Sharing a Piece of the Journey
         Those of you who have been here for earlier installments of my series on Pilgrimage will remember that each service has included a sharing of a piece of one person’s spiritual journey.  Today’s service is on “Arrival”: arrival at the destination of the pilgrimage or journey.  And today, I’m going to share a piece of my journey, which particularly relates to the theme of arrival.

         Before I do so, and lest you think I’m implying that my journey is over, I’d like to share some perspective from Robert J. Hastings: [Condensed Chicken Soup for the Soul]
 

Tucked away in our subconscious is an idyllic vision.  We are traveling by train – out the windows, we drink in the passing scenes of children waving at a crossing, cattle grazing on  a distant hillside, row upon row of corn and wheat, flatlands and valleys, mountains and rolling hillsides and city skylines.

 But uppermost in our minds is the final destination.  On a certain day, we will pull into the station.  Bands will be playing and flags waving.  Once we get there, our dreams will come true and the pieces of our lives will fit together like a completed jigsaw puzzle.  Restlessly we pace the aisles, damning the minutes – waiting, waiting, waiting for the station.

 “When we reach the station, that will be it!” we cry.  “When I’m 18.”  “When I buy a new 450sl Mercedes Benz!”  “When I put the last kid through college.”  “When I’ve paid off the mortgage!”  When I get a promotion.”  “When I reach retirement, I shall live happily ever after!”

 Sooner or later, we realize there is no station, no one place to arrive.  The true joy of life is the trip.  The station is only a dream.  It constantly outdistances us...
 So stop pacing the aisles and counting the miles.  Instead, climb more mountains, eat more ice cream, go barefoot more often, swim more rivers, watch more sunsets, laugh more, cry less.  Life must be lived as we go along.  The station will come soon enough.

         One thing I would say differently:  there are, in fact, many stations along the way.  But none of them represents a final destination.  They may be rest stops, places to pause and gather energy for the next leg of the trip.  They may be places to stop and reflect on where you’ve been, where you are, and where you’re going.  Or they may be places to switch trains and head off in a new direction altogether.  This, or another church may play one or more of these roles for you. The destination and arrival I want to talk about was a bit of all of the above.

         About seven years ago, I responded to an inner calling, and began a piece of my journey called “preparing for ministry.”  The destination – the goal – was to become a minister.  However, I soon learned that the real destination – the station at the end of this particular journey – was the MFC: the Ministerial Fellowship Committee.  But it wasn’t so much a station to arrive at.  It was more like the biblical “eye of the needle” to be passed through.

         Because, you see, after four, or six, or even ten years of sweat, toil, and preparation, it all comes down to a ten minute sermon and a forty minute interview to convince eight people on that committee that you are ready – that you are, in fact, a minister.  As a result, the MFC takes on greater importance in the minds of Unitarian Universalist ministerial candidates than is probably healthy.  And I’ll leave to your imagination some of the alternative phrases attached to the initials MFC along the way.

         And so, for my four years of seminary, and internship, and chaplaincy training, the MFC was a continual presence, looming off in the future as the last great stumbling block.  My own internal doubts along the way about my suitability for ministry were gradually eased by my experiences and the feedback of others.  But there was always that gnawing fear that, after all was said and done, the MFC would catch me out as a fraud.

         As my time approached, I did all I could to feel and be prepared, and to keep things in proper perspective.  The committee is made up of human beings, and they are on my side, not just trying to trip me up.  I listened to advice from many who had made it through the eye of the needle.  I gathered together a “Mock MFC”  of my peers and mentors for a dry run, which helped my confidence immensely.

         Finally the time had come.  My appointment was made for a Saturday afternoon in Boston.  I sat in Dulles International Airport late Friday afternoon, possible interview questions swirling around in my head.  Meanwhile, early February winds were swirling around outside, causing a delay of my flight.  Finally, the announcement came that the weather in Boston was even worse, and all flights there had been cancelled.  My suitcase, meanwhile, had departed on an earlier flight.

         My immediate reaction was panic.  A part of me thought, “Reprieve!”  But the rest of me knew that I had to do this sometime; better to get it over with. My mind raced to come up with some plan to get to Boston by the following afternoon.  I called Cathy and told her to get ready for an overnight drive north, and I headed for home, a two hour trip through Friday rush hour on the Washington Beltway.  By the time I got home, I had come up with an alternative plan.  I got on the phone and managed to book a Saturday morning flight out of Baltimore, only a half-hour away.

         I spent the night tossing and turning.  I worried about another flight cancellation.  I worried about not being well-rested.  I worried about locating my suitcase with my only suit in it.  I did manage a few hours of sleep, got up and caught my flight, got to Boston, found my suitcase, changed my clothes, caught a train downtown, and arrived with about an hour-and-a-half to spare.

         I was greatly relieved, but of course my journey wasn’t quite over.  There was still that hour with the committee.  I sat down and tried to center myself, remembering all the advice about just being myself, knowing that everything I needed was inside me. I just had to let it come out.

         I did survive my time with the committee.  I gave my sermon.  I answered all their questions.  I only had to answer “I don’t know” a couple of times.  We even laughed together once or twice.  And when it was over, they told me that I was ready to begin my life as a Unitarian Universalist minister.

     Four years of focusing on this moment, on achieving this goal, and the message is that I’m ready to begin.  That was three years ago, and indeed it has been the beginning of a new phase of my journey, complete with all the joys and challenges and responsibilities of professional ministry.  My time with the MFC was not the final station, but it was an important stop along the way.
 

Sermon
         When we think about life as a pilgrimage or journey, there is the implicit question, “What is the destination?”  Also, “How do you know when you’ve arrived?”  Some may insist that it’s best not to have a particular destination in mind, since the journey itself is what life is about.  The important thing is to open ourselves to the gifts we find along the way, and not to focus on any particular endpoint.

         Others of us may be less comfortable with what seems to us aimless wandering through life just hoping for the best.  Implicit in this series on pilgrimage has been, if not a particular destination, at least some definite direction, some vision calling us forth.  Without some goal to beckon us and guide us, how do we know when we’ve arrived?  And how do we evaluate our progress along the way?

         Of course there are goals, and then there are goals.  Some goals are quite specific.  Graduating from high school or college.  Finding a life partner.  Landing a satisfying job.  Achieving some particular level of success.  Other goals are more open-ended, like becoming all you can be, or achieving spiritual fulfillment or finding contentment.

         I think it may be the existence of these different levels of life goals that lead to some apparent paradoxes involving destinations and arrivals and beginnings and endings.  A couple of these paradoxes are suggested by two short passages from T. S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets”.  The first:

What we call a beginning is often the end
and to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.

         The second paradox has to do with where we find ourselves upon arrival.  Eliot says:

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.

 Once in Swaffham in Norfolk, a peddler named Chapman lived in a small house beside a towering oak tree.  One night the peddler dreamed that there came a knock on his door.  When he opened it there stood a saintly messenger.  The messenger told him that if he went to London Bridge he would find a treasure.  He didn’t go right away, but after the dream had visited him several nights, he packed his things and walked all the way to London Bridge.  There he stood upon the bridge for three days looking about and listening for some news of his treasure.

 At last a shopkeeper who had been watching the peddler came out to him.  “I’ve been watching you for three days, standing here on the bridge neither selling wares nor seeking alms,” said the shopkeeper.  “I beg you tell me what is your business.”

 The peddler told the shopkeeper about his dream.

 The shopkeeper laughed.  “What a fool you are, taking such a long journey for the sake of a dream!  Peddler, last night I had a dream that I was supposed to go to Swaffham in Norfolk, a place completely foreign to me.  I dreamed that I was to go behind a small house owned by a fellow named Chapman.  Next to the house was a towering oak tree.  I dreamed that if I dug under that tree I would find a vast treasure.  Now, you don’t see me running off to Swaffham just because of some foolish dream, do you?  Were I you, I’d get myself home again.”

 Chapman thanked the man for his wise advice and set off immediately for home.  There he dug under the great oak and found a large box, filled with a vast treasure indeed.

         An image I find useful in thinking about life’s journey is that of a spiral.  It seems to me that a typical journey through life does not take the form of a straight line, moving from point to point in a given direction, moving inexorably onward and upward.  Likewise, with any luck it doesn’t consist of merely going around in circles, repeating the same routines and the same mistakes over and over.  Rather we keep coming back around to where we came from, but with new levels of insight and understanding; with the ability to see things previously hidden from us.

         It may mean returning to family, but with a new maturity that permits transcendence of patterns learned in childhood, so that we can build adult relationships with parents and siblings.  It may mean returning to a childhood hometown and learning to relate and adapt in new ways.  It may mean returning to religion, long since abandoned, and finding new meaning in old concepts.

         Whether our arrivals are back at old familiar places, or at totally new stops along the way, we can use them as opportunities to consolidate the changes and growth in our lives.  They can mark the mileposts along our journey.  But they are not ends in themselves.  They are but stops along the way, providing a means of marking our movement upward and onward and round and round.

        As I said in an earlier installment of this series, the journey itself is as important as the ultimate destination.  And so it’s important to maintain a state of attentiveness, of mindfulness, lest we miss important scenery and landmarks along the way.  The true value of life is in the living, not in what comes at the end.

         I leave you this morning with the following from Walt Whitman:

Will you seek afar off?  You surely come back at last, in things best known to you, finding the best, or as good as the best – Happiness, knowledge, not in another place, but this place – not for another hour, but this hour.  [Not in another life, but in this life].

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