Walkabout Wandering...

Michael and I went walkabout this weekend. We drove to Abingdon, Virginia, a small historic town, and stayed at a lovely hotel that was first a family residence and then a girls college. Many of the shops were closed for the season but that hardly mattered. We needed to step aside from the everydayness of our living and catch our breath. It was a jewel of a holiday.
Virginia countryside, like the North Carolina mountains, has a hold of my soul in some strange way I cannot explain. Since childhood these two geographical locations have called out to me, felt like home, whenever I am there. Perhaps there is some DNA transmission from my ancestors that connects me to these places, connections passed on from great-great-grandparents through my parents to me. Perhaps it is more mystical than that. It doesn’t really matter because I know home when I see and feel it. That is what matters.
The Bible tells stories of others who have gone walkabout. Abraham and Sarah, the Israelites leaving Egypt, the Prodigal Son, Jesus himself, all went somewhere else seeking and searching for something elusive, something that was not where they were. Sometimes they knew it when they saw it and sometimes God had to knock them upside the head to clear their vision. The journey, the trip, leaving behind the workaday world to clear out the sticky cobwebs that hold our soul’s eyes half shut, can help us find our home place again.
The journey can be simple... a weekend retreat of silence and reflection, hiking the Appalachian trail for a few days, going to a friend’s house for an overnight stay... but leaving home to find it is never simple. All you have to do is read your Bible to see how complicated and messy it can be. Abraham passed Sarah, his wife, off as his sister to another man. The Prodigal Son ended up in a pig pen. And the Israelites refused to listen to their GPS system thus condemning themselves to a forty year hiatus in the wilderness.
A walkabout journey for Christians begins this week with Ash Wednesday and the imposition of ashes. I know “imposition” means marking in this context but for me, it also means it is a hitch in my getalong, a break in my usual routine. If I pay attention, read my map and listen to the GPS system provided by this liturgical season of Lent, I can find my home once more in the Love that never lets me go, the Life that is the source of my life, the Laughter that takes delight in my being. So here goes... on the road again... Ash Wednesday, Lent, Easter... death, burial, resurrection... home, sweet home... I know it when I see and feel it.