A Portable Life
I’m going to Africa. How’s that for out of the blue? One minute, Afghanistan, the next one, Africa. But really, it’s not that far, and besides, I’m all packed.
For the last two years I’ve been constructing myself a portable life. I have two backpacks, one big, one small, and a bag for my laptop. I take a meticulous pleasure in calculating just what will fit in this luggage, the things that will do for every situation, which clothes will be comfortable yet suitable for any occasion, which books I will want to read over and over. My computer is a genius, and home to all my addresses, my notes, my writing, my photos, the music I want with me, all in one little box. I have a down jacket for the cold, techie socks that last several days, a sleeping bag and mat that compress to the size of a small melon with the total weight of a bedpost – a light one. My water bag doubles as a solar shower and fits onto my water filter. I have efficient spiral notebooks for journaling and pens that slip neatly into their spiral spines. My camera is the size of a stack of 15 credit cards … I checked. Everything clicks and interlocks into neat shapes, it all folds and rolls and hides away. I get excited in stores that sell luggage locks and towels the size of drink coasters. Sometimes I flip through my passport just to feel the 48 pages of possibilities it holds.
It’s funny, actually. Maybe it comes from my childhood, from the weeklong treks into the wilderness I would go on with my family while everyone else was going to Disneyland or the condo on the lake. I learned to compress and roll, tuck things in, glory in compact gear, to build a home from the contents of a backpack. I have no idea how to use a barbeque because it doesn’t fit into a stuff sack, but I can cook a whole meal with coals and a piece of tinfoil. I think I can, anyway. (I once met a guy who said he could cook a fish using only a piece of tinfoil, a long stretch of road, and his Chevy. I wonder what his childhood was like). I have this idea that the best things are the things you can take with you. I’m a fan of pockets. I like the things that fit in them and unfold later into dinner sets and hand tools and armchairs. I always liked the bits in Science Fiction stories when they would get stuck on some planet and Spock would take out something the size of a mango, pull a cord, and have a pavilion erupt out of it. But that’s not what’s funny. Well maybe it is, but that’s not what I was thinking was funny. What I think is funny is that I’m also completely obsessed with the idea of Home.
I love going away. I love vacations and road trips and all-night adventures. But I can’t decide if I don’t love more the moment when we pack up and turn downhill, crank the wheel the other way, step into the airplane and head for home. Or take surfing. It’s a big rush to paddle out into the surf at sunset, a bigger one to pop up on a glassy wave just ahead of the curl. But I don’t think I’ll ever be a real surfer, because there’s this whole other pleasure that comes from dropping back down on the deck and letting the wash carry you back to the beach, where you can sit by the fire with friends and warmth, with the evening and the Merlot sinking in. And I can’t decide if I like the surfing better, or that. Maybe I like both better. It’s the same with adventure. It’s really something to travel across the world, to bump over roads in dusty Russian jeeps, to see the villages, the towers, the citadels, the minarets, the mosques, but it’s not the same without the memory of Vancouver back home. And it’s beautiful to fly in over Vancouver on a summer evening and see the Lions and Burrard Inlet and the Lion’s Gate lit up like a drawbridge on a fairy castle, but it’s only if I’ve been away on the dusty roads that I get that feeling of my heart collapsing in relief like a knight at the long end of a battle. As exciting as adventures are, there’s too little of home in any of them, and even though there’s no place like home, there’s not much adventure there.
The fact is, I feel a bit restless no matter where I am. There’s just something in me that keeps on moving. The more I live the more I fall in love with life; it’s just becoming clear that there will never be enough of it for me – not here. The more world I see, the more it delights me, terrifies me, astounds me, and the more I become convinced that it will never be the right world for me. It’s hard to explain. It’s as if everything is like coming back to an old fort; it’s never as big as you remember and you wish it could’ve grown with you. Maybe somewhere in me is a distant memory of a world from my childhood or even before that, from the time I was a twinkle in Abraham’s sky, from the moment the voice spoke into the darkness and light rose like a daisy. I guess I construct my own portable life on the hopeful thought that life itself is actually portable, that I am one of those who live here in tents, admitted strangers on earth, and that all this life in me, too big for this place, will last through to a world where it really belongs. I’m not ungrateful; I love it here, maybe even more for all the longing. I just don’t think that means I should swallow my longing down and shrug and say, oh well, that’s life. Because I don’t think it is. There is neither home nor adventure enough for me in this world. What there is, is enough of each to set me off questing for a place where home is really Home and adventure is really Adventure - enough to satisfy the paradoxical longings of my soul.
Someone wrote a long time ago that, “people who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own ... if they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had an opportunity to return.” That’s a haunting thing to say. Once you know you don’t belong here, it’s still a fascinating place, but it never looks quite right again. It can only remind you of something, something that must be unbelievably grand, because the world, with only whispers and shadows left, is still a jaw-dropping place, wonderful, fabulous, terrible; it makes you catch your breath, scream, dance, laugh out loud, pray, sing, gasp … because isn’t it just like, like … what? Like whatever is just on the tip of your soul, some dream of a place they all told you to forget, but you can’t help it because it’s what - as Chesterton says – it’s what makes you “feel homesick at home.” I could never stay here. I’d need room to explode all over at the sight of a sunset, and there’s not enough room.
It might not even be a place or a thing that I want. There’s a part in one of Frederick Buechner’s novels that I love. A man has a dream that he finds a silver dollar with a name on it. He says,
“It wasn’t any of the other names I’ve been called by various people at various times in my life, and yet it was my name. It was a name so secret that I wouldn’t tell it even if I remembered it, and I don’t remember it. But if anybody were ever to show up and call me by it, I’d recognize it in a second, and the chances are that if the person who called me by it gave me the signal, I’d follow him to the ends of the earth.”
I wonder if that’s just it. Suppose what I keep calling home and adventure could do with a bigger name, say “God.” Suppose when God says “come on, let’s go home,” or “come on, I know this great place …” or “follow me” – suppose it’s all the same thing, simply because God is there. What if with God there is enough adventure at home and enough home in the adventure? What if God makes one feel adventurous while sitting in front of the fire in an armchair and the next day quite at home while soaring with eagles? Rich Mullins wrote a song that said (apparently to God): “I’m at home anywhere, if you are where I am.” If it had fit the meter, he might have just as easily said: “I’m in the middle of a hundred-foot swan dive anywhere, if you are where I am.” And he could have added: “And I don’t really care if there’s water down there.” I think that’s what “follow me” means. It means you’re going home and heaven knows where all else.
Which brings me to Africa, somehow. I’m leaving Afghanistan. I have a new job in Mozambique; it starts in three weeks. The position was advertised with the fantastic title of Storyteller. I’ll be writing articles for an NGO called World Relief, for me the most fantastic summer job in the world. Finally I get to do what I love and call it work. After everything I’ve just supposed about God, maybe I don’t really need to take my three bags of cleverly packed stuff and gadgets, but I’m kind of attached to them. I still need them to feel adventurous and ready for anything; I still use them to feel at home. See, the truth is that it’s not just the world that doesn’t seem quite right yet. It’s also me. To borrow from Chesterton again, I have to say “that whatever I am, I’m not myself.” I don’t just need a better world, I need a better self; I need a real name. The backpacks and the down jacket and the computer are a good playact but they’re not going to do it. They’re only a poor substitute at best. But one day Someone will come and flip me my silver dollar and call my name. Then I’ll drop these three bags in the twinkling of an eye and discover the real world at last.
For the last two years I’ve been constructing myself a portable life. I have two backpacks, one big, one small, and a bag for my laptop. I take a meticulous pleasure in calculating just what will fit in this luggage, the things that will do for every situation, which clothes will be comfortable yet suitable for any occasion, which books I will want to read over and over. My computer is a genius, and home to all my addresses, my notes, my writing, my photos, the music I want with me, all in one little box. I have a down jacket for the cold, techie socks that last several days, a sleeping bag and mat that compress to the size of a small melon with the total weight of a bedpost – a light one. My water bag doubles as a solar shower and fits onto my water filter. I have efficient spiral notebooks for journaling and pens that slip neatly into their spiral spines. My camera is the size of a stack of 15 credit cards … I checked. Everything clicks and interlocks into neat shapes, it all folds and rolls and hides away. I get excited in stores that sell luggage locks and towels the size of drink coasters. Sometimes I flip through my passport just to feel the 48 pages of possibilities it holds.
It’s funny, actually. Maybe it comes from my childhood, from the weeklong treks into the wilderness I would go on with my family while everyone else was going to Disneyland or the condo on the lake. I learned to compress and roll, tuck things in, glory in compact gear, to build a home from the contents of a backpack. I have no idea how to use a barbeque because it doesn’t fit into a stuff sack, but I can cook a whole meal with coals and a piece of tinfoil. I think I can, anyway. (I once met a guy who said he could cook a fish using only a piece of tinfoil, a long stretch of road, and his Chevy. I wonder what his childhood was like). I have this idea that the best things are the things you can take with you. I’m a fan of pockets. I like the things that fit in them and unfold later into dinner sets and hand tools and armchairs. I always liked the bits in Science Fiction stories when they would get stuck on some planet and Spock would take out something the size of a mango, pull a cord, and have a pavilion erupt out of it. But that’s not what’s funny. Well maybe it is, but that’s not what I was thinking was funny. What I think is funny is that I’m also completely obsessed with the idea of Home.
I love going away. I love vacations and road trips and all-night adventures. But I can’t decide if I don’t love more the moment when we pack up and turn downhill, crank the wheel the other way, step into the airplane and head for home. Or take surfing. It’s a big rush to paddle out into the surf at sunset, a bigger one to pop up on a glassy wave just ahead of the curl. But I don’t think I’ll ever be a real surfer, because there’s this whole other pleasure that comes from dropping back down on the deck and letting the wash carry you back to the beach, where you can sit by the fire with friends and warmth, with the evening and the Merlot sinking in. And I can’t decide if I like the surfing better, or that. Maybe I like both better. It’s the same with adventure. It’s really something to travel across the world, to bump over roads in dusty Russian jeeps, to see the villages, the towers, the citadels, the minarets, the mosques, but it’s not the same without the memory of Vancouver back home. And it’s beautiful to fly in over Vancouver on a summer evening and see the Lions and Burrard Inlet and the Lion’s Gate lit up like a drawbridge on a fairy castle, but it’s only if I’ve been away on the dusty roads that I get that feeling of my heart collapsing in relief like a knight at the long end of a battle. As exciting as adventures are, there’s too little of home in any of them, and even though there’s no place like home, there’s not much adventure there.
The fact is, I feel a bit restless no matter where I am. There’s just something in me that keeps on moving. The more I live the more I fall in love with life; it’s just becoming clear that there will never be enough of it for me – not here. The more world I see, the more it delights me, terrifies me, astounds me, and the more I become convinced that it will never be the right world for me. It’s hard to explain. It’s as if everything is like coming back to an old fort; it’s never as big as you remember and you wish it could’ve grown with you. Maybe somewhere in me is a distant memory of a world from my childhood or even before that, from the time I was a twinkle in Abraham’s sky, from the moment the voice spoke into the darkness and light rose like a daisy. I guess I construct my own portable life on the hopeful thought that life itself is actually portable, that I am one of those who live here in tents, admitted strangers on earth, and that all this life in me, too big for this place, will last through to a world where it really belongs. I’m not ungrateful; I love it here, maybe even more for all the longing. I just don’t think that means I should swallow my longing down and shrug and say, oh well, that’s life. Because I don’t think it is. There is neither home nor adventure enough for me in this world. What there is, is enough of each to set me off questing for a place where home is really Home and adventure is really Adventure - enough to satisfy the paradoxical longings of my soul.
Someone wrote a long time ago that, “people who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own ... if they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had an opportunity to return.” That’s a haunting thing to say. Once you know you don’t belong here, it’s still a fascinating place, but it never looks quite right again. It can only remind you of something, something that must be unbelievably grand, because the world, with only whispers and shadows left, is still a jaw-dropping place, wonderful, fabulous, terrible; it makes you catch your breath, scream, dance, laugh out loud, pray, sing, gasp … because isn’t it just like, like … what? Like whatever is just on the tip of your soul, some dream of a place they all told you to forget, but you can’t help it because it’s what - as Chesterton says – it’s what makes you “feel homesick at home.” I could never stay here. I’d need room to explode all over at the sight of a sunset, and there’s not enough room.
It might not even be a place or a thing that I want. There’s a part in one of Frederick Buechner’s novels that I love. A man has a dream that he finds a silver dollar with a name on it. He says,
“It wasn’t any of the other names I’ve been called by various people at various times in my life, and yet it was my name. It was a name so secret that I wouldn’t tell it even if I remembered it, and I don’t remember it. But if anybody were ever to show up and call me by it, I’d recognize it in a second, and the chances are that if the person who called me by it gave me the signal, I’d follow him to the ends of the earth.”
I wonder if that’s just it. Suppose what I keep calling home and adventure could do with a bigger name, say “God.” Suppose when God says “come on, let’s go home,” or “come on, I know this great place …” or “follow me” – suppose it’s all the same thing, simply because God is there. What if with God there is enough adventure at home and enough home in the adventure? What if God makes one feel adventurous while sitting in front of the fire in an armchair and the next day quite at home while soaring with eagles? Rich Mullins wrote a song that said (apparently to God): “I’m at home anywhere, if you are where I am.” If it had fit the meter, he might have just as easily said: “I’m in the middle of a hundred-foot swan dive anywhere, if you are where I am.” And he could have added: “And I don’t really care if there’s water down there.” I think that’s what “follow me” means. It means you’re going home and heaven knows where all else.
Which brings me to Africa, somehow. I’m leaving Afghanistan. I have a new job in Mozambique; it starts in three weeks. The position was advertised with the fantastic title of Storyteller. I’ll be writing articles for an NGO called World Relief, for me the most fantastic summer job in the world. Finally I get to do what I love and call it work. After everything I’ve just supposed about God, maybe I don’t really need to take my three bags of cleverly packed stuff and gadgets, but I’m kind of attached to them. I still need them to feel adventurous and ready for anything; I still use them to feel at home. See, the truth is that it’s not just the world that doesn’t seem quite right yet. It’s also me. To borrow from Chesterton again, I have to say “that whatever I am, I’m not myself.” I don’t just need a better world, I need a better self; I need a real name. The backpacks and the down jacket and the computer are a good playact but they’re not going to do it. They’re only a poor substitute at best. But one day Someone will come and flip me my silver dollar and call my name. Then I’ll drop these three bags in the twinkling of an eye and discover the real world at last.
posted by rjs | 9:54 PM
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