Pilgrims take pilgrimages. Mecca. Jerusalem. Rome. These are mythic places that for centuries have been the destination of many a traveler. Their very names evoke something of the sacred. Pilgrims know that the phrase “the journey is as important as the destination” is far more than some New Age mantra; it is truth. It is a chance to be swallowed up by something bigger and more grand than yourself. Somewhat like Jonah experienced in the belly of the whale. And while you’re on it (or in it) profound changes occur. Hopefully you put away some childish things and rediscover some of the childlike. And then all of a sudden, you’re spewed back onto the dry land of normalcy to live the rest of your life with the taste of the sea on your lips and the imprint of the whale on your heart.
What is the American equivalent of Mecca? Jerusalem? Rome? My vote goes to the Grand Canyon. While a few might see it as an oversized hole in the ground, many more view it as a place of breathtaking beauty and grandeur; please remove your hiking boots, you’re on holy ground. I have read of people seeing it for the first time and being moved to tears or even kneeling to kiss the ground. I am blessed to have several best friends in my life. Two of them, and me, took a week in October of 2002 to meet the challenge of intentionally descending into the belly of the whale and having it spit us out four days later. We had tackled trails and hills before, but nothing as daunting as the Grand.
Many things were going on in our individual lives at the time. So, on some level, we knew this was a life pilgrimage; at least we do now. You see, we had to take this journey, an intentional stepping-out-of-time in order to still our hearts to find its rhythm, quiet our minds to decide what we believe and care for our souls because no one else would. We each needed to wrestle with some angels by a river somewhere and not let go until they blessed us. Or wounded us. We needed to be swallowed up by something larger than our lives. Something Grand. Somewhere Grand.
We emerged four days later. To the outside observer, we looked pretty much the same. But to someone who would take the time to pause, smell, and feel, we were radically different men than when we descended. We left some things in the canyon. We also picked some things up. When we stepped back up over the rim, some things had the clarity of the Arizona sky; I've never seen blue like that before. And some things were just beginning to struggle for life; seeds had been planted deep below. We limped back to the pickup with new names.
The title of this beginning-post is “A Difficult Splendor.” If “splendor” is a stumbling word for you, then substitute the word “grace.” There is a splendor to our lives now that did not come easy. No, it’s not some arrogant splendor. Many days it feels more like a burden than a gift. We awoke one day in our thirties and forties in a dark wood and we took the road less traveled, right over the edge. And it’s made all the difference. I may bump into my friends’ stories but I won’t tell them, except where they intersect my own. There’s enough daylight left for them to tell their stories and they’re much better weavers than me anyway. I'll conclude this one with a few words from Buechner; he sums it up well.
When we are on a journey, what is real is not so much the role we play, the mask we wear, in the place that we are leaving, and not even the roles we will soon be called on to play when we get to the place where we are going. Instead, what becomes increasingly real as we travel along is something much closer to the actual face that lies behind all the masks and that gives a kind of relative unity to all the different parts that our life demands that we play. In other words, travel can be a very unmasking experience, bringing us suddenly face to face with ourselves - as when we are gazing out of a train window at the endless line of telegraph poles whipping by, and we find that part of what we are looking at is our own reflection.
And it can be unmasking in another way too, I think, because when we are moving through that no-man’s land, that everyman’s land, between worlds, there is no one around to hold us to any particular form of conduct or even to look to us to behave in a way consistent with the way that we have usually behaved in the past. And the result of this is that to an extraordinary extent we are free to do whatever we like, and the result of this is that what you do is apt to be a more accurate definition than usual of who you really are.
-Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat
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