Photo by Bob Jagendorf

I have spent a lifetime traveling to many places far and wide.  I absolutely love the thrill of a new adventure and all the things that come with it: a new stamp in the passport, the boarding calls on a train or airplane, maps of new and untraveled cities, smells of exotic foods, and an unblazed trail longing for its first traveler.  But you don’t have to jump on a plane to experience the traveling spirit.  A new route to work, a new restaurant to go to, and a new book to read: these are all adventures for me.  These are journeys that fill my desire to experience the world around me.  Every day is an unwritten story, waiting to be experienced, and I love to fill these pages with new and exciting adventures of travel.

Having traveled extensively, there is one gift that is given almost unanimously to anyone who travels on the open road: the realization that life is so much easier when you stop trying to control everything and you learn to “just roll with it”.   

Every traveler has received this gift: the ability to “just roll with it”.  Try as you might, you can’t successfully plan every little detail, and you learn this within two minutes of being in a foreign country or to a new land.  I don’t care how much you Google and how many people you talk to before you leave, nothing can prepare you for the experience of getting off of a plane in Santiago, Chile and having to navigate yourself to a host family that is 30 miles away.  I spent a whole year of planning our bike trip across the country, reading tons of books, analyzing countless maps and routes, and talking to people who had done it, but that still didn’t prepare us for every CRAZY thing that happened along the way.  You just have to roll with it.  (A quick public shout-out to my phantom antagonist Greg Gomez who helped drive the trail van on the first day of the trip as we maneuvered in and out of 60 consecutive miles of inner city Los Angeles, complete with 340 stop signs, 82 traffic signals, and 12 traffic cops who were not too happy to see 8 cyclists and a 15 passenger van disrupting the flow of traffic.  Try “planning” that day!)

This is the gift given to the traveler, to the pilgrim of many lands.  And you don’t need to go to a different country to receive this gift.  You just need to walk out your door and go do something you have never done before, casting aside all previous misconceptions and focusing on receiving the gift of that day, of that experience.  You just need to have an experience where you roll with it.  Or, in Greg Gomez’s case, you just need to volunteer to be a driver of a trail van on a cross-country bike trip. 

In this Christmas season, I am reminded of the traveling adventures of the Holy Family.  Do you think that Mary and Joseph were control-freaks?  Do you think they had to have a plan before they acted?  They were people who just rolled with it.  They were people who said “YES!” first, and then figured out the details, instead of figuring out the details, and then saying “yes”.

Christ said, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear.  Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?  Look at the birds in the sky; they do not sow or reap, they gather nothing into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are not you more important than they?  Can any of you by worrying add a single moment to your life span?” 

I am convinced that Jesus learned this bit of wisdom from his parents.

If you start to learn to say “YES” before you have all the details planned, you will start to believe crazy things.  You will start to believe you can travel to a foreign country without anyone else there to help you.  You will start to believe that you can ride your bike across the country.  You will start to believe you can learn to speak three different languages in less than a year.  And after you do these things, then you will start to believe even CRAZIER things!  You will start to believe that the blind can be healed.  You will start to believe that faith can move mountains.  You will start to believe that death is the beginning of eternal life. 

This is the Joy of being Catholic: You get to say “YES” before you even know all the details.  You just jump in.  You just start living it.  People who think that they need every question answered before they can live the Catholic Faith must not be people who have traveled.  Experiencing and living the Catholic Faith is the ultimate journey, and you do not need to have everything planned before you begin the journey.  You just need the resolve to bring it to completion.

I have so much to learn and explore about my Catholic Faith that I don’t have to travel to any other lands in my lifetime to fill my travel lust.  I have an infinite realm of Catholic Life to explore.  I am woefully ignorant of the Saints, and the only Latin that I can translate is “In Vino Veritas” (Wine reveals the Truth), and I only know this because it is in the movie “Tombstone”.  But none of this prevents me from jumping in.  None of this prevents me from experiencing the unlimited Joy that is offered on this playground.  If you agree to abide by the rules of the playground attendant (Christ, acting through His Shepherds) you can hang out and play until your heart is content. 

It truly is impossible to separate my desire to travel from my desire to live a Catholic Life.  My Catholic Life motivates my desire to travel, and my travel motivates my desire to live a Catholic Life, because in the end, they are both about letting go and having the courage to say “YES!” first. 

If you have the desire to travel, pursue it!  Just beware: it may thrust you into a life that you never imagined. 

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.