Where do you want to go?

Journey: c.1225, "a defined course of traveling," from Old French journée "a day's work or travel"

I love to travel.

Not just to faraway distant lands, but even just down to the corner shop, or leaving for work or errand. Its that tension of leaving home and the resolution of returning home that makes the story so. An ad-venture: to+risk. Some stories arch more than others. Some are meta-stories - a story about stories. Likewise, some journeys are meta-journeys. Some journeys intertwine in some sort of a divine dance.

There is a ritual to preparing for the journey, to think ahead for the day, to plan and pray, and also expecting the unexpected. The process of joining the dots, linking threads together. Meeting strangers, making friends, finding old friends again. To make sense of something, to form. The act of creation, ordered from chaos. To name the animals.

"If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together". - African Proverb

Sometimes we have companions for a while, fellow sojourners - travellers for a day or two. Travelling with company is swell - you get a shared experience and perspective on things, to cry with, to laugh with, to cringe with. Stuff to talk about, a portable communion. Laughing alone isn't all that fun. Per-adventure, some stay for a bit, others travel a distance with you. Per-chance a forever friend stays, commits to you; mayhaps some like Eliezar are more faithful than death. Blessed is that man who has a forever friend.

Yet, some valleys, we are to walk through alone. There are places no one else but you can go. We have just to grin and bear it, trudge and walk through. Only our Shepherd's staff and rod to guide. No light. No cheer. Faint hope. Traveling alone however, one learns volumes about oneself, and how we relate to community, to God and ourselves. There is beauty in the desert journey, grace in that brook we drink from, sweetness in the honey and meat the raven brings. A ragged, wild, unreasonable grace and mercy that pursues us. Almost obscenely beautiful.

Journal: c.1355, from Anglo-French jurnal "a day," from Old French journal, originally "daily"

So we think about the journey (literally 'the day'), write it down, record the daily exploits and the milestones. The mundane, even. Does forty years chasing sheep followed by forty years chasing cantankerous crowds make an epic journal? Perhaps - only if you've got a phenomenal God of the day (jour) and night (nuit) each and every one of those eighty years. A journey journal is something like old hansel and gretel's breadcrumbs. Except this one we carry with us, a map of sorts. A map that only works in hindsight. A map nonetheless. A map of grace.

Our story? His story. my story. turn the pages, leaf me through. I'm not finished yet.

The One You Left Behind
(Sarah Lacy, David Bird & Richard Lacy)

I have lost my true and only love
To the waves and far away
To the listless sea, the cloudy skies
To a new and distant day
Though I know you must go
It is hard for me and so
In the eventide I cry
And I hope that you will think of me
The one you left behind

Under different skies you'll do His work
Under different stars you'll stay
I pray that when your work is done
That He'll send you home someday
Every thought, every breath
Carries aching emptiness
For your loving arms I sigh
And I pray that you will think of me
The one you left behind

I would travel over water
I would race the river to the sea
I would give my home, my everything
Just to have you here with me
But my heart is alive
To the knowledge of His timing
And so ‘tis here I'll stay
‘Til He sends you home to me again
To the one you left behind