Road Trip
Wise men came asking, “Where is the child born king of the Jews? We observed his star at its rising.” Matthew 2.1-12
Item: Here's The Picture: Three wise guys on camels following a GPS – God Positioned Star. The New Testament word is ‘magi’ – from which we get our words ‘magic’ and ‘magician’. Go figure how translators got to wise men.
Might we connect to some degree in that most of us begin a new year hoping to find a "star" of meaningful more to our lives?
Item: Camels. For some reason, this year, the camels caught my attention. I made an unsuccessful search for the picture of me and my long ago five-minute camel ride outside a hotel near Jerusalem. Not enough for a true test. But I recall the ride as galumpy and gabumpy (my spellcheck is in therapy). 400 miles or so from Persia to Judea, I imagine, was tough on Magi backs, bladders, and bottoms.
Due credit to camels. They were trusty transportation in shifty sands and on ruggedy roads. Not only good suspension, but also good fuel economy. Able to drink 30 gallons at one time, they could go a week on one watering. The fat in their hump/s could sustain them for several weeks.
When I checked with Jim Stringfellow one of my travel mates in search of the unfound picture, he put me onto a website about modern day camel races and beauty contests. (Google “camel beauty contests”) Hundreds vie for prizes and sell for big prices. In a recent contest in Saudi Arabia, several camels were disqualified because they had been injected with Botox to enhance their beauty. One of those eyes of the beholder matters, I guess.
Even with due appreciation for camels, I find a bumpy camel ride an image for our time travels. We experience a lot of ups and downs in our star quests for lives worth living and dying for, in our efforts for meaningful work and relationships, for an authentic faith often navigating more questions than answers.
Item: 21st CENTURY STARGAZING. This Christmas day, another kind of star search began. The James Webb space telescope was launched from South America. It is big as a tennis court; 100 times more powerful than the Hubble telescope. It will orbit a million miles from the earth around the sun. It’s infra-red observations will go far out in space and far back in time, to watch happenings in zillions of galaxies.
At first, it makes us and our earth feel very small, like a B-B in the Grand Canyon. Yet, it’s a reminder we are part of something cosmic, mysteriously-wonderfully bigger than us. A reverential WOW! just to be along for the ride!
In an old Beetle Bailey cartoon strip, the Army guys Beetle, Killer, Zero, and Plato are in the barracks talking about news reports of possible life on other planets, maybe even invading earth. They are upset. But Plato says it’s a good thing. “How?!” they exclaim. “Well, overnight,” he says, “we go from enemy Americans, Russians, and Chinese to fellow earthlings.”
From camel riding star-followers to space-telescope stargazers, our new year life trip begins. We live between our bumpy camel ride circumstances and the starry meaning and joy the cosmic mystery some of us call God brings into our galumpy lives and rocky relationships.
Item: Book providence, synchronicity. My Brother-in-Law Dick L’Eplattenier put me onto TRAVELS WITH GEORGE: IN SEARCH OF WASHINGTON AND HIS LEGACY by Nathaniel Philbrick. (A good read to which I am barely doing justice.)
Philbrick charts four road trips the first president made to get to know, be known by the people in the 13 states. Already there were seeds of our ongoing feisty fights over the role of federal government and states’ rights…sigh.
There were generally bad roads and bad accommodations, no Motel 6’s, maybe a Tavern 3 ½ at the best. Washington’s retinue was amazingly modest: A carriage, a baggage wagon, 8 persons, 10 horses, and his dog Cornwallis. Washington would get out of his carriage and ride his big white horse Prescott presidentially when they entered towns.
Here are a couple quotes which seem good 2022 travel advice for us to consider, not impose on others, who, like us, must find their own way.
Washington wrote in 1789, his 1st year as President: “Men’s minds are as variant as their faces. Liberality and charity* ought to govern in all matters of importance. Clamor and misrepresentation only serve to foment the passions without enlightening the understanding.”
*(The phrase open minds and open hearts comes to my Methodist mind.)
Though Martha Washington was not a happy camper about being the first First Lady, she wrote to a friend…
“(I) am determined to be cheerful and happy in whatever situation I may be, for I have learnt from experience that the greater part of happiness or misery depends upon our disposition, not upon our circumstances. We carry the seeds of one or the other in our minds, wherever we go.”
ITEM: 2022 Packing Advice. You’ve probably heard the packing suggestion for a long trip…lay out your clothes and money on the bed…then half the clothes and double the money.
What good stuff will we take with us and what of our junk will we leave behind? Take a moment to unpack these suggestions…
Take our gratitude; leave out our grudge-itude.
Pack our capacity to encourage; leave out our gripe-itude.
Take our wonder; leave out our grouch-itude.
What will you take? What will you leave behind?
Tell me. I'd like to know.