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Trains...
When I was a child, I purchased a Tyco electric railroad set for the astronomical sum of $28.00. I didn't purchase the set outright. How could anyone, much less a child, at that price? I used the store's layaway program. Layaway--virtually nonexistent these days--allowed the customer to make periodic payments on an item. The retailer removed the item from active inventory, but the customer didn't take possession of the item until it was paid off.
A layaway program would be unlikely today because of the availability of store credit. A credit account allows the customer to make periodic payments after first taking possession of the item. Credit allows us to play now, and pay later.
The essential learning...where might you choose to fully experience the depths of desire and anticipation and patience, by intentionally surrendering immediate gratification?
Planes...
Over the past five years, our family has endured numerous losses. Difficult, indeed. But, we "do not grieve as others do, who have no hope" (1 Thessalonians 4:13).
When my mother passed, we flew from our home in Louisiana for the memorial in California. Within hours--not days--of travel, we inserted ourselves into the sorrow, but just as quickly retreated to the emotional safety of home, two thousand miles away. When my youngest brother passed away, then my father, then my mother-in-law, we repeated the brief--and rather surreal--incursion into the place of sorrow.
The essential learning...how might you allow yourself the stillness, the solitude, the silence to experience the full range of emotions that accompany love and loss? Turn down the noise--from both within and without--and the frenetic activity that distracts you from hearing the still, small voice.
Automobiles...
It's been a month now since we lost my nephew Ricardo, after he had traveled from California to El Salvador to visit his birth family. His passing coincided with the fifth anniversary of our move from California to Louisiana. As we planned our trip west for yet another memorial, we deliberately chose to drive to California. Our intention was to give ourselves space and time to contemplate the cumulative life and death, joy and sorrow, challenge and triumphs, of the past five years.
Our intention was to perceive the trip as a pilgrimage. A pilgrimage is a journey to a place of personal significance, for the sake of transformation. Mark Nepo, author of The Exquisite Rich, writes, "To journey without being changed is to be a nomad. To change without journeying is to be a chameleon. To journey and be transformed by the journey is to be a pilgrim."
The essential learning...might there be a pilgrimage--a "journey of transformation"-- that bids you, "Come"? A quest that might call you out of a place of avoidance and despair and into a place of faithfulness and trust?
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