Travel Out Back I know the reasons why I love to wander. I remember traveling out back behind the house for hours. I climbed trees infested by pine beetles. I fed horses tall grass. We so dream of distant treks—to venture far. But the most important trips might be the ones we most often take.
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Journal with me.
What is immediately available to you that brings you joy, or even restores your soul, within reach?
Some thoughts.
A professor of mine used to talk about gold buried in the backyard—goodness in places we least expect, or overlook.
I remember driving through Namibia on sand roads all the way to the coastal town of Swakopmund. So breathtaking. So beautiful. I face a different beauty, but just as healing, walking the nature trail ten minutes from my house now.
The spiritual life is ultimately about this conundrum, or dilemma: we want heaven, and yet, in our search, we miss heaven coming to us; we strive to reach the stars, but God walks the very dusty roads of our lives. We seek escape; Jesus seeks encounter.
Journaling has been the constant reminder of this for me. There are many things I love—new gadgets, books, art—and I love the expectation of receiving a new item in the mail. There’s always that excitement of opening the box. Yet how quickly that experience falls away, and the thing purchased becomes a thing among others?
But then my journal. It’s always there. It’s always available. Ten minutes of writing out my defenseless and bare thoughts before God, and wow—I feel rich—like I might know the One who owns the cattle on a thousand hills.
I wrote this poem above a little over a year ago. It’s fact. When I was little, in the Rocky Mountains, I spent so much time just wandering around the woods. I can still smell the thin, crisp mountain air—even as I sit here in North Georgia. I took those walks often, and those walks changed me.
Do you want an adventure? Do you want to go somewhere with God? Go to the porch. Go to the library. Go to that coffee shop down the road. It might be a bit inconvenient—I know you have other plans for your day.
But there’s gold there.
Pico Iyer, in his book The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere, writes about a research experiment at the University of Wisconsin where scientists attached 256 electrodes to the skulls of volunteers for three and a half hours and compared the brain activity of a group of people who were quite similar, except some of them had regular practices of stillness: “The researchers . . . felt obligated to conclude that those who had sat still for years had achieved a level of happiness that was, quite literally, off the charts.”1
Wha…? They must have done something wrong—surely the people with the most miles, who were swept into the frenzy of going places, would be happier than those who regularly sat still…
I experience joy when I am least hurried—why do I hurry myself most often?
These thoughts aren’t to suggest that stillness is the only way to happiness. I’m suggesting that often the things that can actually give us a significant and healthy sense of aliveness are right there before us—we’ve just overlooked them.
Perhaps the most important trips are the ones we most often take. Perhaps the dailiness of my days is hiding treasures I have yet to uncover.
What is something you can do today, something very much in reach, that will expand and grow your heart in the direction of love and union with God, neighbor, and creation?
Get specific: What, when, where?
Pico Iyer, The Art of Stillness (2014), Pg. 25.