Journey of Life, Journey with Christ…

Spend anytime at the airport and it is soon very evident that people are on the move. Large numbers of people are traveling within Australia and across the world. They are traveling for business, for holiday, education, family reunion and crisis. They travel on their own and in couples and groups.

Yet we don't have to leave home to travel. Our lives are a journey in themselves. A young Dad proudly tells the waitress his baby is 7 weeks old. That is how it begins: life is counted in days and then weeks and months and somehow, after reaching that first year, years are enough. Well almost! Most self respecting young kids are always boasting that they are nearly their age at next birthday rather than just the age they are. And somewhere on the way from childhood to adulthood we put the brakes on and stop yearning to get older and start forgetting or denying our age.

So what is this life, this journey?

I think life is a journey to the heart of ourselves and to God. It is a journey that we begin naked and vulnerable and dependent. We journey through our years, clothed and gaining all manner of things, surrounding ourselves with security, only to leave this life as we came in: naked, vulnerable and dependent.

There are so many images of this journey, this life. One that has a great richness for me is my life as a landscape. I can physically draw a map of my landscape and name the mountains, bridges, playgrounds, orchards, deserts etc. I can see myself at many points in this landscape, sometimes sitting in awe of the view, sometimes stalled with fear between precipices in the mist, falling into a bog, swimming joyfully in the lake or treading water in treacherous seas.

It is a beautiful life, for this landscape is infused at every moment by God's presence. It is beautiful even in the darkest places, not always immediately when I am there, but as I reflect on the landscape and find that I was not alone even in those most terrifying or sad or dark places.

This landscape is populated with friends who seem to arrive unexpectedly on the way. They too are on their journeys and their landscapes intersect with mine. At times we might be languishing together, or giving a hand up or just standing, unable to reach but being there.

It is a landscape where we discover our weakness and our strength. It is a landscape that is carved by our search for meaning, our need to belong, our journey to restore what seems to be lacking or missing - the fullness of life in the love of God.

All things considered, I have been blessed with a gentler landscape. There are landscapes which include battlefields of violence and death, seas with marauding pirates, jungles with venomous snakes and any other challenge you can imagine.

In the gospels we find the journey of Jesus mapped out on the landscape of Israel in the 1st Century CE. Yet it does not take too long to understand that the landscape of the gospels is often metaphorical rather than actual. Matthew puts Jesus on a mountain to teach the beatitudes to emphasise him as teacher. If you were to map the sea crossings in Mark you may find it hard to match the journeys with the location. Visiting Israel certainly gives a depth to the idea of the landscape that Jesus traversed and there is something very moving about being in the Garden of Gethsemane with very old olive trees (none of them original). The landscape of the stories of Jesus is also part of our story. We find in his journey a model for us. We learn to trust God, to follow Jesus, to travel lightly and to share what we have, we are told not to be afraid, to love one another, to listen, to pray, to forgive.

Take a moment to consider the landscape of your life and how it merges with that of Jesus. Visit some of your favorite places and notice the challenging spots that you have made your way through, ponder the journey ahead.

“I have wandered all my life, and I have traveled; the difference between the two being this, that we wander for distraction but we travel for fulfillment.” ...Hilaire Belloc

Rosemary

Rosemary Canavan lives in Adelaide. Her qualifications include a Bachelor of Arts major in Psychology and two Bachelors degrees in Theology, the most recent an Honours degree in New Testament studies. She has two adult children.

Photo Credits: Main image "I want out" by Kevin Cloutier, Alachua, FL, United States.
Img sourced from stock.xchng

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Rosemary can be contacted at: rosemary@catholica.com.au

©2006 Rosemary Canavan

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