Journey
How to Journey in a Pandemic
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These Northern Hemisphere late-summer months hum with the rhythms of journey. Since 1791, Congress has recessed during August, creating a tradition of Washingtonians fleeing a sweltering DC in response. Given the globalized world we’ve known for several decades, “journey” has often meant the accumulation of passport stamps, airline miles, and exotic Instagram selfies.
Until now. How do we journey during a pandemic, when the frenzied hum of yesteryear’s travels has quieted down almost to the point of silence?
Perhaps the silence is actually the point. One ancient practice that connects journey and silence is that of the labyrinth. Unlike a maze, which is filled with confusing dead ends, a labyrinth only has one way in and one way out. The goal of journeying through a labyrinth is typically to quiet the noise, to seek silence in its heart, and then to exit via the same path with new awareness of divine presence.
The predetermined path of a labyrinth actually offers its pilgrims much freedom. Like a work of art, a labyrinth is multivalent. Pilgrims may skip, walk, or even crawl. They can stay in the labyrinth’s center for as long or as short as they like. Some pilgrims bow to the four directions from the center, and others leave ebenezers to mark the moment. As pilgrims, our practices with a labyrinth may differ, yet we keep coming back to discover something new. No two labyrinth journeys are the same.
A labyrinth invites us to see the familiar with new eyes. Given the urgent conversation around racial justice at the moment, how else can we journey across familiar terrain with new sight? What art will we create in response?
Writing in 1942 in the heart of war, T.S. Eliot in his poem “Little Gidding” writes, “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.” Biology professor and Citizen Potawatomi Nation member Robin Wall Kimmerer considers similar sentiments in her 2013 book, Braiding Sweetgrass:
The people… do not yet walk forward; rather, they are told to… walk back along the red road of our ancestors’ path and to gather up all the fragments that lay scattered along the trail. Fragments of land, tatters of language, bits of songs, stories, sacred teachings—all that was dropped along the way.
In response to the pandemic, many of us have “walk[ed] back” by baking bread, sewing masks, and growing gardens. I and many other white Americans are also learning neglected history such as the destruction of Tulsa’s Black Wall Street In 1921. How else can we journey back along well-worn roads and gather up the forgotten pieces?
This quarter, we’ll venture in labyrinths literal, metaphorical, or adaptational (have you ever walked a finger labyrinth before?). We’ll journey back into our own stories through the craft of memoir. Perhaps some of us will start a new journey via a new art medium. In all of it, we seek to “know the place for the first time.”
— Melanie Weldon-Soiset
Questions for Reflection
1. What journeys have you had to relinquish this year? What journeys have you subsequently discovered?
2. Describe any journeys in scripture that particularly resonate this season.
3. How would you describe your contemplative journey? Your artistic journey?
4. The word travel has etymological roots in the word travail. What self-care practices related to journey do you find yourself practicing this season? How have they changed (or not) since last year?
