Wanderlust, Kempis, and Chardin

Who in the world does not want to travel? I certainly count myself among humanity's inveterate adventurers. Indeed, I write this piece on my way to Rome by way of San Francisco. Most Filipinos in the United States, by the mere fact that they mustered the courage to venture halfway around the globe, automatically qualify as bona fide "wanderlusters".

Wanderlust seems like an archaic word. But, in fact, the German derived term first appeared in the English dictionary in 1902, about the time when the effects of the second industrial revolution rendered the world dramatically mobile.

Not knowing any better, I simply assume everyone wants to get out there to see the whole wide world. Strangely, I've met people who have not ventured more than a few miles from their place of birth! When I lived in Buffalo, New York, I had patients who had never seen the Statue of Liberty in Ellis Island! In Southern California, I've known folks who have not crossed the border into Baja California. Why would people not take the opportunity to travel to another country next to their doorstep? In Hawaii, I met several natives in the outer islands who had not surfed or at least trekked along world famous Waikiki Beach.

Perhaps, these souls have been influenced by the famous writer Thomas a Kempis who said: "...they who travel much abroad seldom become holy." (Imitation of Christ, Book 1, Chapter 23).

I think I understand what the German mystic Thomas a Kempis was concerned about. The world, during his time (1380-1471), was not conducive to leading a decent life. He found peace and solitude “only in retirement and in books”. Earlier, around the 3rd century, the Desert Fathers fled to the Scetes desert in Egypt, far away from the reaches of the hedonistic Roman Empire. For centuries thereafter, holy men and women viewed the world with justifiable contempt, cautious about being contaminated by its secularity.

It took the genius of Jesuit paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) to make the world attractive again, for indeed, if God created the world – “The Divine Milieu” -- why wouldn’t it be good? Subsequently, the social activist Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Workers Movement, and the Trappist Thomas Merton made engagement with the world theologically sound. We cannot retire to the chapel even as the world teetered in the brink of nuclear self-destruction. It was imperative that we immersed ourselves in world affairs and play active roles in the direction of history.

The Peruvian Dominican priest Gustavo Gutierrez and liberation theologians of South America remind us that it is good to pray but that we can ill afford to spend hours in the altar while our brothers and sisters go to bed hungry each night because of society’s unjust economic and political structures. In the 1960s, Vatican Council II acknowledged that the pathway to sanctity was through the world, not outside of it.

As Filipinos, we can be proud that our people, in the darkness of crisis, found a way to balance prayer and action. I must say it took a while for us to take action in the face of an increasingly oppressive dictatorship. But we did act. And the way we did it, in the innovated form of people power, effectively blended prayers in churches and demonstrations in the streets. It was such a powerful combination of prayer and action that Lech Walesa’s Solidarity in Poland learned from it, triggering Communism’s downfall, which culminated in the fall of the Berlin Wall. Today, we see the continuing ripple effect of people power in Myanmar (Burma), as non-violent Buddhist monks take to the streets to protest the military stranglehold of their nation.

But, active involvement in world shattering events aside, isn’t it pure joy to travel and marvel at the exhilarating beauty and expanse of the world in which we live? Seeing the world, interacting with people of various cultures and customs, we realize that despite the differences, we are all basically the same – blessed with the same dreams, the same hopes, the same aspirations for ourselves and for the next generations.