Journeying
Third Sunday of Advent 2009
The other day my four year old daughter told me she wanted to go on a journey. I told her that we would be going to New Mexico for Christmas and asked if that would count. She said, no, that was just a trip, not a journey. Journeys involve going on a quest to find something important and discovering stuff about yourself along the way. So she wanted to find a journey to go on. I explained to her that often the journeys she’s thinking of are often thrust upon people by strange twists of coincidence or fate. Dorothy gets carried in a whirlwind to Oz. Alice falls through the looking glass. Lucy steps through the wardrobe.
And a suspiciously pregnant Mary is forced by the government to journey while heavy with child to the town of Bethlehem.
This week’s Advent theme is that of journeying. Of making our way through life with awareness. Anyone can get along and move ahead. We can go on trips and reach destinations, but it takes awareness to give it meaning. To journey through life requires a commitment to seek after something and to be open to have ourselves changed along the way. We can be scared and unsure of exactly where we are going, but we accept and commit to it nonetheless.
Mary committed to the journey she was thrust into. Despite the ridicule and judgement of those who could count the months between the wedding and due date which is likely the reason there were no rooms for them in Bethlehem, Mary journeyed anyway. Even as the hardship of the journey brought on the pains of labor, she accepted her path. Even as strange visitors praised her son and fear forced them to flee the country, Mary treasured the moments and journeyed on. Bethlehem was just the first stop along a journey that led her eventually to see her son crucified on the cross and the Spirit descend in wind and flame at Pentecost. She was committed to the journey she had accepted no matter the pain it caused her as it unfolded. It is believed that a good deal of our gospel accounts come from Mary telling the story of her journey. This wasn’t someone who proceeded through life unaware. She treasured her experiences in her heart – understanding the significance of the path she was on.
I wish I was more like Mary. Or like my daughter asking to go on a journey. I want to see, truly see, the world around me. I want to seek something truly significant and be willing to let myself be shaped into an instrument of the good along the way. I appreciate this reminder in the Carmelite Advent tradition that Incarnation isn’t just about God coming to us, but also about us choosing to seek and journey after God as well. We choose to follow and to do so with open eyes – building awareness of the ways we can better serve. We choose to journey together.
julieclawson(at)gmail(dot)com 
Hi Julie, doesn’t parenting count as a journey that you’re on (and me too)? Not that it has to be the only journey we’re taking – but it seems to me that it should count as one of them.
Oh for sure parenting can be a journey. But I think often it isn’t done with awareness. Most days we just try to make it to bedtime – and end up missing the bigger picture.
Yes, good point. It’s easy to get lost in the details especially when the children are little and need so much attention all the time.
thanks for such a moving reflection, julie!
yesterday, while finishing cleaning somebody’s
house (my paid work) i was feeling tired, distracted and also upset about climate change, about which i’d just heard dire statistics
on the radio. i happened to look out the window and somehow, for a moment, really “saw,” very close to the house, a tall, beautiful pine tree, which i understood as the cross at the heart of our world as it really is now. i felt collected out of the dusty, sleepy hour, to recommit myself to following jesus on the path of social justice and prayer, by letting what i can gather of the truths of his amazing grace and the truths about climate change, meet and mingle in my heart, as a prelude to action with others, that we might unfold new ways, with god’s help, to help heal the planet and all precious circles of life there-on. that’s my wordy way of saying – watch out! sometimes the journey can find you where you least expect to be found, and require you to do what you may not feel like doing. i’m practicing remembering how the blessed promise is so wonderfully there for us as it was for mary – that if we can just get to saying yes to whatever is asked of us, we will definitely be given all the amazing gifts and friends we need, along the way.