Coffee

Did I mention earlier how much I enjoy travelling? I Guess I have a wanderlust! I love seeing and meeting strangers. I love the anonymity of foreign travel. I enjoy stepping out and leaving the past behind. Have you read Bruce Chatwin's Songlines?

Yes, a long time ago. It is about his travels in the Australian Outback among the Aborigines. Their myths, or songs, were their continental road maps.

Yes, that's right. Chatwin believed that humans by nature were wanderers. He based it simply on the fact that the human species has lived a migratory life for a million years and only 10,000 years as settled farmers.

To wander is in our genes.

That's what he would say, I suppose. The journey gives us a sense of purpose, like riding on a train, we are going somewhere, in some direction, to some destination. If we are born walkers then walking fulfills our nature. It makes us feel good!

Does the final destination matter?

Does it matter where we are going? The Trobriand Islanders traveled in open boats across seas to trade economically worthless necklaces and bracelets. The Polynesians were even greater seafarers crossing thousands of miles of open sea. Tell me what material factors pull a person one thousand miles across open ocean? To journey in space is to be part of that space. To sail the sea you become part of the sea, something bigger than yourself.

A theologian wrote once that all of human knowledge is only a small island in a vast ocean of unknown mystery. To sail on that sea is to be part of that mystery, to be developed and be defined by it.

Humans are both distinct from the mystery and yet also part of it. Our minds are open to the unknown and therefore can't but be shaped by it. We even give it a name, either "God" or "The Void." Does it matter which?

I think it does matter. "God" is a more personal term then "The Void." It helps to define us as persons in relation to it and not in distinction from it. It allows for love, that sublime interpersonal feeling. The journey is not something one does alone but with others. We do not walk alone. That covenantal relationship is a important dimension of Christian life. We are social beings after all.

The Confucian virtue ren is translated as "benevolence," but also "love." The character itself is a clue to its meaning, a combination of the characters for "human" and the number "two."

"Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them."

Yes. Are you feeling it?

Ha! It has been hard to feel love for anyone since Jenny has gone. It is as if she took it away with her!

You feel nothing at all?

No, no, I am not a stone! I have received a lot of sympathy from friends and my congregation, many whom I consider my friends. However the emotional intensity of an intimate relationship is gone. Is that good or bad, I wonder? Should I have had that strong a desire for any one person or thing? I feel now I am going through an addiction withdrawal. Was I an addict? It is very strange! I fully understand why people hook up on the rebound. They need to continue that emotional intensity, both to love and be loved.

One reason I did not become ordained after seminary is because I fell deeply in love and I found in that relationship everything I was looking for in religion. It was a beautiful moment, love freely exchanged. We were in a world of our own, like heaven, the garden, or the kingdom, choose your metaphor. I never understood Christianity better than at that time, but strangely I lost touch with God. The human relationship was all consuming. Where did God fit in? My lover was not religious. It set me on an entirely different track, until now. Heh, it is getting late. I am enjoying this but it will have to be continued another time. I have a big day tomorrow.

By all means, lets call it a day. I'll walk you to your hotel.

Good enough.