When I found myself walking across the parking lot at Food Lion this past Saturday evening, I was struck by the absurdity of the moment.
Earlier that same day, I had taken one last look at the front of Windsor Castle outside of London, England. The sky was a brilliant blue that Saturday morning in England, and the wind chill made it feel like it was in the mid-30s.
Hours later, I was sauntering jet-lagged into our local grocery store through mid-summer humidity to buy fresh milk. And it occurred to me. You shouldn’t be able to be on two continents on the same day.
Please, don’t get me wrong. I love to travel and to have the ability to visit far-off places and to experience people and cultures that are unfamiliar to us. The reason that I don’t think you should be able to be on two continents in one day is because it all feels surreal and overwhelming. Our ability to travel so rapidly can easily generate culture shock. When we zip around the globe so quickly, our mode of transportation doesn’t naturally provide a way for our new experiences to sink in. Like a torrential summer storm that pelts the ground, international travel can feel so sweeping in its reach that the experiences don’t sink in and saturate the ground. Instead, they just run off the surface and float away in the flash flood of rapid assimilation back into the life we had left.
What’s needed when one has an experience of a lifetime is space to absorb all that was felt, sensed, heard, tasted, and explored.
My great-grandfather’s experience a century ago sounds about right, then.
My great-grandfather was a circuit-riding Baptist pastor in the northern foothills of North Carolina. He was beloved by the congregations he served, and they made it possible for him to see the Holy Land. So, he and a good friend boarded a boat—an ocean liner, no less—for a two-month voyage to the middle east.
No, I don’t cotton to the idea of being on a boat for weeks at a time. And no, the practicalities of that kind of extended sabbatical seems unrealistic for me and my family at this time. But I do think there’s something to having space to think about and reflect upon one’s experiences so that they might sink in.
Our week in England and Scotland was extraordinary and life-changing. I am so very grateful for the rich blessing of being able to travel with my family and to have a pilgrimage experience in an ancient, and faithful setting. Yes, the reason for our particular journey to the United Kingdom centered on my doctoral studies. You’ll remember that my doctoral studies are intended to enrich and deepen my call to congregational ministry.
I am eager to tell you the story of my pilgrimage to the island of Iona, and I will do so with pictures and anecdotes beginning Wednesday night, May 15th. But I’m also glad there’s a bit of space between now and then as I’m still processing the power and significance of my journey. There is something deeply moving about being in a place that is widely known and understood as being ‘thin.’ Truly, in doing so it provides space to become ‘thin’ ourselves to the presence of God in our lives.
Of course, I’ll tell you about seeing the Gutenberg Bible and the spectacularly important Codex Sinaiticus at the British Library. I’ll tell you about worshipping in Westminster Abbey and at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle. I’ll tell you about the sleeper train and the complicated travel to the small, spit-of-land off the northwest coast of Scotland.
And I’ll tell you about my time of pilgrimage to a sacred place and all that it stirs up within me.
It just may take some time for me to let it all unspool.