I'm Moving On...Come Along!

My Dear Seven (Or So) Blog Companions:

(Hello, Mom!  Hello, Dad!  Hello, Sis!  Hello, the other few!)

Merry Christmas!  Happy New Year!  I hope you are all doing well!

Change is in the air, isn't it?  And things will be changing here, too!  I have some exciting news for all you faithful companions of mine: I'm moving to a new blog site.

Now I've been delaying telling you because I wanted to be certain that things were perfect at the other blog first.  Welp, Perfection called and said she is running a little late, per usual.

So I figured, why deprive you any longer?  And I want to keep writing more and have an audience besides myself.  

Without further ado, the new blog address is www.seekingafterhisheart.com.

Bookmark it.  Follow it.  Sign up for the e-mails.  Share it.  Re-post it.  Do all the things.

This little starter blog will just remain here, a little time capsule in the cyber world with no new posts.  (Meaning: Ah-hem: You'll need to follow the new one, Mom and Dad!)  All of my blog posts from this website have been transferred over to the other.

Go take a look!  Thanks for continuing to seek the Lord with me!

George Bailey

I never really associated myself with George Bailey.  "It's a Wonderful Life" is a classic movie, but I've always viewed it as a movie, not something that seemed to speak into my own life.  A couple days ago I re-watched it.  Apparently, the wanderlust desire to see the world and do incredible things is more an aspect of the human condition rather than my generation.  So I watched the classic film, shed some tears, and realized that the longing George Bailey had was fiercely beating within my own heart.

I'm shakin' the dust of this crummy little town off my feet and I'm gonna see the world. Italy, Greece, the Parthenon, the Colosseum. Then, I'm comin' back here to go to college and see what they know. And then I'm gonna build things. I'm gonna build airfields, I'm gonna build skyscrapers a hundred stories high, I'm gonna build bridges a mile long...

As high school neared its end, I was never one of the students who couldn't wait to get out of the small town.  It just happened to be that I chose a school hundreds of miles away from home and was only able to come back for Christmas and summer breaks.  When college was finished, I moved back home because moving far away for a job seemed strange to me.  Now I'm in my fourth year of teaching high school and I live about thirty minutes from where I spent my childhood.

Young adult life is filled with many different experiences, but I keep coming back to a desire to pursue greatness, a desire that filled George Bailey his entire life.  He wanted to see the world, to travel, to build structures that will last years, and to pursue adventure.  Yet he ends up spending his life in Bedford Falls, a seemingly idyllic town that feels like a prison if one doesn't want to spend the entirety of one's life there.

Any place can feel like a prison, though, if one is constantly desiring to be elsewhere.  The greatness found in the little and the simple can be overlooked so quickly.  St. John Vianney would spend hour after hour in the confessional.  Looking at his life from my vantage point, I can see how much fruit his life of simple faithfulness bore.  Yet in that moment of waking up early to say Mass and then spend the whole day in the confessional, he might not have felt this aura of greatness surrounding himself.  St. John Bosco rallied together the poor street children from Turin and taught them how to be men.  In the daily grind of loving them in the midst of their flaws, he might not have recognized the monumental work he was doing.

And I teach.  It isn't much.  My younger sister was watching "Freedom Writers" with me and she said each time she watched the movie, she thought of me as the teacher.  I am laughably not like Mrs. Gruwell.  I'm not taking on extra jobs to buy supplies for my students or going to bat for them against a racist administration or devoting all my time to helping them graduate from high school.  There are many teachers who spend hours with their students after school as they guide them through problems (academic or otherwise) and leave this deep impression on their very beings as an adult who cared and sacrificed for them.  I am not that teacher.

During finals, one of my students walked into my classroom with a card.  She told me she was giving me this card because she was thankful that I would go over the study guides with her before tests.  All I did was spend fifteen to twenty minutes after school with her the day before the test to review her answers and go over any questions she had.  But the gesture she made was worth ten cards.  Hidden within that quiet exchange, one done without any fanfare or balloons, was the greatness I am seeking.

Greatness is found in the simple, in the little.  I've written about this before.  I write about it again not to convince you, but to convince myself.  As a teacher, affirmations are few and far between.  Even if administration affirms your work, you want to hear it from those you spend day after day with.  Students are unaware how powerful their words are about their teachers.  I don't need their support or affirmation, but I love it when I receive it.  It means something is sinking in, something is being passed from my soul to theirs.  I don't have state standardized tests to rely on as a Theology teacher.  I want to know if they know the Lord, rather than if they can ace my tests.  That is when I know that I am successful.

George Bailey wanted a blazing kind of greatness, one that tears through towns and astounds people.  What he finds instead is the greatness of enduring friendships, believing in the dreams of others, helping others pursue human dignity, and building a family that bands together.  A greatness that his father pursued in that very town.

There is greatness in simplicity.  There is simple greatness.  There is unassuming greatness.  Perhaps greatness is found not in doing wild things or going to exotic places but in doing what you do to the best of your ability.  Maybe greatness is simply living your own life well, even if you remain unaware of the impact it makes on the lives of others.

Pa Bailey: I know it's soon to talk about it. 
George Bailey: Oh, now Pop, I couldn't. I couldn't face being cooped up for the rest of my life in a shabby little office... Oh, I'm sorry Pop, I didn't mean that, but this business of nickels and dimes and spending all your life trying to figure out how to save three cents on a length of pipe... I'd go crazy. I want to do something big and something important. 
Pa Bailey: You know, George, I feel that in a small way we are doing something important. Satisfying a fundamental urge. It's deep in the race for a man to want his own roof and walls and fireplace, and we're helping him get those things in our shabby little office. 
George Bailey: I know, Dad. I wish I felt... But I've been hoarding pennies like a miser in order to... Most of my friends have already finished college. I just feel like if I don't get away, I'd bust. 
Pa Bailey: Yes... yes... You're right son. 
George Bailey: You see what I mean, don't you, Pop? 
Pa Bailey: This town is no place for any man unless he's willing to crawl to Potter. You've got talent, son. I've seen it. You get yourself an education. Then get out of here. 
George Bailey: Pop, you want a shock? I think you're a great guy. 

Being the Adventure

"Someday, I want to be the adventure someone chooses."

The words resonate in my heart, even though I've never quite thought of it like that.  My friend is telling me that she has encouraged men she was interested in to pursue their dreams.  Yet what she really wants is to be the adventure they choose to pursue.  I hear her ache and I feel a similar one in my own heart.

We are millennials.  In many ways, I do not believe I fit into my generation.  However, in this regard, I do: I desire greatness.  I do not mean that I long to be recognized or praised in front of all.  Nor do I want empty words of admiration or platitudes repeated just to satisfy a longing to be great.

No.

I want to contribute, in some meaningful way, to society.  I want to leave an impression.  I want to fill a need.  I want to embrace adventure and travel and see new sights.  I want to feel the exhilarating rush of being absolutely, irrevocably alive.  I don't want to do this by getting high, imbibing too much alcohol, or living a way that is less than I am.  I want to live fully my humanity.

At times I feel like I haven't done much in my twenty-something years of living.  And by some standards, I haven't.

I have:
-graduated from high school
-graduated from college (and completed English and Theology theses at 20 pages each)
-studied abroad
-gone on three mission trips, leading one of them
-been a small part in saving at least one child from abortion during my time sidewalk counseling
-been a Confirmation sponsor for two people and godmother to two others
-been published in two newspapers and a college student publication
-traveled to: Mexico, Canada, Honduras, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Spain, Portugal, France, Switzerland, Germany, Poland, Austria, Czech Republic, Italy, Vatican City, and 32 of the states in the US
-successfully taught high school for 3.5 years
-walked El Camino de Santiago

Yet despite these "accomplishments" I am left longing for more adventures.  Namely, the adventure of marriage and family.  The person I immediately turn to when thinking of marriage as an adventure is the ever-endearing G.K. Chesterton.

The supreme adventure is being born.  There we do walk suddenly into a splendid startling trap.  There we do see something of which we have not dreamed before.  Our father and mother do lie in wait for us and leap out on us, like brigands from a bush.  Our uncle is a surprise.  Our aunt is, in the beautiful common expression, a bolt from the blue.  When we step into the family, by the act of being born, we do step into a world which is incalculable, into a world which has its own strange laws, into a world which could do without us, into a world that we have not made.  In other words, when we step into the family we step into a fairy-tale.

So my dear Chesterton would tell me that I am already living the supreme adventure: I have been born into it.  I would argue with him (since it is often my nature to be non-compliant) that my current life is not the familial adventure he speaks of since I am in the "in between" time.  I have a house but it is rented.  I live with friends and not a family of my own.  It is good, but not what I long for.  Perhaps he would agree with me in these points.  In this hypothetical argument, he might remind me that marriage, for all my silly idealism, is not perfection.  He might say this:

When we defend the family we do not mean it is always a peaceful family; when we maintain the thesis of marriage we do not mean that it is always a happy marriage.  We mean that it is the theatre of the spiritual drama, the place where things happen, especially the things that matter.  It is not so much the place where a man kills his wife as the place where he can take the equally sensational step of not killing his wife.

I remember the look of confusion and a bit of shock on my mom's face when I read her that quote once.  But isn't it true?  Sometimes the more sensational thing is two human beings, undeniably different even if undeniably in love, not killing each other.  Clearly, Chesterton was a married man.

However, I do not wish to simply quote Chesterton all day, though I love his writings even if I haven't read many of them.  Rooted deep in the hearts of modern man, I believe, is the desire to give entirely of oneself, wholly and without reserve or end.  This is the longing for marriage.  The desire we have to be the adventure that someone else undertakes.  What adventure (apart from that of pursing God) could be greater than looking at another human being and saying, "You.  I choose you and only you forever.  I choose to journey through life with you, come what may.  I choose your heart to pursue and cherish always.  And I know time will change us.  In ten years, you will not be the same person I married.  But I will still choose you."

It is the nature of love to bind itself, and the institution of marriage merely paid the average man the compliment of taking him at his word.

As much as this millennial longs to do all kinds of things and pursue all sorts of adventures (pilgrimage to the Holy Land, run a half marathon, go to jail for a night*, or fly a plane), I long for the simple adventure of a home and a family.  In many ways, my desires are not so adventurous or dramatic after all.  They are little things, daily things.  The adventure of simply being the adventure.

The old-fashioned Englishman, like my father, sold houses for his living but filled his own house with his life. 

*Naturally, when I say I wish to go to jail for a night, it is with the idea that I went standing up for something I deeply believe in.

The Wal-Mart Heart Change

I could feel it increasing in my heart.  My fingers tapped on the shopping cart as the impatience within escalated.

Standing in the speedy checkout line at Wal-Mart, I was feeling pressed for time.  I hadn't wanted to stop at Wal-Mart, but I needed glitter.  Never in my life have I purchased glitter, so it took a bit of meandering before I found what I needed.  A few other items found their way into my hands and then I was at the checkout.  Waiting.

The sense of urgency was palpable in Wal-Mart.  I could feel it because I had places to be, things to do, and the rush of shoppers waiting at the checkout lines declared that they had similar situations.  The clerk tending the cash register was taking care of one customer and it seemed to take a while.  His credit card wasn't accepted and he was on the phone.

Minutes passed.  I kept eyeing other lines, watching them line up and pass through while I waited.  Finally, the woman ahead of me moved forward in line.  Change needed to be dispensed into the tray and we watched her unroll two packs of quarters.  Then the cashier counted the gifts bags.

1...2...3...4...5...6...7...8...9...10

10 gifts bags.  Then she swiped one.  And repeated the act seven more times.  She stopped and began to count the number of bags on the screen.  But she must have lost track of which line she was on so she took a piece of paper, holding it up to guide herself line by line.  The customer told her that she had only scanned eight but there were ten.  The cashier finished counting, swiped another, and then keyed in another.

I'm feeling impatient, inwardly reminding myself that it is Advent, the season of waiting.  But for some reason, my time feels more important.  Perhaps it is part of the human condition.  We are quick to hurry others, almost insulted that they should waste our precious time.

I will my heart to stop pounding with impatience.  Almost like hushing a baby, I remind my heart that there is enough time for what is necessary.  Slow down, slow down.  Do what you tell your students to do: practice patience, seek holiness in the simple, ordinary things in life.  Be faithful in small matters.

And my heart slows.  When I approach the cashier, I am greeting her as though I never waited.  I am striving to not make myself the most important person in the situation.  The anxious tapping of impatience is brushed away for a moment, and I try to hang onto this as I navigate the parking lot and the line of cars waiting to exit.

Later, I will lose this patience and peace.  I will rush about, attempting to do in a couple hours what should have been done in days.  And I will miss the joy of the present moment and seek to tend to things rather than to people.  But for all the missteps that will later follow, I am reminded of that moment in the checkout line.  That moment when my agitated heart encountered the peace that it was always meant to have.

Say to the fainthearted, "Take courage and fear not. Behold, our God will come and will save us." -Isaiah 35:4

There He is: saving me from myself in the Wal-Mart checkout line.

Why I Am a Catholic

For the last couple days of class for the semester (before preparation for finals), I decided to try something new.  It was an idea I had a while ago, but it just seemed to work to implement it this year.  The section is dubbed, "Why I Am a Catholic."  After weeks of (hopefully) learning Apologetics, I wanted to have them consider why they are Catholic.  I challenged them to find something beautiful, compelling, or desirable within the Church, even if they struggle with different facets of the faith.

I listed off for them Peter Kreeft's seven reasons why he is a Catholic.  I read a line from G.K. Chesterton's "Why I Am a Catholic" essay.  Then, because I wanted this to be real for them, I told them my reason for being Catholic.

In all actuality, it cannot be boiled down to one reason that I am Catholic.  Yet, for the sake of simplicity, I picked what was central to my faith and declared that it was the reason why I was Catholic.  What I didn't expect, though, was that I would nearly cry in every Apologetics class as I told my story.

Honestly, I was a little annoyed with myself.  "Really, Trish, get it together!  It isn't as though you have never talked about this before."  I'm still a little confused, but I think the primary reason is that I was opening my heart to them.

I've shared with my students different experiences I've had, places I have traveled to, and stories I have heard.  As a Theology teacher, I am daily speaking of persons and ideas that are very close to my heart.  But to open my heart, to share part of "my story," and to point to something so personal, in a classroom setting, is difficult.

I told them that I am Catholic because of the Eucharist.  Yet I had to give a bit of a back story for why the Eucharist is so pivotal personally, not just theologically.  So I had to go to the beginning of my faith hitting the pavement, nearly the beginning of a heart that aches yet keeps it all tucked away within.

Naturally, it was a story about my sisters.

My two older sisters, specifically.  And my throat became scratchy and I prayed that Jesus would just let me get through these stories without crying.  The feelings I was portraying aren't ones I typically feel now, but ones that were jettisoned across time from nearly 12 years ago.

When I was in 8th grade, my older sister entered a Carmelite cloister.  She was the one who seemed to know me.  As an introverted melancholic, I've always ached to be known.  While she was still my sister, our relationship was dramatically altered.  I could pour out my heart to her in writing, but then I would need to wait months for any sort of response.  I became angry and bitter, yet still had to present a happy exterior, because that was expected of one with a nun for a sister.  When I was a junior in high school, my other older sister joined a different convent about twenty-four hours from home by car.  The feelings of bitterness and anger were once again kindled.

I was teaching myself something that is untrue about God.  Internally, I was learning that God will take from you that which you hold dearest.  Whatever you don't want to do, He will ask it of you.  I was learning the sacrificial part of Catholicism without the love or joy that must accompany it.

As I'm telling my little stories, I am looking into their eyes.  For once, the classroom is mostly silent and their eyes are on me.  I'm wondering, as my insides quake a little and my hands shake, if they can see that I'm opening up part of my heart to them.  I'm hoping that even though their story is different, that they are open to discovering the beauty of Catholicism, too.

So how do my sisters entering the convent make the Eucharist the reason I am Catholic?  When my sister was entering the cloister, she turned around and said, "I'll see you in the Eucharist."  Eighth grade me wasn't impressed.  That's nice....but how about you see me on my birthday and at Christmas?  How about you hold my children and are answering the phone when I want to talk?  Despite the minimal impact it made initially, it eventually became a central point of my personal spirituality.

When we go to Mass and receive the Eucharist, we are receiving the Body of Christ.  The Church is the Body of Christ.  When I receive the Eucharist, I receive the entire universal Church, the Church inside and outside of space and time.  As I missed my sisters, I would receive the Eucharist and know that this union that I tangibly experienced in Holy Communion was the deepest union I would have with them.  It was comforting when I went off to college eighteen hours away and I missed my family.  The Eucharist bound me to all my loved ones.  Moving from college back home and being separated from beautiful friends, I found solace in the ties of the Eucharist, bonds that even death cannot break.

Why I am a Catholic cannot be simplified to only one reason for me.  There are many factors and influences, but the central point is the Eucharist, God Himself.

"The difficulty of explaining “why I am a Catholic” is that there are ten thousand reasons all amounting to one reason: that Catholicism is true."    -G.K. Chesterton 

Holiness in the Mundane

Their faces are registering complete shock.

Personally, I'm a little taken aback that what I said is so surprising to them.

"How can homework make us holy?"
"Do you want to do homework?"
"Yes....er, no," my student responds, wavering, it seems, between what he feels he should say and what is actually the truth.  "No, I don't."
"So doing your homework would mean you are going against your own will and desire to do what you should do."
"So we are supposed to stab ourselves in the arm?!"
"Doing your homework is a bit different than stabbing yourself in the arm.  I'm not saying you need to intentionally inflict pain upon yourself so that you suffer.  Simply accept the suffering that comes your way and offer it to God.  Choosing to do your homework when you don't want to means saying no to your own will and yes to God's will.  Right now you are to be a student.  God isn't requiring that everyone gets a 4.0 GPA, but He does want you to do the very best that you can."

How often we fail to see the ordinary, inconvenient, monotonous tasks of the day as paths to sanctity!  We want something extraordinary.  Lord, give us some big task, some grandiose mission and we will fulfill it for You!  Instead, we are given long lines at the grocery store, disobedient children, laundry, and snow shoveling.  They don't seem quick paths to holiness, but the Lord only entrusts big missions to those who are faithful in small matters.

If the cross my students carry is homework, my cross is found in grading their homework and tests.  It is easy to push it aside, to think I have far better things to do.  Yet, in a way that I don't fully understand, my holiness can be brought about in grading the 63rd paper about the Shroud of Turin or test over the arguments for God's existence.  Somewhere in the monotony of that work, I can utter with my actions, "Not my will, but Thy will be done."

So homework, study guide writing, end of the year planning, and room cleaning here I come.  And somewhere in the midst, may sanctity be found.

A Moment of Encounter

Yesterday, I got out of school and brushed the half foot of snow off my car.  I went home and helped my housemate finish up shoveling the driveway and sidewalk.  Last night, after taking out the trash, I paused under the awning and took in the winter portrait that was painted before me.  It was cool, but without our customary wind, it was nice out.  An icy finger had touched the world, leaving trees outlined in silver and the streets glistening with custom-designed flakes.

Winter, I thought, is quite beautiful.

Then I took a few steps and entered my house, where I could view the frozen art from the ease of a comfortable chair.  In those few steps, though, a thought came to me.

It doesn't feel that cold because I have a home, right here, that I can step into.  I don't mind the cold today because I've spent very little time in it.  If I were homeless, that wouldn't be the case.

For yet another time in the past week, I considered again difficulties of homelessness.

Homelessness is never something I have seriously feared.  In fact, it was within the past couple years that I realized that I've never even considered it to be a fear I could have.  I live in a rented house shared with other young women and I have a job that pays the bills and loans I've accumulated.  Yet I've always known that even if I lost everything I own, I could always move back home.  Through the years, as my siblings and I have grown up, we have found it necessary or best to sometimes move home for a while.  We've all taken advantage of it, for varying lengths of time.  So if I got sick, lost my job, was in an accident, or something devastating happened, I know I would be able to seek the refuge of my parents' house.

At the time that I was having this not-profound realization, I thought about how others don't have that support system.  What if I was all I truly had?  What if I didn't have parents that were able or willing to help me through rough times?  What if I had no siblings or extended family that would let me crash on their couch or put me up for a while as I sorted through my life?  The result of these thoughts was immediate anxiety and fear.

In the summer of 2014, I walked the Camino de Santiago.  It was 500 miles across northern Spain and I carried all my possessions on my back for just over a month.  While it was a beautiful experience, I was sometimes frustrated to always be packing up my things and moving to some place new.  I didn't have a home and I found myself wanting to spend two nights in the same place.  Over half way through the walk, it happened when we stayed at a Benedictine pilgrim house.  What a joy it was to leave our packs in our room and roam the town, knowing we would be sleeping in the same place that night and didn't have to carry our packs that day.

Homelessness is not like that experience.  It often doesn't include a bed or a mat to sleep on.  You aren't stopping for a mid-morning cafe con leche or a sit-down lunch on a leisurely day.  There is no communal cooking with lots of wine flowing into the evening.  There isn't the knowledge that if something goes wrong, you can use your VISA or ATM card to pull you through the dilemma.

In a minuscule way, I understood the struggle of not having a place of one's own.  I felt a desire to have roots, to remain in one place with a familiar system and order.  I understood not having the luxury of a car and using only my feet to get everywhere, even after a long day of walking.

But, in all reality, I have no idea what it would mean to be homeless.    

Last week, I went to help decorate a homeless shelter.  I had little concerns and fears as I walked in, but mostly I found myself frustrated for feeling so awkward.  It is far easier to write a check and donate to an organization rather than to encounter the homeless in the flesh.

“To love God and neighbor is not something abstract, but profoundly concrete: it means seeing in every person and face of the Lord to be served, to serve him concretely. And you are, dear brothers and sisters, in the face of Jesus.”     -Pope Francis

I was embarrassed to feel out of sorts and out of place.  Instead, I wanted to just interact with the guests as though they were ordinary people.  Mentally, I couldn't help but note the disparity between our lives.  My inconvenience of a cool basement bedroom was utterly ridiculous in the face of the cold outdoors as a bedroom.

And I did a laughably small thing: I decorated the kitchen and helped bend the branches of a fake Christmas tree.

There was a man washing dishes in the kitchen.  He noticed my arrival and would look over at me every now and then, making a little small talk as I worked.  Internally, I was kicking myself for not being able to think of any good questions to ask him.  I would comment on how many trips he made to get dirty soup bowls and he would comment on me struggling to, once again, find the end of the roll of tape.

Finally, I was stringing up the last bit of garland and he said, "You should have brought your boyfriend to help you."  I laughed, probably blushed a bit, and said, "Well, if I had one, I would have brought him."  He said he was surprised "a pretty girl like you" didn't have a boyfriend.  I laughed and said, "I'm still young, though, right?"  (My one semi-consolation.)  He said I was, but that he was alone, too.

Then, he did it.  He opened a bit of his heart up to me, someone he didn't even know.

"My wife died.  It was three years ago.  She died three days after Christmas."

And, suddenly, this wasn't a man doing dishes at a homeless shelter, but he was a man with real struggles and pain.  He wasn't looking for sympathy and he didn't elaborate with a story.  I didn't ask him to, either.  Instead, I told him I was sorry and said it must be very difficult.  In a warm kitchen with crumbs on the counters and the heavy aroma of chili, I met a stranger concretely in a brief sharing of the heart.

After leaving the kitchen, I went to the entry way to help finish setting up the trees.  Guests from the shelter kept walking by and I wanted to be certain to greet them with a smile, if I could.  Because it would have been too easy to just ignore their presence.  Excuse me, please.  Carry along.  We are setting up these trees for you, but we don't want to actually interact with you.  So I would smile as they walked past or move out of the way if they were trying to pass by.  In many ways, it was easier to focus on the task at hand (setting up Christmas decorations) than to remember the underlying reason for all of it (the homeless who would be staying there).  I tried to force myself to remember this central reason, rather than obsess over the exact angle of the ribbon on the tree.

Once again, I felt a smallness.  Yet, once again, I felt a desire to do more.  What if I did more than set up a tree?  What if I volunteered far more of my time?  Not to the idealized homeless person in my mind, but to the actual homeless people that I would encounter.  In the midst of their hardship, I want to bestow upon them all kinds of virtues that aren't necessarily there.  I expect gratitude and humility and kindness.  But why would I expect it more from them than from my students or co-workers?  Rather than set them on a pedestal, I want to concretely encounter them.  In the midst of their brokenness, their chaos, their efforts, and their failures.  Because that is humanity.  They have stories and lives and I choose not to romanticize them because they are real people.

I don't know how these desires will be lived out, but I want to pursue them.  It is not enough to feel sorry for the idea or concept of homelessness.  Each of these people staying at the shelter and each person I encounter daily, has the face of Christ, if I have the grace to see it.  We are all on the quest for a true home, walking toward the Heavenly kingdom much like I made the trek to Santiago de Compostela: day by day, carrying only what is necessary, walking even if we don't want to, and journeying to a place that will justify all our suffering and wipe away every tear.

What other homeless pilgrim will you meet on the way today?  Whose face will they have?