River Sojourns-Life Journeys
One of the enduring joys of my youth has been a fondness for rivers, lakes, and streams. I especially enjoy whitewater canoeing and kayaking, and the wild places to which these activities take me. Growing up in North Georgia, I felt at home on the Amicalola and the Chestatee, the Chattahoochee, and the Nantahala. In more recent years, I have discovered sea kayaking, and I have been fortunate to paddle in places as diverse and magical as coastal Maine, Tebenkof Bay Alaska, Lake Jocassee, and the Boundary Waters of Minnesota. Our two sons also developed a love for water, as evidenced by this photo of older son Justin, who was a raft guide for the NOC while in graduate school at Vanderbilt:
It is a delight to view the world from the perspective of the water. One notices the intricacy and beauty of creation in new and remarkable ways. One is for a time both in—and of—the context of the water. The Japanese poet Basho knew this experience well:
The old pond, ah!
A frog jumps in:
The water’s sound!
Like the ripples of my paddle as I dip it into the current of the Cartecay, the frog’s presence both disrupts the smooth texture of the world and belongs to it. Yet in some ways we are different, Basho’s frog and I. We humans cannot fully immerse ourselves in the river world around us. We cannot escape our awareness of being “sojourners” in the world, as the theologians Kierkegaard, Tillich, and others have expressed so well. We are wholly in the world, but reflectively so. We are carried along by the current, even as we participate in our passage and watch our ripples spread for better or worse. We are at one and the same time travelers, and part of the terrain. We are sojourners in our own home. And as such, we need companions on our journeys. We ask questions about who and whose we are, where our lives are going, and the meaning of our sojourns here. This is one reason we have created religions, and churches: as contexts which bind us together (Middle English (originally in the sense ‘life under monastic vows’): from Old French, or from Latin religio(n- ) ‘obligation, bond, reverence’, perhaps based on Latin religare ‘to bind’) in our quest for meaning.
In some ways, my own work as a pastoral counselor/marriage and family therapist is like paddling down the Amicalola River. Those of us who engage this work do so out of our conviction that it is ultimately relationships that heal what is broken. And relationships provide the best context for asking the deepest spiritual questions about our lives. Theologian Ed Farley, one of my graduate school professors, once described courage as “venturing forth into creation with vitality and wonder.” This is true of both river sojourns and the many journeys—both relational and spiritual—we take over the course of our lives. We often need companions on our journeys, even the most introverted among us. One of my favorite authors, the psychiatrist Donald Winnicott, began his autobiography with these lines: “O God, this is my prayer. My prayer is that I will be fully alive when I die.” Indeed, as the theologian/mystic Irenaeus said so well, “God fully glorified is a human being fully alive.” Another author whose work has been important to me is Maurice Merleau-Ponty, especially on the topic of “intersubjectivity” or, those spaces between us in relationships:
“True reflection presents me to myself not as idle and inaccessible subjectivity, but as identical with my presence in the world and to others, as I am now realizing it: I am all that I see, I am an intersubjective field, not despite my body and historical situation, but, on the contrary, by being this body and this situation, and through them, all the rest….The world is the natural setting of, and field for, all my thoughts and all my explicit perceptions.”
~ Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Philosphers, theologians, psychologists such as Emmanuel Levinas, Donald Winnicott, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty have been frequent conversation partners, though I cannot claim to have mastered any of them. Still, there are times when running on trails, listening to a patient, teaching in the classroom, or immersed in the liturgy are all of a piece, phenomenologically speaking. They are forms of what Merleau-Ponty called “intertwinement“–cultivating and adopting an ‘attentiveness and wonder’ and curiosity towards the world and one another as fellow sojourners. And our “intertwinement” with others extends, equally, to our relationship with the natural world – a theme that Merleau-Ponty was increasingly drawn towards in his later writings. Intersubjectivity is a theme that informs and enriches in so many ways. Or, as Thomas Merton wrote:
“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world. . .
This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud. . . . I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed. . . . But this cannot be seen, only believed and ‘understood’ by a peculiar gift.”
― Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander
Yes, and through our disciplines and practices we can cultivate this embodiment. As Dan Nixon has written:
“Citing the French poet Paul Valéry, Merleau-Ponty even questioned whether there’s a sense in which language is, before all else, ‘the very voice of the trees, the waves and the forest’.”
This is a lovely invitation to pay attention and join in the dance.
Poets often convey both intersubjectivity and availability in their writing, as in this lovely poem by Robert Frost:
I’m going out to clean the pasture spring;
I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I sha’n’t be gone long.—You come too.
~ Robert Frost
Friends, we are, each of us, called to be ministers of relationship, and in so doing, to facilitate just this process of “aliveness.” I invite us all to pay attention to the world within our reach, and to reach out to those who may be in need of relationship, as so many of our Holy Family ministries are designed to do. Consider, won’t you, ways you might reach out and connect to another. In this epidemic of loneliness we are called to be “available” to one another. The theologian/philosopher Gabriel Marcel called this “disponibilite’” or availability. And should you need a paddling companion for a time on your journey, let us know—the water’s fine.
I’ll catch you later on down the trail, and I’ll hope to see you in church!
Bill+[i]