ABOUT THE JOURNEY
“…God will come to life before us and be reborn in us in unexpected ways day after day throughout our entire lives. We must be ready to respond to this God of woods and highways, of gentle breeze and cataclysm, of privacy and crowds—however this Spirit comes…”
- Joan Chittister, Wisdom Distilled from the Daily
Running along Portland’s Southwest 54th Street one morning, I passed a woman pushing a stroller, her toddler wrapped snugly inside. A boy of four or five walked briskly beside them.
“Here it is,” she said in an eager, furtive tone, “the secret passage!”
Sure enough—concealed by an evergreen hedge, obscured by a jungle-like boxwood canopy, and extending between several narrowly-spaced garages, there it was: a slim, covert path to Southwest 53rd.
Despite having passed by hundreds of times, I had never noticed. A few days later—knowing the trail was there—I still had to circle back to find it.
It made me wonder: Are there similar paths—hidden in plain sight—that lead to God?
“Call them glimpses of grace, moments of clarity, or epiphanies,” begins Cathleen Falsani in The God Factor. “However you choose to describe them, we’ve all had them—split seconds when something suddenly makes sense, when the pieces of the puzzle fit together.”
Like clandestine trails in neighborhoods far and wide, could the fleeting visions identified by Falsani shed light on our deeper capacities and open us more fully to the Divine? Is there an unspoken commonality of experience and understanding just waiting to be recognized?
The deaths of two close friends in 2012 strengthened my conviction in the concept of a realm beyond. Likewise, age has increased my comfort with mystery. Clearly it’s difficult to put one’s head around the mystery of God. But what if I were to give it my heart and soul for a year? Where—and to what—might that quest lead?
In 1960, John Steinbeck—confessing that he did not know his country—packed a camper and set off with his poodle, Charley, to reacquaint himself with America. I loved the notion—and ever since reading Travels with Charley as a teen, I’ve wistfully contemplated a similar journey. Soon, I intend to embark on one.
On March 6, I finished my work as Executive Director of Ronald McDonald House Charities® of Oregon and Southwest Washington, a role I’ve enjoyed for 15 years. One month later, I moved out of my home. On Easter Sunday (April 20), I hit the road.
At the outset of his travels, Steinbeck alluded to an American hunger to move about “free and unanchored”—observing that, for most, the journey tends to be not toward, but away from something.
My aim is otherwise. I’ve long sought Chittister’s “God of woods and highways, of gentle breeze and cataclysm, of privacy and crowds”—initially as a Catholic believer, and later as a more curious, unaffiliated (though no less faithful) seeker. Unlike Steinbeck, who sought to rediscover America in America, I’ll be looking for God in America. And as a friend advised, I’ll depart with no preconceived notions about how “this Spirit comes.”
Neither will I be constrained by what this Spirit is called. I’m not concerned whether people use Yahweh, Buddha, Allah, Awe, Creator, Grace, Transcendence, Higher Power, or any other name to describe the Infinite and Ultimate. I honor every sincere reference. Further, my intent is not to make a case for or against religion—or one’s lack thereof. What I’m interested in are the ways people experience Divinity—and the fallout from that deeply personal encounter.
Across the country, I’ll be asking people two questions: 1. How do you experience the Divine? 2. How does that meeting color your life? Put another way: Where do you go? and How do you know?
From the shores of Maine to the beaches of California, and from the Boundary Waters of Minnesota to the white sands of Alabama, I look forward to enjoying a land once heralded as the new Eden. But beyond observing America’s storied grandeur, I’ll be seeking its less conspicuous saints—ordinary men and women who live their understandings in humble yet extraordinary ways. God in nature—and God in people.
If I harbor an initial bias, it’s one hinted at by John O’Donohue in his book, Anam Cara. “For too long,” O’Donohue suggests, “we have believed that the divine is outside us… (But)…if we believe that the body is in the soul and the soul is divine ground, then the presence of the divine is completely here, close with us.”
I like the idea that we’re literally enveloped by the Divine—that we’re so fundamentally part of God, and God so fundamentally part of us, that the reality often eludes us.
I sense that, much like the air we breathe (and upon which life depends), God may be easier felt than seen. But that requires attention. If nothing else, I expect that daily exposure to the unfamiliar will considerably heighten my senses. For, as O’Donohue adds:
…Your senses link you intimately with the divine within you and around you. Attunement to the senses can limber up the stiffened belief and gentle the hardened outlook. It can warm and heal the atrophied feelings that are the barriers exiling us from ourselves and separating us from each other. Then we are no longer in exile from the wonderful harvest of divinity that is always secretly gathering within us.
At some level, I hope my exploration ultimately helps to break down some of those barriers “exiling us from ourselves and separating us from each other.” And I intend to share any “harvest of divinity” I find “secretly gathering” along our highways and byways—initially in the form of a blog, and eventually as a book.
I undertake the quest not with the discipline or persuasive intent of a theologian, but rather with the desire and curiosity of a student. These preliminary thoughts are composed primarily as a planning framework, and secondarily as clarification for my daughters—to assure them that I haven't lost my mind. If that's not enough, I offer Chittister’s eloquent characterization of her own probing fever:
Someday, somehow I have to see a thing through to the end or I will never come to know what I was meant to find there and I will never come to recognize the face of God that is hidden there and I will never come to be all that I could be there.
By journey’s end, I hope to answer a third question: Can the ways we connect with God help us recognize and appreciate what’s truly important—and perhaps even transform how we engage with each other and the Earth?
Tempering the quest’s inherent gravity (and as a concession to the interests of my beloved, Susanne, who will be joining me periodically), I’ll be carrying Eccentric America: The Bradt Guide to All That’s Weird and Wacky in the USA. And—inspired by a suggestion that I visit the Blue Gate Restaurant and Bakery in Shipshewana, Indiana—I’ll be undertaking a parallel pursuit: a search for America’s most “heavenly” cinnamon buns.
As I contemplate the journey ahead, I’m reminded of a crisp, gray, December afternoon in 1990. Kate, the older of my then two daughters, was walking out the door.
“Hey, where are you going?” I called.
“Just wondering around,” she replied, nonchalantly.
That thought—of simply wondering around—has fascinated me ever since. Come summer, I’ll be wondering along the open roads, looking for God in America. Where do you go? How do you know?