At a cursory level, I suppose it simply captures the reality in all of us that we are in process, in between, trying to find our way. Like many words (e.g., missional or authentic), this term risks becoming an ambiguous, hindering concept, co-opted into youth ministry subtexts. While youth workers use the word constantly in dialogue, teaching, and preaching, its meaning remains vague.
I do believe we’re called to a journey or pilgrimage, and I think each person must embrace its meaning before attempting to use it on others. What may be a hurdle for some is not the reality that spiritual formation is a journey but that journey (noun) calls them to journey (verb). Just because there is a journey doesn’t make someone a journeyer any more than acknowledging the existence of marathons make one a marathoner. Further, activity is not synonymous with journey any more than randomly surfing the web is research. Thus, I offer some signposts:
You know you’re on the journey when you’re moved by wonder. New territory heightens your senses as you experience something for the first time. Often the view is obstructed when one’s language, outlook, or assumptions blind one. Journeying people have the ability to see people and situations with continually first-time eyes. They believe that each situation, each person, every day is worth discovering more fully. Journeyers see. This is worship.
You know you’re on the journey when you embrace personal goals along the way. While journey is often referred to as the opposite of destination, this does not mean passive wandering in hope that the destination will appear. Do not hide behind the journey metaphor as an excuse for aimless wandering. Journeyers actively seek God, critically reflect on themselves, and discover that outcomes are likely not random events but fruit. Journeyers sweat. This is spiritual practice.
You know you’re on the journey when you’re laughing and crying. Journeyers get close enough to be moved by others’ journeys. Life is not lived at a safe distance, protected by power, theological dogma, or busyness. Journeyers find ways to come close enough to be moved to tears of joy and pain. They feel deeply, experiencing wonder and exhaustion. They recognize that there is nothing safe about their journey. Journeyers feel. This is solidarity.
You know you’re on the journey when you view the mundane as sacred. It’s the daily practices of love, charity, emails, conversations, spiritual practices, etc., that sustain the journey. These are the things that no one notices, yet this is the sacred stuff of journey. Leadership, vision, or events can blind journeyers from the smaller, more sacred, more essential things. Those who lose sight of this roll their eyes when receiving parents’ emails and get annoyed at “interrupting” phone calls. Journeyers live for the small, unnoticed acts. This is prayer.
You know you’re on the journey when you see yourself as the guest. Journeyers give up control. They come as visitors to every context, graciously learning, honestly seeking to understand, and resist forcing their agendas on others. Journeyers see every relationship as holy ground and every person as an image bearer. It’s been said that when one sees another as an opponent, the result is competition. But when one sees the other as a fellow journeyer, the result is partnership toward a shared goal where everyone risks change and transformation. Journeyers accommodate. This is self-giving love.
You know you’re on the journey when someone asks you how you’re doing and you say more than, “Busy.” Those who are on a journey have a story to tell, a discovery to share, an experience to express, and they can’t help it. Journeyers are beat poets and artists. This is witness.
You know you’re on the journey when you depend on others to journey with you. Those truly journeying recognize that they need the company of others. As numerous theologians have reminded us, the Christian life is personal but not private. The essence of Christian spirituality reflects the nature of the Trinity through journeying communities that perpetually tell the story of God in word and sacrament. Journeyers connect. This is the church.
You know you’re on the journey when you see faith as improvisation. When traveling, it’s tempting to overpack your creature comforts. Journeying is about packing less and leaving familiar things behind. It is more about improvising than making everything fit old paradigms. It exposes the limits of your faith categories and asks you to let go of your pre-packed theology, programs, and dogma. It asks you to reconsider your notions of God, world, and self, which will be both scary and liberating. Journeyers risk. This is faith.
You know you’re on a journey when you recognize that your pursuit is embedded in God’s pursuit of you. Journey is more than a self-focused endeavor. It is situated in the understanding that God is continually pursuing us, showing us the reality of our world where God’s love, grace, and recapitulation of you, others, and the whole world are happening already. At times you may lose your bearings, but you are never lost. Journeyers are embraced. This is the gospel.
Journey on, friends. Hope to bump into you along the way.
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Because that’s what life is. Life is a journey, and so is our life in Jesus. Life isn’t stagnant, and as much as we try to stay the same, to stay stationary, “the road goes ever on and on.” And as leaders, we need to talk about this because we tend to want to stay put, and we tend not to like or appreciate change.
Everyone starts at the same place. We all need God, and we are created to be in relationship with God. Many of us don’t see that for a long time. Some of us take detours along the way and meander in the wilderness or camp out in the valley or put down roots in the suburbs and just STOP, not wanting to go on the next leg of the adventure.
Some of us carry way too much stuff. Some of it we collect on purpose, and some of it is really heavy baggage that gets heaped upon us. Yet it all is a part of the journey. And the question is… Will we allow the journey to change us and transform us? Or will we have to continue to wander about in the wilderness? (Yet even in the desert God is there and continues to provide for his kids.)
With the journey of faith in mind, I often begin confirmation class with a handout. On the page, I’ve drawn a path. The road winds around, and there is a river with a bridge out; there are potholes on the road; there are mountains and valleys; there is a bus stop beside the path and a castle/cross/kingdom pic drawn at the end of the winding road. I ask my students to consider where they are on their spiritual journeys as they start confirmation (or as they start the new school year, or even the New Year).
Some might not even feel they are on the path at all. Some might feel they are in a pothole or stuck in the mud somewhere. That’s okay. We need to talk about that and allow them to see that God is in the process and with us in the potholes and even sitting beside us on the bench at the bus stop, even if we don’t see him yet.
Father Edward Hayes says that we are all “homeward bound” hobos—on the road home to be with Jesus (Lenten Hobo Honeymoon). We are all in process, and we all sometimes get stuck, and most of us take breaks along the way. And it’s okay to take baby steps.
Journey is how God has built the human experience. It’s unknown and ever changing. Life forces us to go forward; it’s the nature of time—birth, life, death; it’s what we’ve been given.
When it comes to spiritual formation, I really appreciate the metaphor of the journey. It gives me great hope. I’m not done yet. Nothing is set in stone. There is a path, there is a way, there is a road through. Best of all, I’m not stuck if I don’t want to be. I can take a new road and know that it will ultimately be safe because the King is with me. And for me, this is exciting! My life in Jesus really is an adventure.
“Thinplace… A pilgrimage of discovery and creativity” is the tagline on my business cards. Thinplaces are the places where one feels closest to God; where heaven and earth seem to touch. And pilgrimage involves going on a journey together, seeing what God is up to, and getting out of our normal routines. We travel together in order to discover something about ourselves; we travel together to understand and discover what God is doing and has been doing in our world. That’s why I believe in going on pilgrimage personally and with students.
We need to see, and we need to help our students see, how journey is woven into the entirety of Scripture. The children of Israel were pilgrims heading for a strange land. They didn’t really know where they were going when they left for Egypt. They really weren’t sure that it was a good idea anyway. And they definitely had doubts about their leader. They took major detours, building golden calves and complaining about food and water.
And even before that, Abram and Sarai were pilgrims, leaving their comfort zones and traveling to a place God would tell them. They too got confused and sidetracked along the way, sometimes with drastic results. But throughout their journey they were seeking to follow God and attempting to hear his voice and doing their best to listen to him.
And Jesus didn’t invite his disciples to sit down and memorize a bunch of rules. He invited them to follow him, to go with him and learn along the way.
It’s important for us to remember and for our students to know and understand that God has taken all his children on journeys of discovery and creativity; that life in Jesus doesn’t allow us to remain the same. Jesus asks us to get out of our boats and follow him. And if we choose to leave our nets, our lives will definitely never be the same.
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First, I think it may be the healthiest way to view spiritual formation—as though each of us is unfinished, always becoming. So we refer to it as a path or journey to remind us of where we have been, where we are, and where we are going. Not only does it remind us of ourselves, it reminds us of others who have also embarked on the path toward becoming more like Jesus.
Second, to refer to it as a journey or path implicitly suggests movement. We aren’t a static people; we are a pilgrim people in exile, awaiting our future residence with God. A path or journey denotes progress or development.
Third, a journey is unpredictable, isn’t it? When was the last voyage or expedition you took that didn’t have some twist or turn—unwanted, maybe—but nonetheless, an arbitrary happening. Our path to formation is like this. It possesses sometimes an immediate and abrupt change in plans. We are who we are becoming to respond to those changes in plans. Ever been delayed at an airport? Had a flat tire? Lost your passport or had it stolen? All of these things contribute to our journey.
Fourth, a path has undulations. It has smooth and rocky soil. Paths have steep ascents and declines. Paths can be leisurely traveled or require great amounts of exertion. Is not the spiritual journey of becoming like Jesus very similar?
Fifth, a path or journey represents a course of action—a purpose. Spiritual formation isn’t passive; it requires certain practices and disciplines. Formation doesn’t just happen. Change may operate this way (except from a vending machine), but (trans)formation demands that we take up our cross, not simply sit and look at it.
Finally, just as a journey or path can open to other routes or passageways, connecting us to people along the way, so can our formation open us up to new dimensions of our soul, connecting us to people and places we’ve yet to discover.
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