On the eve of our departure for Portugal, this from Thomas Merton's journals, as he prepared for his journey to Asia:
"A journey is a bad death if you ingeniously grasp or remove all that you were before you started, so that in the end you do not change in the least. The stimulation enables you to grasp more raffishly at the same, familiar, distorted illusions. You come home only confirmed in greater greed--with new skills (real or imaginary) for satisfying it."
These words resounded as I spent one last day on-line with literally sundry details, running off docs, and gazing once again at the small untidy pile of what I wonder will be needed, or only wanted, or a product of my compulsions and anxiety. Merton's stark and uncompromising words are a reminder to not undertake this journey in some egocentric hope of gaining one more spiritual bullet-point on the invisible resume, not to assume a temporary false "spiritual" mantle. It is a gift that my youngest daughter is my companion, a living embodiment of the past decades that finally do not belong to me or me alone, but to spouse and children and their own unique history independent of my own. Or inextricably intertwined with my own, as marriage and parenthood rescued me time and time again from terminal self-absorbtion.
Wonder what would happen if Delta lost the pack, after all the maundering and wondering? The Osprey is getting tired of being empty and re-packed, I imagine, all without leaving the house!
But for perhaps the first time in any sizable journey, I do not wish to leave myself behind. I'll risk a heavy pack.
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