I finished Donald Miller's book last night, Through Painted Deserts, and my mind was awhirl with all sorts of things that I was going to blog about - painful torturous confessions of the soul, a litany on love, visions of my spiritual journey, a hymn of praise for astrononmy. I fell asleep and woke up with an empty mind and a smile on my face. You don't know how lucky you all are. ;)
This happens to me often when I finish a book. Its like my mind is a fast car that occassionally gets stuck behind a slow moving book. I'm forced to slow down and enjoy the scenery for a while as I read other people's thoughts, feelings, and experiences. But the second I'm done, my mind takes off again at a million miles per hour wanting to sum up my entire reading experience in five short minutes of mental work so that I can get on with my life. Of course, I eventually slow down again and my mind is better able to process the latest experiences. To a certain extent, this is what makes me slower than most people when it comes to thinking - impatience to continue the journey.
At the end of every journey, there is a new beginning - a reginning. The thing that stuck with me the most about the end of Through Painted Deserts was how much it clearly showed the concept of a reginning. At the beginning of the narrative, Donald Miller is looking for something deeper in life and is about to set off on a journey across the United States with his friend Paul. He is surrounded by his friends who are wishing him a good and safe journey and who are not a little sad to be losing their friend. At the end of the narrative, Donald Miller is surrounded by his new friends who are wishing him a good and safe journey and who are not a little sad to be losing their new friend. Though 300 pages have gone by in the middle, we are right back at the beginning again - only a little further down the road; a little older and a little wiser.
The story then, like life, does not end on a sad note because we know it goes on beyond the pages of text. At this new reginning, Don summarizes what he's learned, what he's discovered over the past few months, and looks forward to what more he will learn and what more life has to offer him. We can be confident that Don will continue to have more adventures, will continue to get older, will continue to get wiser, and will continue to come closer to that which he ultimately seeks.
We all face reginnings all the time. They are not all so neat as to be the complete breaks that a narrative can offer. Many times we have reginnings that overlap one another. When I left to join the Navy, it was not the end of my relationship with Karen. Though it was a new chapter in my life, a reginning, it did not mean a complete severing of all my ties to my former life. Still, I think a reginning has to be more than just a physical change in your life's direction. It would have meant nothing to Don and Paul had they just packed up their van and moved to Oregon, arriving there three days later, weary but otherwise unaffected. A reginning has to begin and end with the soul.
Whether we ascribe to being spiritual or not, there is a part of us that is not flesh and bone, not intellect, not emotional, but is, in essence, us. Its who we are. Its what we've been. Its what we'll become. This is the part of us that pushes us to grow, that pushes us to remain good, that pushes us to seek out things that we don't even know the names of. Our souls take these occasional journeys and we have no choice but to follow them. Our physical journeys make no sense otherwise. I can't begin to explain to you why I joined the Navy except to say that my soul wanted me to grow (and grow I did, but that's another story ;) It is the soul that has the reginning. It is the soul that travels. And it is the soul that brings us to the end of our journey.
And so, as I bring my Novel to a close, I look forward to wherever my life will lead me next - sure to embrace this reginning with hope for a better life.
2 comments:
The renewal that comes with the "end" of a part of our journey is such a key part of our development, and it opens us up to the next journey that awaits us.
I like that.
I really enjoy how Deserts is a wonderful metaphor for his faith journey, and really, for our own, because growth does come from taking that leap of faith.
Nevermind that I know what it's like to drive through the Southwest...so I relate well to Miller's adventures in the desert.
Except for the driving in a beat up VW van part.
Will,
I used to hate to travel. I don’t know when I started hating to travel because as a kid I have fond memories of loading us all in the car and taking off on some adventure to Disneyland, the Grand Canyon, The Hoover Dam etc. but somewhere along the way into adulthood, I started hating it. What if the car broke down? What if we don’t have enough money? What if our luggage gets lost? What if I’m injured? What if our room is unpleasant for any reason? What if the service is bad? What if the weather is bad? What if we get lost? Well, any of these things can happen and they do. But whether they ruin the vacation or not really depends on other factors.
I remember traveling with my husband when I was still married and my son was small. I was well aware, that many things could go wrong on even the shortest of journeys so I tried to plan for these as best I could. But no matter how well you plan, things do go wrong and your attitude about the hardships is what makes or breaks the journey (and eventually the relationship). I don’t like to think about my life while I was married, but I can tell you that neither one of us had a very good attitude when it came to hardships. I remember that errors *by anyone* were not tolerated. I remember the tension in the air was absolutely nauseating at times when something did not go right. I remember wondering why our relationship was so fragile. I remember being sad.
I now know the problem was that we were not walking with Jesus, neither of us. We depended entirely on ourselves and our own strengths. God allows hardships so that we might learn from them. If we don’t, we live the same mistakes again and again. When I finally got to a point that I thought I was going to die of sadness, I came to the “church”. I came to the church with trepidation, however. I was not fully committed but eventually I came to know Jesus (that’s a whole other blog). I learned the joy of knowing that I journey through life with the best travel companion one can have, Jesus Christ!
Now my vacations are a whole lot better. I have traveled to many places in the United States and Europe and ready to travel some more. My life journey is filled with happiness..
I didn’t read “Painted Deserts” but I assume the message is similar.
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