Now and Here

We often speak of our lives as a journey... and a journey implies a destination. But, recently, I received a new insight into the kind of journey ones' life might be. On a trip to California, a friend overheard a conversation between two men -- let's call them Peter and Paul -- trying to establish some connection with one another. Peter asked the stranger seated next to him: "Going somewhere?" to which Paul surprisingly said: "No." After an embarrassed silence, Peter responded: "I've been there. Now I'm going back!" i.e., "I'm going back to nowhere."

Might you have stated his journey differently? I'm often tempted to divide the word "nowhere" into its two components: "now" and "here". "Nowhere" sounds so devastatingly lost! But when separated, there is immediacy and presence: "I am here, now!" Isn't that better and even more realistic? Or perhaps we are wont to say: "I'm here. I want to be here, in this place, where I am at home, the only place where I can really be my yearning, striving self and not only 'here, but 'now'. The "naked now" as Richard Rohr would put it!

Life may be a journey - though not necessarily one where we need to go anywhere. We need only go in an inward direction - deeper into the place where we are, to the center of our own beings where God awaits, forever looking upon us in love as we try to find our way home

Renee Domeier, OSB