On Getting Somewhere

There’s a passage in Lord of the Rings that has always haunted me. To paraphrase, it’s Bilbo telling Frodo about the Great Road that reaches the whole known world, even the doorstep of Bag End. Follow it far enough, and it can take you eastward like a great river to distant and fair realms… or worse places.

I was thinking about that passage after taking a long pilgrimage during this past Spring Break. There’s a Benedictine monastery I often stay at in the town of Still River. It’s 30 miles away from BC; not a big deal for cars, but it’s a bit more strenuous to reach on foot.

Now, that was a smaller-scale trip, but have you ever realized just how big you can think? Have you ever appreciated the frightening prospect that if you just pick a major road and keep walking down it, you might just get somewhere? For instance, hike west on Washington Street and don’t stop; eventually you’ll end up in Albany, New York. That’s pretty short as far as interstate roads go.

Besides the numerous paved roads, a luxury totally unknown in the days of the great pilgrimages when they were most needed, there are also no highwaymen. As long as you have the time, the will, and the resources, you can leave your very doorstep and simply walk as far as you’d like, even to the other side of the country.

Maybe you find that notion intimidating or just downright preposterous. Sure it’s possible, but who would really do that? Well, I’m not here to exhort you to it; my only aim presently is to plant one question in your head: “What if?”

What if you strode out of your door one day and never turned back until you reached your destination, whether near or astonishingly far?

Well, maybe I sound a bit crazy for asking that seriously. I’m sure you have responsibilities; I certainly am not at leisure to drop everything and leave forever. My little journey was quite insignificant compared to such a great feat of endurance as inter-state hiking.

Consider this topic in a more spiritual light now. Have you often read the Gospels or the legends of great saints and wondered at the lives depicted in them? Have you ever thought about seriously living their way of life? Have you ever considered what it would take, peered down that pathway, and shrunk back from it upon reflection?

I look at the Desert Fathers and Doctors of the Church much like I do a hike to the Pacific Ocean; it sounds amazing, adventurous, alive…but could I really do it? I admire few saints so much as St. Anthony the Great and St. Francis de Sales. I’ve read their works and biographies, and I think about them frequently. But really emulating them? Or, above even that, really being an imitator of Christ? How intimidating.

But what if you took that road, the road that is a great saint’s life, Christ’s life, and walked down it and never looked back? What if today you listened to the Lord’s voice and didn’t harden your heart? Maybe the constant exposure to that exhortation, and, if you’re at all like me, the constant failure to listen to it, has discouraged you and numbed you to the possibility. But so long as you live, that real possibility can never be taken away from you. 

The truth is that you are already a spiritual pilgrim by being human, and in comparison, a physical pilgrimage is rather straightforward; for the latter, you can quantify your strength, figure out what you need to work on, buy the right equipment, and plot a course. Trials of physical strength are a great analogue for spiritual striving, but they are still much easier than navigating the mires of the interior life. Hiking across the country is far simpler than ascending the mountain of prayer; indeed, Mount Everest is flat in comparison.

So if a trek across the country sounds impossible, I (sort of) regret to inform you that if you are a Christian you are already committed to something much, much harder. California is at least on Google Maps; I’ve yet to find the Beatific Vision as a valid destination. If you have, let me know so I can get going. 

Perhaps you can gather encouragement for your pilgrimage, spiritual and/or physical, as I have tried, by musing upon the what-if. If you wish to be a saint, there will come a day when there will be no more time for what-ifs. You will be along the road already, having left all worldly things behind. For the present, maybe the constant reminder of that possibility, the presence of the quiet what-if, can suffice to encourage us.