Hither & Yon

Some people have asked me about the name of my new book. On a trip to Ecuador some time ago, I started thinking about how great it would be to have a book that was a travel guide for the spiritual journey....what to wear, what the language is, things like that. Hither & Yon is my thoughts on steps you can take, preparations you can make on your own spiritual journey.

Hither and yon is a mysterious place of communion with God. It is the destination to which we are headed and the circuitous path itself. For the trip there are some things we should pack and some things we should leave behind. There are road signs to read and a language to cultivate. There are ways to walk, work, and pray. There are customs and practices that all respectful travelers need to observe. Hither and yon is the place that allows us to enter territories we never dreamed of in the world and in our hearts. We are already on the journey. This is written to encourage all of us to keep walking.

The Gospel Heats Up

Things are heating up here in the south and it doesn’t take a great prophet to see it. Newspapers, meteorologists, and strangers on the street all tell us the south wind is blowing bringing scorching heat and drought. The grass is returning to dust, the creeks are warm, the pavement is getting soft, and fragile woods are shedding leaves. It’s so dry that shedding feels useless.

This heat sets the mood not just for the weather, but for what we need in our faith. We need to feel the heat, take it in, and let it fan the flames of our passion. Such heat makes us divisive, like Jesus says. We feel undone that it is not peaceful when we face injustice in our world and in our selves. It makes us, like Jeremiah says, tire of talk of dreams and long to hear the truth of God. We don’t have patience in the heat. It makes us, like the prophet says, worry and pray for the widow and poor among us. If you are homeless or worrying if you have enough money to pay the electric bill, everyone is praying with you. It makes me uncomfortable.

Jesus keeps stepping up the heat until we can hear him and wake up to the suffering of our brothers and sisters, see our own suffering in it, and feel the real worth of love in the world. I dare us to come to our faith unchallenged in this heat. We do not have it right yet. There are still children in this world with no water in places hotter than this. There are still people who want to draw a circle and say these folks are in and these are out. There are still people who love with judgment. All of us need to feel the heat in our own hearts and where our faith is calling us to stir up the fire of passion in our hearts, for the sake of love.

Where Your Treasure is

My son Caney’s latest obsession is coins. He loves foreign coins, shiny coins, and old coins. He loves the exotic images, the feel of copper and silver, and the idea that they are worth something. We went to the Coin Purse in Nashville for him to buy an old coin with a panda on it. When we got there an old, old man with thick tortoise-shell-framed-glasses was sitting with three books filled with pages of copper and silver mint-conditioned coins that must have represented a life-time of collecting.

The owner of the coin store was sitting opposite the old man with an adding machine, going through each page, coin by coin, adding up their worth. I was trying to imagine what the story was behind selling this treasure. Maybe he had a sick wife, or he was sick. Maybe he needed the money for his granddaughter’s wedding. I thought of a million stories, in all of them, something more important than this collection was making him sell it all. I wanted to sit down beside him and hold his hand while the adding machine was calculating its worth. Instead we smiled at each other and I left him alone.

In that moment I thought about the old abandoned copper mine my family visited this summer in the desert of Namibia. Near the mine was a dry river bed where some white rhinos lived, so we talked the kids into going. We drove an hour on a dirt road with no other cars until finally we reached the mine. It was hot and so quiet that it hurt my ears to stand still, as if there was no air. When we got close to the mine we saw a thin African with a pick ax sitting in the 100 degree heat. He was just sitting there on top of the entrance like he was the only inhabitant on the planet. We walked around the stifling heat and saw semi precious stones like tourmaline in the rubble and even an old ax that my sons welded until the heat called them back to the car. We left with the man still sitting. A man told us later immigrants from Zimbabwe had taken over abandoned mines hoping to collect copper and stones to sell on the roadside to dealers who polish them and sell them for three times more. My mind again went to the story behind the man. There must have been great suffering in his life for him to spend his days guarding an abandoned treasure. He must have grieved leaving Zimbabwe and being apart from his children.

Three men of different ages, continents and circumstances all value treasure and from that treasure it feels possible to follow a path to their hearts. The path of their copper line leads beyond politics and families to a place and a moment when a man figures out his worth. The truth is though that the worth can’t be tallied on the adding machine or in the pittance of coins offered roadside. It is figured in the dignity of the human story and the tenderness of God to make those stories priceless. It is figured in the wonder of child that still loves the fantasy of treasure and the sweetness of the end of life story. I think the treasure is pointing to the heart, and how valuable that heart is.