The art of the journey

Appalachian Journey; Yo-Yo Ma, cello; Edgar Meyer, string bass; Mark O'Connor, fiddle

I don’t take enough journeys. Way too frequently, when I hit the road headed to South Dakota, I wear my blinders. I get on the interstate, avoid the toll roads, and put myself into a nice comfortable rut. So many miles to Columbus, so many miles to Indianapolis, so many miles to Bettendorf. All I do all day long is check off miles. I’m always eager to get back to the state and people that I will forever love. But I yearn to transform the trip into an excursion, an expedition, a peregrination, a trek – a journey.

One day, when the Delta Queen pulled in Paducah, Kentucky, I stopped at the bookstore a few blocks away from the river. A new bestseller called “The Cloister Walk”, by author and poet Kathleen Norris, had arrived a few days earlier. I picked up one of the books to check her biography. Lo and behold, she came from South Dakota. So I bought it.

Her writings were a series of essays, in somewhat chronological order, concerning her time as an oblate at St. John’s monastery near St. Cloud, Minnesota. I was captivated by her writing and by her subject. She referred frequently to the Desert Fathers of the third, fourth and fifth centuries. And she liked to allude to the great 20^th century Trappist monk and Catholic writer Thomas Merton; often enough that I resolved to discover who this man was.

Within a few years, Merton’s autobiography “The Seven Storey Mountain” fell into my lap and I basked in the journey of a passionate young man seemingly destined to become a man of God in the Catholic Church. The autobiography only deals with those years leading up to his rap at the gate of the Abbey of Gethsemani, Kentucky. The rest of his life story can be found in volumes upon volumes of writings, letters and poetry that cover twenty-seven years.

About five years ago, I made myself take a more leisurely road trip home. I set out to see a friend of mine, H., in Hodgenville, Kentucky. With an atlas riding shotgun, I made up my trip along the way, heading ever so closer to Hodgenville, taking as many back roads as I could. I turned off of Martha Layne Collins Blue Grass Parkway to get onto Route 31E South. After only ten to twelve miles, I happened upon a sign pointing to the road that forked off to the left. It said “Abbey of Gethsemani – five miles”.

After literally stopping in the middle of the road, astonished that I had stumbled across the home of Father Louis – aka Thomas Merton – I checked my rearview mirror, closed my eyes to consider my options, then told myself that I had to get to Hodgenville and that my journey didn’t have time to visit this bastion of Christian spirituality in its humble, pastoral surroundings on a rise hemmed in by rustic meadows. I moved on. I have regretted that decision ever since. I failed in my undertakings as a journeyman. I must go back someday, and I will.

On “Appalachian Journey”, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, bassist Edgar Meyer, and fiddlist Mark O’Connor continue right where they left off in “Appalachia Waltz”. The jaunt they undertake allows them the time to stop along the way to smell flowers, dance, fish, read and slumber; all the things you read about in the proverbial journeyman’s handbook.

The monks at the Abbey of Gethsemani make and sell cheese, fruicakes and fudge in order to economically sustain their establishment. I found this out by logging onto their site on the world wide interweb. For the past two Christmases, I have purchased cheese and fudge from the monks online. Maybe this year, I should stop and pick some up on the journey home.

Credits: To Kathleen Norris, a fellow South Dakotan, for her precious insights and thoughts concerning the contemplative life, and how it impacts her as she airs out her sheets on the clothesline in the sweet, prairie breeze.