Skellig Michael

On Dreams and the Open Road

If you let me talk uninhibited about my art for any length of time, you'll know I love to travel. I guess I inherited my Dad's itchy feet, always looking for new paths to tread. (Are you an itchy-footed person, too??)

Wandering, for me, is best exemplified by the word "peregrinatio," which often pops up when reading about the early Irish church. For those unfamiliar, it denotes a pilgrimage, a journey, but specifically, journeying for the love of God. (You can read more about this in my Introduction post.) It’s a journey for the love of God, not as if you have to find Him, but understanding you cannot meet Him at the end of your journey if He is not invited along for the ride. It's a shared encounter, a joint endeavor, an exploration of the inner as it relates to the outer.

Here at the cusp and finale of a major life transition, I desire to become a peregrini, though I know not to where (I not-so-secretly hope it will someday include Skellig Michael, where this lovely stone beehive hut lives). It grows within me by the day, to get back out into the wild spaces, to document the ways He waits around every corner, crack, and crevasse in our landscape.

Have you ever felt the longing to explore in this way? A yearning for the open road?

It’s rainy and cold here in Walla Walla, and the winter season has been long and arduous, but every day I see the sun a little more, I can breathe a little bit deeper, and the wounds and hardship of the last season are falling away. The road ahead beckons. Freedom sings out to me, and the reasons holding me fast in one place grow faint and minimal with every note.

As Bilbo said,

"You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to."

So why not? Why not pick up and GO?

In a lot of ways, this is also the Commissioning in the Gospel. We aren’t to stay cooped up like birds in cages, only sharing our song with our compatriots who also live inside the four walls of the church community. Matthew 5:15 exhorts us to not be like a lamp crammed under a bushel basket, only lighting its’ immediate location. No; we are to shine brightly and go forth. To carry that light into the world.

There’s a lot of Ts to cross, a lot of Is to dot before I am ready to spread my wings and soar across the Atlantic ocean to finally breathe the same sea-salt air as my monastic forefathers.

In the meantime, I continue to dream with the Father, and fan the flame inside my soul with each brush of charcoal on the page.

“Skellig Hut,” 5x7 inches; charcoal, sanguine, and acrylic.
$130 US + shipping