This is the inaugural post for the Owen Project’s work in Navajoland. The Latin title above translates as Man the Pilgrim. I’m borrowing this title from a book of the same name by Gabriel Marcel. Late last year Sally and I walked part of the Portuguese Camino to Santiago de Compostella. I was struck by the similarities between mission work and being on pilgrimage. Both involve stepping into the unknown and a suspension of habitual concerns. Many of these habits are so ingrained that they appear like part of reality itself, like the air we breathe and take for granted. Whether on pilgrimage or a mission trip, it feels as if your life is confined to an envelope of awareness immediately around your body, as you take a next step or unpack a Chromebook. This is a startling liberation, a welcome relief from carrying an entire world of concerns, aspirations, past disappointments and old resentments. Marcel was a Christian existentialist who asserted that only as pilgrims moving through the world, on the way to somewhere else, could human beings avoid the attachments to transitory political, cultural and social relationships. As pilgrims people are free to live in wonder and with gratitude. Maybe this explains the regret sometimes felt when contemplating the return home to those comfortable, if stultifying, routines. Like waking up from a particularly magical dream, soon enough you are back to a life filled with forgetting.
I’ll end here with a promise to include photos and a narrative of our work at Saint Michael’s in Upper Fruitland, on the reservation.
Mark
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