Journeys

Just some thoughts while on the road today, while we travel around New Zealand (It’s a beautiful country). Anyhow I’ll start with a bitch…
I don’t know how many other people have found this, but travel brochures turn everything into a must see, then you actually get there, and you aren’t sure why you wasted the money to go see it, anyhow just another reason why I’m a terrible tourist.

I have been thinking today about the way our society puts such strong emphasis on arriving: ie.
- Get your license/ car
- Get a diploma/apprenticeship
- Get a good job
- Travel
- Meet someone, marry/ move in
- Get your own house/new car/ boat/ Motor bike, the more the better
- Reproduce
- Retire etc

But to it’s loss there is no push (or very little) on knowing yourself. For many the push of gaining stuff is so strong that having an understanding of yourself is almost considered one and the same. That once you have ‘arrived’ then that also must equal knowing yourself.
However knowing yourself goes far beyond knowing what you like for breakfast and what makes you laugh/cry, rather it is an exploration of the very depths of oneself. Henri Nouwen talks about three basic movements in his book Reaching Out
- Loneliness to Solitude
- Hostility to Hospitality
- Petition to Prayer

Knowing yourself isn’t just an inward journey which eventually leads to an enhanced social life. It is a spiritual journey, one of truth and desire, one which spirituality flows from. A journey which seems to lead you away from home. When in actuality God is in the process of restoring everything to perfect wholeness.

Not journeying is the cancer of today.

Watching people around me that I love and others that I don’t know who are just living, (yes they are on a journey, but not one that leads to self discovery) makes me sad. Watching people who are so afraid of themselves, is like viewing a half person.
I don’t feel very far down this road of self discovery, but that’s ok. Just learning to be still is a big enough feat for me at this time.

Writing these thoughts feel almost dangerous for myself, for fear of cementing an idea and turning it from a malleable collection of thoughts into an opinion. Learning to communicate without just speaking from an opinion or an ideology isn’t something that I do very well. I hold tightly to what I think or believe and often try to out argue others. (maybe simply just to convince myself…?) Instead I feel that I need to listen, and listen well, and only add my thoughts when it is going to add something.????

Anyway there they are, please check my thinking…