"which flows in places that others disdain"

Paoli, PA

We walked through Vally Forge national park yesterday evening, a beautiful place despite the sad memories there. Tall, old woods, and wide, rolling meadows, with deer everywhere.

We've also enjoyed stopping to look at streams that pass under the roadway. Sometimes we've seen ducks or herons or fish (even an eel!). Once there were several deer drinking. But mostly it's become a reminder of the natural flow that goes on underneath the concrete, unnoticed. A symbol of the gentle Spirit of God living and moving below the hard, loud, man-made surface that usually commands our attention.

It reminded Heather of this passage from the Tao Te Ching that I've quoted to her before:

The best of man is like water,
Which benefits all things, and does not contend with them,
Which flows in places that others disdain,
Where it is in harmony with the Way.

And that makes me think of Jesus and his kingdom of nobodies...

"it'll come back to me"

King of Prussia, PA

It didn't work out for us to go to Philadelphia this weekend; both the Cramers' friends were out of town. And we were tired and dirty. We still had a considerable amount of money from large gifts, though, so we found a motel on our route and got a room, spending about half of what we had left. It wasn't the best motel we've been in (and overpriced), but it was the only one around, and we both were really glad to get clean and sleep in a bed. There was a coin laundry there, too. No change available, however, or laundry soap. But then we asked a family living in the motel (long-term, apparently) and they made change for us, and provided soap for free. "I don't need to charge you," she said when Heather offered. "It'll come back to me."

I think it was good, too, to experience the situation of low-income people there, being overcharged for poor quality housing. And having to accept it because there just isn't anything else around that's affordable. It felt like we came through it cleanly, though, feeling good, because all our needs were met, and we enjoyed being together through it, and I also felt good about the kindness of the family we met there. The generosity of the poor. They also seemed to be enjoying each other (playing in a plastic kiddie pool when I met them), even though their living situation wasn't great.

I wonder if finding "home" in a situation like that is similar to finding home while out on the road? Finding home that has more to do with relationship than location? Or finding home in God no matter where we are?

So now our money is down to what I'm used to. We had also sent some ahead to Washington, DC, to pay for bus tickets, since it looks like we'll need a little help to stay ahead of the weather in about a month. After visiting friends in DC, we'll probably take a bus down to North Carolina (about a month's walk) and then continue walking from there.

I'm grateful we had been given the means to pay these extra expenses. And even glad, in a way, to be getting low on money again. I don't want to be trusting our purse. As we heard on Sunday:

"Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give alms; provide yourselves with purses that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." (Lk 12.32-34)

first month

Doylestown, PA



A little pick-me-up for a rainy day. We stayed dry last night, but got stuck at the church this morning for a couple hours (and met two friendly people who showed up for work), then it let up long enough for us to make it to the next town.

We've been on the road a month now. I think the first wave of fatigue may be setting in, as we pass the usual time when a trip or vacation would be over. I guess now's when we find out if we can find a real sense of home while still being homeless.

We might get a chance to go south into Philadelphia this weekend, to visit with some friends of our recent new friends, the Cramers. We'll see.

the storm again

Lambertville, NJ

Heather started her own blog recently. Here's her description of the other night:

Blessings in disguise come in odd packages. Yesterday, after a great visit with Paul's friend Tom in New Jersey, we were walking around eveningtime through a town where Paul had map-spotted two churches and a park as potential sleeping places. It was almost dark already when we came to the first church; by the time we had walked around its "campus" looking for good overhang shelter, finding none, and debating whether to go on or trust the cloudless sky, it was dark. We rang the rectory doorbell. A light came on in the hall. A crack opened in the mini-blind showing a pair of frowning eyes: "Whaddya want?" No sign of the door opening. Paul and I looked at each other and back at the eyes, wondering if we were really expected to shout our story through the door. Another moment, and the door-muffled voice added (I think): "We don't have any!" and a hand waved good-bye. I waved good-bye back. The debate was settled.

We walked on, down nice safe sidewalk under streetlights, not a bad way to walk at night. Paul didn't even need to put on his reflector vest [for walking on the road after dark]. Within twenty minutes we were at another church, with a lovely covered side porch; the "rectory" was unlit and apparently uninhabited, so we just settled in.

A car pulls up. "Looks like we'll talk to some people after all," says Paul, and wanders over to the back door where the car is parking. I follow. "Are either of you the pastor?" The couple laughs. "No, we're the cleaning crew!" We explain, ask if we can sleep there. They don't see why it should be a problem; they offer bathroom facilities, water, a rug they were about to throw out for an impromptu mattress pad—then a recommendation on a nice place for breakfast and ten dollars. Wow.

And then, as I tried to sleep, the wildest thunderstorm I have ever seen blew in.

Lightning, over beyond the trees; not five times, not ten times, not twenty or thirty. Constant, an every-other-second flicker I could have read by if I'd wanted to. Huge cracks of thunder that, two or three times—even though I was flat on the ground and felt perfectly safe—made that duck-for-cover spasm run through my body. And then, after an hour of this (and I honestly think that's a very conservative estimate)—the rain. It poured hard, so hard that tiny spatters reached us, and the river we crossed this morning was risen high, deep brown, carrying broken branches and a tall dead tree down its roiling current.

So thank God for the eyes behind the mini-blind.

after the storm

Three Bridges, NJ

Great visit with Tom. He was very attentive to our needs and generous with us, and one of the best gifts was just being able to spread out and relax at his place for almost two whole days. Good talks over dinners, too.

Then last night we approached a church after dark, and knocked on the pastor's door. But when he came down he wouldn't even open the door. Just a muffled "Whaddya want?" We couldn't really talk through the door, so he just gestured at us, shooing us away. Heather thought she heard him saying "We don't have any" as he turned away. That's the experience of nobodies.

But we found another church soon after, with much better shelter. Thank God for that, because a powerful thunderstorm hit in the middle of the night. Longest and loudest thunder I've ever heard in a storm. A little hard to sleep, but we stayed dry.


Here's a picture of us on a sunnier day, sent by a couple we visited:



(Click on the image for full size, and here's another one.)

"Come."

As I wrote yesterday, Jesus' greatest gifts to others were not particular acts of service or healing, but "the appearance of his life in the world, a life of utter dependence on the love of God, and his offer of that life to us." Not just being helped by him, but being invited and enabled to live our whole lives as he did. His gift is wrapped up in the two words he said again and again to those who came to him: "Follow me."

But following Jesus involves great risks, and calls for great faith. As I think of that, I wonder what it felt like for Jesus to invite others to walk the path he walked, knowing what it would cost them, knowing they were frail and would fall. I remember the story of Jesus walking on the water, when Peter asks to walk on the water too. Jesus replies, "Come." What did it take to say that one word? To encourage his friend to attempt the impossible, knowing Peter's weaknesses, perhaps even knowing he would almost drown? But that was, after all, what Jesus had come to offer: an impossible life like his. He was here to speak that word: "Come—follow me."

Similarly, the greatest gifts we his followers have to offer are not particular acts of assistance but the invitation and encouragement for others to enter Jesus' life as well. We become evidence of that life, and we point to the way to enter into it. And urge others to follow? Urge them to "sell all and follow," to risk everything and follow? I find that much harder to do than following Jesus myself. What if they—those I love, those who are already frail and suffering—risk everything and fail?

I suppose utter dependence on God also includes trusting him to reach out and catch others when they fall, just as we trust him to catch us. It just seems so much more difficult.

"this is our efficacy"

Basking Ridge, NJ

After four nights in a row indoors, we spent the next three nights sleeping out (finding shelter one night on a church porch while a storm raged around us). Sunday morning we started walking early and then stopped at the first church we came to. After worship, Don, a nurse just coming off a night shift, shared his own coffee with us ("dark roast with heavy cream") and guided us to the adult Sunday school. Then we ended up staying for two classes in a row, talking with many people. Next, we were invited to lunch at a restaurant with the group, and after that Larysa took us to a historic park and then drove us down to meet my friend Tom, who we were planning to visit. He was gracious about our early arrival. After introducing us to his cat (it seems like we've been meeting a lot of cats on this trip—an answer to Heather's prayers?), Tom took us out to an excellent Thai restaurant. We're resting and getting cleaned up at his place today.

I've been thinking a lot about how this walk has been different from past years. With Heather along we do seem more accessible to people, so we've had more invitations and seem to be treated better than I remember in the past. That also means it's been easier to invite us, less of a risk, so our encounters seem less challenging to people. And the conversations seem somewhat lighter, less in-depth. Which has made me wonder if somehow we're "doing less" for people this year.

But one of the good things I've learned during these years of pilgrimage is that what I do for someone is not so important (what I say or teach, for example), it's just the good effect in their lives that counts. The more that people see their help coming directly from God, the better. And, for me, it's better, more humbling, to not be recognized as "the helper."

I'm still looking for and desiring more opportunities to serve and act compassionately towards others. But I have to remember that Jesus' greatest gift was not the particular acts of healing or teaching (which were relatively few, during only a couple years). His greatest gift was the appearance of his life in the world, a life of utter dependence on the love of God, and his offer of that life to us. This has given hope to countless people and inspired love again and again among us. I hope on this walk we offer something of that inspiration to others. It seems from people's responses to us that something good is stirred in them; and I do think they are happier to see us out here together, rather than just me alone.

Also, the best challenge to people may simply be the life lived (miraculously) free of the restraints and oppressive forces that usually control our choices and actions. Demonstrating that we don't have to settle for "the lesser evil," or give up the highest good (or our true calling) because it's "just not possible in this fallen world." Jesus' life uncovered the falsehood of those excuses. Just living among us, a truly human life, yet not bound by the forces (economic, political, religious, social) that control our lives, he challenged us deeply—and offered hope.

As Jacques Ellul wrote, in a passage I return to again and again:

We have simply to be, and we can only be a question put within the world, a question invincibly confronting it. This is our efficacy. It is the efficacy of the question, a question which society and sociological movements cannot assimilate. Israel and the church have never been efficacious except to the degree that the world has been unable to assimilate them. This is the vocation of the people of God incomparably more authentic than "service" or "works."

It is not at the level of works and their results that this efficacy may be seen; it is at the level of inassimilability.

"a couple of real Jesus freaks!"

Garnerville, NY

Last night we stopped at a church that I had visited three years ago, when I had walked to New York from Chicago. And we were able to join in their bible study and meet people (one young guy even remembered me before I introduced myself). When we walked in, one woman said with a smile, "A couple of real Jesus freaks!"

The study was on "offense," how to deal with being offended by others, and how to avoid giving offense, or causing others to stumble in their faith. I mentioned that one of the biggest causes of offense is when we Christians don't live out our faith, when we have words and worship but not the kind of love that Jesus demonstrated. We didn't have time to go into the other aspect of offense: The offense of the cross, the way Jesus caused scandal by his way of accepting and living among society's outsiders, his nonviolence, his rejection of power and wealth, his self-sacrificing love. It's hard to accept (and even harder to follow). But, as Jesus said, "Blessed is he who takes no offense at me." (Lk 7.23)

After the bible study we talked with several people and enjoyed them enjoying one another. We were invited to sleep in the small house they use as an activity center. Then one of the young women went out and bought a pizza for us! And I remembered one of the prayers that was said for us, that no snakes or ticks would hurt us, that if they tried to bite us they would fall off "like teflon."

a beautiful morning

Tomkins Cove, NY

There were splendid views as we climbed to the Bear Mountain bridge yesterday evening, and we stopped to enjoy one at a scenic overlook. Someone approached and asked if we were on the Appalachian Trail. We said no and explained our walk a little, and then another man (who had overheard) approached and surprised us with an invitation to spend the night at a retreat center just up the road. The Garrison Institute, a huge, beautiful place. It's a former Capuchin monastery overlooking the Hudson River, now used for a variety of religious retreats. Gorgeous accommodations (check out the bathrooms!). We even got to enjoy a private soak in the hot tub.

When we were dropped off this morning, Bill and Erin (who we met at the retreat center) gave us small gifts. Then we took our time walking across the bridge, about 150 feet above the Hudson. Breakfast was next to a small, clear lake in Bear Mountain state park.

On our morning walk along the hills of the river valley we talked about some ideas for the retreat ministry. About focusing not on creating an institution but on developing ourselves and those who work with us and who come for retreats. About how it's people who are eternal, not buildings or institutions (though those are the things people usually want to leave as their legacy). I'm not sure what got me in that train of thought. Maybe the big monastery, which could no longer be filled and so was left to be used by others. Maybe the idea of Jesus' "kingdom of nobodies," which I think is accurate. Jesus focused on society's outsiders, and died as one of them himself. So even though we've found a place to live and work, I want to intentionally resist becoming "established," secure and accepted, preserving what I built rather than following the one who had nothing but the word God gave him.

This walk is a good way to start.