Take Me Where You Want Me To Go
“You must then say in the presence of the LORD your God,
‘My ancestor Jacob was a wandering Aramean…’”
Deuteronomy 26:5
This story might get me investigated by the Vatican secret police and led off in handcuffs by Swiss Guards. (I hope they wear those great Medici era red, blue, orange and yellow uniforms with their halberds and those crazy metal helmets with their red plums.)
I learned the value of wandering in Rome and worked at perfecting it in China.
Really good wandering is almost – but not quite – completely aimless, letting the path take you where it will. No goals. Slowly. Not meditative-monk slow, but not nearly a brisk pace. Be in your own head and your own heart. Let God present you with whatever God will present you.
In the end, really good wandering has the potential to bring you into the heart of God. Because Jews and Christians believe that God is everywhere, there is no need to go “searching” for him. Rather, in wandering we take the risk of stumbling upon God, allowing God to jump out and surprise us when we least expect it.
Way back when, my brother Barry invited me to join him on a trip to Rome for a meeting of Roman Catholic philanthropists and family-directed charitable foundations. I’ve always been allergic to archbishops and cardinals and the formalities of “Your Eminence” but a free trip to Rome is a free trip to Rome and I’m crazy but not crazy enough to pass that up.
Now for the fun part.
After the public papal audience in St. Peter’s Square and when the group headed to a private luncheon with and lecture by yet another cardinal, I decided to boogie and WANDER.
“The most important relationship we can all have
is the one you have with yourself, the most important journey you can take
is the one of self-discovery. To know yourself,
you must spend time with yourself,
you must not be afraid to be alone.
Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”
Aristotle
Leaving St. Peter’s Square and at the very end of Bernini’s Columns, I spotted an open, wrought iron door, maybe three feet wide and short enough that I had to bend slightly to walk through it. “What the heck! I’m wandering and have nothing better to do.”
I pushed the door open, walked through, climbed the spiral staircase and emerged atop Bernini’s columns with a clear and perfect view of the Square, where the pope was still touring in his open-air popemobile. I also had a perfect view of the back of the Vatican Secret Police officer surveying the crowds below and, until I was only feet from him, completely unaware of my presence.
Holy Moly! I could have shot the pope.
Once shooed off the Columns, I wandered.
Down to the tomb of St. Peter and a chance to converse with Pope John XXIII and a few other long-deceased pontiffs. A wander through the Basilica. Oh Great! Another door and another staircase.
551 steps – mostly inside the walls of the Basilica – to the outside of the Dome. Spectacular views. And time to take it all in.
With the entire Eternal City literally beneath my feet, I decided the wander.
An interesting church there on my right. Let’s – me, myself and I – go in. Holy sweet mother of all that is wonderful! Bernini’s Ecstasy of St. Theresa of Avila. Dear God in Heaven, no wonder it is considered one of History’s greatest sculptures.
Wander. Oh, WOW! Now this is one that I’ve got to come back to with friends! Santa Maria della Concezione de Cappuccini or Our Lady of the Conception of the Capuchins. Let’s just say that once you’ve been there, you’ll never forget it. (I won’t spoil the fun or surprise.)
Assisi. Don’t get me started on wandering in Assisi! Wander slowly, Wander alone. Plan to meet your family/friends for lunch or dinner but spend time in your head and in your soul and alone, it can be life changing. Plan to stay until late in the day and all of the tourists have left and set aside twenty or thirty minutes to sit in silence in the crypt below the Basilica, where St. Francis is buried, and have a private conversation with him. Or just listen to him.
I also wandered in China dozens of times. Two experiences:
While the world is well aware of the death camps of the Holocaust, few Americans have ever heard of Unit 731 - a Japanese chemical and biological warfare “research” and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army. Located in a section of the northeastern Chinese city of Harbin, the largest city in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), the facility was built between 1934 and 1937 and ultimately some 3,000 Chinese, Korean, Soviet, and Mongolian citizens and Allied POWs were subjected to indescribably inhumane “medical experiments” within its walls.
The entrance to Unit 731 is down a side road off a main thoroughfare. Almost half-a-mile away, as one approaches the entrance, you are hit – hit – by something akin to an earthquake and an historic thunderclap. A terror inducing sense of unspeakable evil.
Unit 731 should never be experienced with someone. It must be experienced slowly, quietly and alone in order to understand that the evil of what happened there lingers even today. It radiates up through the ground; it vibrates off the walls; and fills the air eighty-plus years after the Sino-Japanese War and World War II ended.
One must wander alone to experience Unit 731.
At the end, one is left with an indescribable, never-again-to-be-questioned sense that evil exists.
I recall visiting Unit 731 with Father Scott Harris, who spent more than 20 years doing HIV/AIDS education training in China. That first blast of evil was so powerful that we fell instantly silent and did not – could not – walk together through the ruins. We wandered separately, alone, soaking in, yet attempting to avoid, the palpable sense of evil. Only when the sense of evil had become too overwhelming did we come together. Perhaps for comfort. For silent prayer. To leave.
During my teaching/speaking trips to China, I designed my daily schedule to allow time for wandering. Without destinations. Absorbing sights and sounds, atmospheres and cuisines.
[Here’s a tip: Always carry a few business-size cards with the phone number and address of where you’re staying. You’ll never be truly lost.]
I don’t remember the city, but the days were split between a team of HIV/AIDS educators and myself, lecturing on addictions and addictions treatments.
On day one, I had been wandering for a couple of hours when, by divine inspiration, I glanced down an alleyway and saw a huge blue A (as in the Greek “Alpha”) above the blue-painted frame of a door in a white wall. “If there’s another door and it has an Omega over it, I’m going in,” I said to myself, detouring down the block-long alley.
There was. I did.
In the courtyard, an elderly man was carving intricate designs into a coffin. In one of the only Mandarin phrases I know – my favorite word in Mandarin is for “dumplings” and that hardly seemed appropriate – I repeated over and over “I am a priest.” I am not certain what surprised him more – an American in jeans and a sports shirt suddenly walking into his patio or an American saying in something approaching Mandarin “I am a priest.”
He dropped his tools and ran off, leaving me to wander. With a strange sense of the universality of Faith, I was caught in quiet prayer when the coffin-carver returned with a man approximately my age and similarly dressed. He was, he explained, apologizing for his limited English, the vicar general of the diocese. We talked for a while and I explained why I was in his city. As we parted, I extended an invitation: Any priest or Sister of his diocese was welcome to our lectures as my guests. He promised to spread the word.
Sacred Heart of Mary sisters prepare food in front of their convent in early 2000s, about the time of my lecture tours.
The next morning and very much to my surprise, four Roman Catholic nuns in simple habits – brown skirts, white blouses, modified veils and simple crosses – arrived for our lectures. Like many Chinese communities of Sisters, they worked with the poorest of the poor, the rejected, the sick and the abandoned. Despite rising early and travelling from the outskirts of the city, they were always the most attentive members of our audience. They were there all day every day for two weeks, soaking up every bit of information they might use to help God’s people.
But it was the last morning I most remember.
They arrived early. With gifts.
A small box of crosses and fish carved from black stones indigenous to the region. (The fish is an early Christian symbol. Remember: Peter, James and John were fishermen and “fishers of men.”)
And, one Sister had a huge blanket slung over her back and knotted at her throat. With care, they lifted and placed it on a table before opening it to reveal a bushel of apples. As a community, they explained, they were too poor to offer more expensive gifts; instead, they had awakened even earlier that morning to pick apples from their orchard. Would Father Scott and I please accept them as an expression of their gratitude?
My PTSD makes me especially prone to emotions. And on the rare occasion when I have shared this story my voice cracks and my eyes well up with tears.
And I am grateful for the grace of quiet wandering.
“Lord, take me where You want me to go,
let me meet who You want me to meet,
tell me what You want me to say,
and keep me out of your way.”
Father Mychal Judge, first official victim of The World Trade Center Attack
“Jesus said to them, `Come away with me.
Let us go alone to a quiet place and rest for a while.'”
Matthew 6:31
Be still and know that I am God.
Psalm 46:10
Wandering is part of God’s will for us.
It is God’s will that, at least from time to time, we wander.
Wandering takes us into the lives of those whom, otherwise, we might never encounter and brings folks we would never know into our lives.
Wandering has an internal contradiction. It is purposeless; we wander without a goal, without a destination or purpose other than to wander. It is purposeful; we wander in order to allow God to speak to us as only God can, when and where and as we least expect it, when we are not listening or looking but listening and looking, when we have no goal or purpose other than to wander. Wandering allows us to hear God saying “Come. Let me show you what I want you to see.”
The purpose of wandering is to wander. There’s really no such thing as effective or successful wandering. Except there is. As Father Mychal Judge – killed by falling debris as he ministered at the World Trade Center on 9-11 - reflected, the purpose of wandering is to go where God wishes us to go, to see what He wishes to show us, to speak the words, especially the words of kindness, He wishes us to speak, and not to get in His or our own way.
New York firefighters carry the body of Father Mychal Judge Judge to safety on September 11, 2001.
Effective, successful wandering – “successful wandering” and “effective wandering” are oxymorons – demands trust. Trust that, when the time is right, when we are right and ready, God will speak to us. He will take us – He will place us – where He wants us.
As I write this, I think of Mychal Judge. I like to think, I choose to believe that in the Providence of God, Mychal Judge was right where God took him, ministering to someone frightened, terrified, and alone as our world tumbled around them as it had never before. And Mychal Judge was there to make certain that frightened child of God did not die alone, was not alone.
And I am grateful for the quiet grace of wandering.