Linda Fernandes-Bailey
May 29, 2005
What Should I Pack?
I don’t know if you are anything like me but I noticed especially since I just went on vacation in April that every time I vacation I get very anxious about what to pack! Will I have enough? What will the weather be like? Should I bring a hairdryer? What about makeup? How many books should I bring to read? Every time I tell myself : “What is the worse that will happen…I’ll forget something…and is there anything that I really can’t live without for one week?” Aside from medication one might be on (which I am not ) and a tooth brush I couldn’t really think of anything I couldn’t live without for a week. I always try to pack light so my suitcase will not be too heavy to lug through the airport and into the hotel room but every time my suitcase seems heavier than need be. To make matters worse most vacations I come home with many unworn items…things I could have taken out of the suitcase to lighten my load. But every vacation I seem to repeat the same pattern no matter how hard I try to talk myself out of it!
In today’s scripture lesson Jesus sends the disciples out two by two and “orders them to take nothing for their journey except a staff” Now he would have to order them because on their own I doubt they would make that choice. They can bring their staff to lean on to help them as they walk along but really how much comfort can that possibly be? No bread…no bag…no money in their belts….They can wear their sandals but not two tunics! What they are left with is each other and trust in Jesus. Trust that this is what they are called to do…follow Jesus and trust that he wouldn’t lead them in the wrong direction. Trust that wherever they go they will be fed and taken care of as they cast out demons and anoint the sick. And if they come upon a place that doesn’t welcome them…they are to shake the dust off their feet and move on. Can you imagine the conversations they might have had with one another? Surely they must have had doubt about what they were doing. They must have felt discouraged along the way. Were they going in the right direction? I wonder how many households turned them away? How often were they hungry? Yet somehow they mustered up enough faith to keep going and do the very things they had witnessed their teacher doing.
Well it got me to thinking about our own faith journeys and the many different roads we take along the way. As I was thinking about this I came to the conclusion that our faith journey is very different in one big way from the trips we take. Our faith journey is more about unpacking than packing. It is more about emptying our selves so that we might see clear the path that God has set before us. Henri Nouwen says it this way “In our spiritual life we find the fulfillment of our deepest desires by becoming empty for God. We must empty the cups of our lives completely to be able to receive the fullness of life from God.” Our spiritual journey is about emptying our self of everything that distracts us from God. Our busyness, our pre-occupation with work, our worries, our need to be in control, our need to be right… our judgments…the list goes on and on. But I know and you know that sometimes we live our lives as if we are God and emptying ourselves of everything we are so attached to is so hard!! To be empty is about as counter cultural as we can get in a world where we multi task and fill every moment with noise. AND we want immediate gratification so if we empty our self for five minutes and nothing happens…we say yeah I tried that once but nothing happened. Remember Gordon saying prayer was 90% silence… Well silence is about emptying our self so that we are open to God. On the recent retreat I led we did one meditation in which you hold an empty cup in your hand and imagine that you put into the cup all that clutters your life and distracts you from God…THEN you tip the cup and pour out all your clutter…most of us agreed it was a very powerful meditation…You felt uncluttered…emptied…try it! Becoming empty for God helps us to pay attention and notice where God is working in our lives, it helps us become aware of how we experience God’s presence and helps us notice the direction that God is nudging us towards.
On my first mission trip there was a young man from our church Nick Vivian in our group. I noticed as we were trudging through the airport (me with my suitcase that was much too heavy!) that all Nick was carrying was a small backpack and I asked “Nick is that all the luggage you have?”…”Yep” he answered. Hmmm…I thought. And as I got to talking to him on the trip he told me that right after the trip he was going to college in New York City…now this is after spending a week in the most vast and open country I have ever seen…”Wow that’s going to be quite a culture shock” I said to Nick. “Yeah I like that” he said “I like the culture shock.” Now I think Nick has something to teach us about our spiritual journeys. Travel light and be open to life…open to all the changes along the way. I was struck by the wisdom in this nineteen year old and aware that often as we age the opposite happens. We become bogged down by our own idiosyncrasies and are not very open to change! AND I began to wonder how often have we miss the Spirit’s movement in our lives because we had become too ridged…too controlling…too set in our ways…AND too afraid of change? Jesus sends his disciples off and orders them to take nothing and shake the dust off their feet when things don’t work out and move on. In other words travel light and be open to change. Be open to the fact that on our faith journeys things don’t go as planned. We think we are headed in a particular direction when all of a sudden we’re knocked off course and put on a different path. We experience culture shock and hate it…travel light…be open to change.
When we go on a trip we love to come back with stories of our travels. What we did…what we saw…who we met. Stories of air travel gone sour…Like my recent trip to Florida when on the return flight we missed our connecting flight had to stay in Atlanta then fly into White Plains New York and drive to Hartford…the place of our original destination. We tell the stories of what went well and what annoyed us and trips never go exactly as we plan. The plane ride is often too turbulent for my liking…the car ride too long…the hotel not what we expected but somehow we manage and enjoy anyway. It is important to tell the stories of our faith journeys too but it seems that we rarely talk about that! We are afraid we might be wrong or that what we perceived as a faith journey wasn’t one at all. Our faith journey is our life with an intention towards God. In other words it is noticing and listening to where God is in the midst of the life we live. AND often it is about making decisions because we want to please God. We want to do the right thing…live the right way and that means making hard choices. Before we can talk about our faith journeys we have to become aware of the ways in which we have seen God working in our lives. One of the ways to do that is to make a life line of the major events in your life…or chart every 5-10 years (this need not literally be a straight line since our journey is not…be creative!) Look at the significant events that changed you…moved you in a different direction…changed the way you think…opened your heart wider. What are the key experiences and moments of insight and decision that stand out as road markers? Are there times when you turned away from God? What did you learn? If you do this a few times in your life you will begin to notice things you hadn’t really thought about while they were happening and you were caught up in the whirlwind of life. To be on a spiritual path requires some reflection. Recently in one of the Companions classes The Way of Grace we had to share parts of our journey. I shared an event that had happened 21 years ago which at the time didn’t seem that big a deal….suddenly I became aware of what an amazing experience of God’s grace it had been and how it changed the course of my life forever. Sometimes it takes a while to put things together but the more attentive we are…the more we empty our selves the greater awareness we are given. So much of my work here has been listening to the stories of people’s faith journeys…stories of their lives. The twists and turns…the rocky roads…the hard up hill climbs….the tears and the laughter. I have heard people say time and time again. “I never put that together until I said it out loud.” Or “oh I didn’t know that was God’s presence in my life” It always convinces me how important it is to share our journeys. Often people think they are alone and when someone else shares part of their story inevitably someone says “I thought I was the only one who felt that way” It always convinces me of the value of the Companions in Christ classes…people are transformed…they see their path more clearly. Everyday I become more and more convinced of the importance of community… The disciples are sent out two by two… They are ordered to travel light but not alone!
We are on a faith journey with its twists and turns, rocky roads and steep climbs. We often wind up in unexpected places. This on going search for meaning…the search for union with God is what makes us human. What is my purpose? Why am I here? These are the questions we live during our journey. Our destination is not so much answers but a path…a way. Jesus beckons … Come follow me…Travel light and be open to the fullness of life that God offers. Amen