A LONG WALK IN DUBLIN
A few weeks ago I set out to walk and pray. I really needed to clear my head and spend some time with the Father. I left my house in Bray around 9am and eventually, 8 hours later, tired and satisfied, found myself boarding the train at Lansdowne Station, to head home. I walked north for 22 miles. It was a journey of prayer and self reflection and because I didn’t really have a plan or a map, and because I was not trying to get anywhere in particular, this little walk of mine ended up feeling like a metaphor for my life. And maybe yours too.
Here are 9 things I realized…
Part of the journey was easy, especially the beginning.
Starting out is always full of happy anticipation. Just because that wears off doesn’t mean it isn’t a gift when we feel it. Life is full of starts, and starts are full of hope.
Part of it was hard, walking on an incline; where the landscape and gravity itself seemed to be conspiring against me.
There are moments in our lives when it just feels like everything is working against us. What is normally just a challenge becomes extraordinarily difficult. This is not in your mind. Gravity is real and depending on where we are on the road, the road is actually resisting you. Your only choice, really, is to press on or go back.
Part of it was clear, I could see where I was going and how far I had to go.
Vision is implicitly motivating and a gift when you can get it. When you can see what is next you can either steel yourself against the challenge to come, or welcome with anticipation the coming relief.
Part of it was hidden, the future was unclear, and there was a bend around which I could not see.
Still, for long stretches of our journey you simply can not see what is next. You have to press on blind. This too is a gift though, because it is an occasion for faith.
And for part of it, it must be said, I was just plain lost.
The lost times of our lives are disorienting at best and depressing at worst. They cause us to double back, to lose ground, and to suddenly become aware of how tired we feel. The loss of progress not only highlights fatigue, it welcomes a foreboding sensation of futility.
There are also summits along the way.
I walked up Killiney Hill. I walked to the end of Irishtown Nature Park. These moments gave me the chance to look back on the vast distance I had already traveled. And each time it surprised me. Had I really walked that far? (Above, you can see the picture I took that day.) One step at a time, it seems, is a serious strategy for covering great distance. In those moments you forget all the backtracking and all the lost ground. And it seems as though, just maybe, you were never really lost at all. It all brought you here after all.
There are dark and dirty places you pass along the way.
As beautiful a city as Dublin is, and as glorious the coastline, some places I passed were unloved and neglected. There will no doubt be places we pass through the course of our lives that surprise you for how ugly they really are. There is no way around it, the world is scorched by sin and hatred and this too is part of our journey.
Yet, for every alley or trash heap, there are two or three places that are so charming, so commonly beautiful you wonder if they are enchanted.
These places are just as easy to notice but more quickly forgotten. I am not a photographer and don’t take many pictures with my phone, but kept finding myself thinking, “what a lovely picture that would make.” This might be one of the important lessons of life, to not just take the photo, but to hold them in our memory for as long as we can. To let go of the memory of ugly places, and to hold tightly to the enchanted moments in our lives, and to have the will to remember them.
Finally, all journeys end in rest.
A promise we all have to look forward to. I didn’t realize just how tired my legs were until I took my seat on the train. The small discomfort of that pain was more than eclipsed by the satisfaction of a day well spent. Of course, there are things I heard God say to me along the way. But those secrets are for me. And so it is that each journey is alike, but also utterly personal.
