Journey to a New Country

Some of us are journeying to a new country this weekend. I’m sure that Monday will bring many reports about our adventures at the workshop. Others of us, while not coming here, are still on a journey to somewhere, and all of us appreciate holy companions on the way.

Today’s post is from a profound spiritual writer named Henri Nouwen. It’s been huge for me at significant moments on my own journey. Take what is useful for you and leave the rest.

You have an idea of what the new country looks like. Still, you are very much at home, although not truly at peace, in the old country. You know the ways of the old country, its joys and pains, its happy and sad moments. You have spent most of your days there. Even though you know that you have not found there what your heart most desires, you remain quite attached to it. It has become part of your very bones.

Now you have come to realize that you must leave it and enter the new country. You know that what helped and guided you in the old country no longer works, but what else do you have to go by? You are being asked to trust that you will find what you need in the new country. That requires death of what has become so precious to you: influence, success, yes, even affection and praise.

Trust is so hard, since you have nothing to fall back on. Still, trust is what is essential. The new country is where you are called to go, and the only way to go there is naked and vulnerable.

It seems that you keep crossing and recrossing the border. For a while, you experience a real joy in the new country. But then you feel afraid and start longing again for all you left behind, so you go back to the old country. To your dismay, you discover that the old country has lost its charm. Risk a few more steps into the new country, trusting that each time you enter it, you will feel more comfortable and be able to stay longer. -Henri J. Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love

Wherever we are headed,

we cannot get there without leaving where we are.

May that leaving be marked by grace and forgiveness, as well as gratitude for the gifts received while in the old country. And whatever is new country to you, may you be encouraged in your quest. May we all “risk a few more steps”  in our own journeys.