musalaha

For sometime now it has been a dream of mine to walk the Camino de Santiago (Way of St. James) from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, France to Santiago de Compostela, Spain (the Camino Frances). It’s a distance of some 500 miles and may take as much as a month, but I long to take on the pilgrimage.

It was with that in mind that I read with delight The Way is Made by Walking, a recent piece by Arthur Paul Boers given to me as a gift from Sarah. It was towards the end – in an appendix actually – that a few words caught my eye and rattled by brain a bit. For sometime now, as some readers will know, I’ve felt much like a frustrated wanderer in Christendom. There have been epiphanies along the way and many more recently, but I can nevertheless shake the feeling of wandering. And then I read these words:

Citing the work of Alan Morinis, Camino anthropologist Nancy Frey notes several types of Christian pilgrimages [with particular reference to the Camino]: devotional . . . initiatory . . . instrumental . . . normative . . . WANDERING (emphasis added) . . . .*

And then lines I had previously read came into clearer focus. From T. S. Eliot: “We shall not cease from exploration, And the end of all our exploring, Will be to arrive where we started, And know the place for the first time (emphasis added).”* And from Scott Russel Sanders: “Pilgrims often journey to the ends of the earth in search of holy ground, only to find that they never walked on anything else (emphasis added).”*

And so it seems that this wandering of mine – and it is indeed a sort of wandering – is perhaps part of the grand design of my life’s pilgrimage. It is not entirely aimless. It is not an escape I’ve misunderstood. It may in fact be divinely intended, a wandering on holy ground. Even more, I feel like my wandering has more than anything taken me back somewhere to a place deep in my heritage, a beginning point that I may perhaps know again for the first time.

Knowing this gives my wandering a sense of purpose, for in a very real sense it is pilgrimage.

Citations from Arthur Paul Boers, The Way is Made by Walking: A Pilgrimage along the Camino de Santiago (Downers Grove, IL: Formatio, 2008), 178, 182.

Just beyond London’s Trafalgar Square lies the city’s National Gallery. It’s not the Louvre, but it is nonetheless a treasure-trove of art, not the least of which is among my favorites – Caravaggio’s The Supper at Emmaus. Like most pieces of art, it is so much larger than what you might expect and it beautifully captures the utter shock and surprise the two disciples must have felt when they “discovered” that they were dining with Christ. One of Rembrandt’s versions (below), which is in the Louvre, captures another aspect: simple and confused innocence. The disciples are frustrated – the Christ and the kingdom were not what they thought they would be. Now they weren’t sure what they should think they should be. In essence, these disciples hadn’t found what they were looking for and in Rembrandt’s piece we gain a glimpse into that split-second before their “discovery.”

I can’t help but identify with these innocent and confused disciples, for the months I’ve spent wandering in Christendom have been my own sort of journey to Emmaus. So many times I’ve felt my wandering has been a black mark on my soul; a reason to discount my spirituality; the “wrong” answer to the where-do-you-go-to-church question. I’m not sure that’s fair though. I may be wandering my way through Christendom, but like the disciples who “discovered” Christ in that village near Jerusalem, I seem to have to have discovered something in Christendom that I didn’t expect. And for me it is, in a word, romantic.

In reality, while I’ve wandered, I’ve also searched. Perhaps I’ve been naive, but I really feel like I have climbed highest mountains; I have run through the fields only to be with You; I have run, I have crawled, I have scaled these city walls, only to be with You. But like the disciples making their way to Emmaus, I still haven’t found what I’m looking for. As I listened to those lyrics recently, I reflected on my wanderings and they suddenly became intimate, not shameful. They were and are a pilgrimage that I’m taking with someone.

That discovery became all the more real while listening to those same lyrics (from U2‘s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”) from a version recorded live in Milan on their Vertigo Tour. Frequently, Bono has made this a gospel song (it’s the Kingdom on earth that he’s still looking for). So, in this version, when he yells to the crowd “take us to the Duomo” (il Duomo – Milan’s cathedral) everything suddenly came rushing together for me. I was, perhaps, like one of the disciples in Caravaggio’s interpretation of the supper at Emmaus – struck with discovery. In an instant, my mind was transported to the Via Orefici where a short walk southeast and a turn of the corner brings you face-to-face with il Duomo in all its glistening wonder. Its newly-cleaned walls gleam white and soften its imposing size. Once again, I enter through its beckoning doors to float among the romance of massive pillars that kiss the sky.

It can take some time to properly “read” a cathedral and it’s only been recently that the pieces of il Duomo have come together for me. It is, in a word, romantic. And it has suddenly occurred to me, whether its architects realized it or not, that il Duomo points to the Eucharist. It encapsulates the theological romance of the sacrament; of that moment of innocent and surprised discovery. For me, it has been in churches like these, both large and small, that I have [re]discovered the Eucharist and all its mysterious romance. What a pity, it seems, that the post-hippie ecclesiastical traditions like the one I’m most connected with have limited this sacrament to thumb-sized glasses of grape juice and Nabisco crackers taken on the first Sunday of the month. As Timothy Larsen describes: “Last year, to my dismay, my eight-year-old son, having dutifully waited his turn in line, knocked back the grape juice as if it were a shot of whiskey and then held the cup in the air and demonstrated his superhero strength by crushing it in the palm of his hand” (Theolog, “Callous about a chalice,” February 20, 2007). Wait in line? I had to wait for the silver tray. In any case, I may still be wandering in Christendom, but I’ve discovered romance in it as well and that makes me feel a bit less lost.

The fullness of your grace is here with me; The richness of your beauty is all I see; The brightness of your glory has arrived; In your presence God I’m completely satisfied (Phil Wickham, “Divine Romance”)

In 1979 the late Henri Nouwen wrote his Clowning in Rome, the result of several lectures in the Eternal City based on the idea that “. . . clowns remind us . . . that we share the same human weaknesses.” He may just as well have called it ‘Driving in Rome’ – we all share the same vulnerability of potential and inevitable lostness. That was, at least, my experience. Even so, traveling to Rome is a dream come true. Obtaining a rosary from St. Peter’s is icing on the cake. But as I clutch my pilgrim’s prize I can’t help but feel a bit lost, my weaknesses exposed. Telling someone why I was so intent on getting the rosary made me realize how typical I can be of my generation. I appreciate and even incorporate much of the symbolism, tradition, and spirituality of Roman Catholicism (or Eastern Orthodoxy, for that matter), yet I have no authentic connection to them. This makes me a sort of hybrid – an ecclesiastical mutt. Like clowning or driving in Rome, I am left wandering in Christendom.

My family’s spiritual heritage itself is a bit mixed. My forefathers and mothers were, for the most part, German Mennonites. That means they left the Roman Catholic Church in the 16th century. Some escaped economic hardship in Germany hoping to find a better life in Russia. Some of these left before the extermination of many Germans there, immigrated to the United States, and formed part of the Mennonite church in Minnesota. Finding that their experience of Mennonite spirituality had lost its authenticity, some left for the denominational movement that I grew up in. My most recent spiritually formative years were spent in California under the influence of charismatic leaders and former Jesus Freaks. On the positive side, this heritage demonstrates a driving pursuit of genuineness, authenticity, and vitality. But, like many other American Christians, especially those closer to the west coast, I am left with a rather transitory spiritual heritage with relatively thin ecclesiastical roots. Consequently, many of my generation are attracted to the tradition found within Christian traditions of greater antiquity. The pendulum is also swinging towards emphases on symbolism – also found within the ‘older’ traditions.

Some respond to these transitions by officially joining (for some rejoining) the Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox Church. Actually, a close friend of mine was just received into the Eastern Orthodox Church. This wasn’t a flippant decision of his by any means, and to be honest, this was a proud moment for even me. A lack of flippancy is important, for these traditions are more than just tradition and symbolism. We cannot simply switch teams (within the same conference, if you will) on a whim. These are serious decisions. We also mustn’t be reactionaries willing to live our lives in a sort of pin-ball machine bouncing from one point to another as it suits our fancy. Doing so would simply perpetuate thin roots and implant shallow theology. Much more, some of our spiritual nomadism occurs in the face of aspects of our traditions that we forget we hold dear. For instance, taking in the art at St. Peter’s and the Sistine Chapel, for all the beauty and truth they communicate, reminds me of the contribution of Protestantism. The Roman Catholic Church of this time was in need of reform on many levels. The spiritual torment with which Michaelangelo painted his The Last Judgment (amidst other controversy) was shared by Martin Luther whose subsequent realizations freed him.

It should be noted that I, perhaps like many in my generation and in presently emerging churches, have an abiding and growing sense of ecumenism. With this in mind, we can celebrate the relative erosion of intra-denominational/ecclesial barriers, but this is, in part, responsible for the picking and choosing I describe above. Like other reformers, I raise my right hand in support of Protestantism’s contributions, but I also lament some of what we reluctantly left behind. Like many of my generation I seek to re-incorporate elements into my own spirituality, but in so doing I have little way in which to make these elements a part of a corporate identify. True, some emerging, or emergent, churches are doing this, but I’m not sure this is the answer for me. At this point, then, I remain a non-denominational, slightly-searching Protestant wandering in Christendom. Is this part of the pilgrimage that is the walk of Christian faith? Or am I going somewhere?