pilgrimage

Early morning and the way feels long, as though I’ve meandered for miles without a full inhale, and my finger pauses over this verse: “When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country, though that was shorter (Exodus 13:17).”  I imagine the way those freed women felt, wrapping their dough before the yeast, carrying it out of town on their shoulders in the night.  I sit back in my chair, peering out into the darkness through the gaps in the window blinds.  I wonder did the traveling mamas have their tired, sleep-eyed babies strapped to their backs or tightly held in crook of the one empty arm? Sometimes that’s the thing, how to move with a clutch of children. I fondly remember little girl trips that began when my dad scooped me out of bed, settling my warmth on his shoulder.  I never opened my eyes, just thought, here we go, we’re going!–bouncing a little with his footfall through the house and into the night air.  My cheeks pinked and I heard Mom whispering purposefully even as invisible multitudes of cicadas reverberated their repetitious refrains, shaking their bulbous tails.  Of course, we weren’t actually hurrying away; nothing threatened us except the promise of traffic, and in those days, we kids could snuggle into sleeping bags in the back of the family Station Wagon for the first part of a trip, drifting back to sleep as the car swayed over the blank road. Ours were adventures; Mom packed cereal for breakfast in plastic-lidded containers; we changed into t-shirts and jeans in the bathrooms at rest stops.

The text says 600,ooo Israelite men became pilgrims the night of their escape, not counting women and children.  I grip my coffee mug in my hands, rounding my fingers.  We modern-day escapees number a whole heap more, actually; we just don’t imagine we’re traveling together, if at all.  The hamster wheel we believe we’re walking may yet be one of the greatest spiritual tricks of our time; it makes us numb and blind and offers us the illusion that our progression is solitary.  Most of us live without the chase of fear, but our days also begin and end without the thrill of adventure.  We move through our hurried and harried routines without smelling or tasting anything.

An intentional wanderer, my dad often intentionally chose circuitous routes for travel.  Even when we walked through parking lots, Dad refused to succumb to any sort of crowd mentality, but often chose his own strange and crooked pathways from point A to point B.  If we remarked about this, he’d launch into paragraphs about the virtues of uniqueness.  In truth, I think he simply meant to journey deliberately, to make even the most mundane progression at least unusual, if not extraordinary.  Of course, as I look back now, I recognize that his “scenic routes” made a pilgrimage of our living.  We never merely moved; we experienced.

So today I set out in the dark on the edge of a new day, stretching my legs against the weary press of time, looking to God to lead the way out of captivity, and this startles me:  He took the long way.  He even doubled back.  The text actually says Pharaoh will believe God’s people confused and hemmed in because of their circuitous path (Exodus 14:3).  The long, arduous ordeal of all those plagues just behind them, the Israelites hurried away from captivity dressed for battle and expecting a fight, and God took the scenic route.  I screw up my face, and God offers paragraphs:  As ready as they felt, God knows his children needed not a trip but a pilgrimage; He knew they needed to experience Him before they’d be able to trust Him.  I read this and I know now what I need to do to begin well:  I close my eyes, bouncing along on my father’s shoulder, as the night air hits my cheeks and the cicadas begin to sing.