the journeyer forever, whether in a subtle but substantive way or in a profound, life-altering way. Nothing is really the same once you have ventured forth on the sacred journey, neither yourself nor the place or the people you return to which you now see with new eyes, for now you know there is poetry on the road and at the heart of everything. Now you know that your significance resides in the journey from seed to blossom to fruit.
Reflection
Remember, we have been on a journey already for a long time. The point is to bring it to greater and greater consciousness, to consecrate the journey with intentionality, awareness, and passion and to realize that we never journey alone or solely for ourselves.
A JOURNEY POEM
The Journey by Mary Oliver
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.
Blessed Journey,
Dan
[1] Dawna Markova, “I Will Not Live an Unlived Life.”