Travelling Bear

The metaphor of journey is used in relation to spirituality. We are often guided in our early years, learning one travelling tradition, and then finding it unsatisfactory and leaving it, maybe never to journey again. But more often than not I suspect most people do travel again. Some will travel with companions down a well-known road and be satisfied. Some will travel on a less-known path. Others will leave the known altogether and head out across the fields or over the seas.

On the journey beliefs are like cairns. Useful things, marking the path others have followed, bringing travellers to this point. We need to remember the beliefs, the cairns, of the past and learn from them.

Some people camp around cairns, building churches or theological colleges on the spot. After awhile however, especially when the discussions seem to be about who’s got the biggest cairn or how to make the spot more comfortable, many move on. Beliefs are not an end point.

Faith is not belief, or having beliefs. Faith is that urge to move on. Faith is about taking the risk of leaving the familiar to journey into the unfamiliar. Faith though is not irrational in the sense that it is unreasonable or folly, though to some it will seem so. Rather faith can come after carefully weighing up of the options, the known verse the unknown, and then taking a step.

Lastly the spiritual journey has no end point. You don’t necessarily find God at the end; or heaven; or even self-fulfilment or contentment. Some would say that you find these things along the way. I’m not so sure. Sometimes they can be quite elusive. There are few guarantees in the spiritual life.

The person who is comfortable camped with a set of beliefs, enjoying the security of certainty, is not to be pitied. When new events or knowledge shake their world they will try hard to incorporate those things within their camp. I envy them in some ways. That is until they start imposing their beliefs on others.

I know for myself and many others that we have no option but to take leave of the familiar camps and travel on. Not for any reward. Not for any peace of mind. Not for any higher calling. We travel simply because that irrepressible spark of life and love within us gives no other choice.