You are here!

For many of us, the realization that life is a journey dawns only gradually. Like the warm morning light breaking through an overcast sky, we glimpse only faint hints of the sun’s fierce, consuming noonday brightness. Here we are, traveling with our fellow passengers – enjoying life or cursing it, according to our temperament, when we realize that one or two of them are no longer with us: They have departed at the previous stop.

Sometimes these departures are sudden and unexpected – like the whining screech of the train wheels locked against the steel rails in the blackness of the night. But as we progress on our own journey, we also see departures that we know are coming – indeed, that seem to go on for too long. And gradually, ever so gradually, we notice that the light of late afternoon does not burn so brightly as it once did on the noonday landscape of our lives. Like the fleeting streaks of morning color breaking through the clouds of life, we begin to understand that we, too, are moving steadily along on that same journey with our fellow passengers. Our travel had a beginning, it will have an end. And when the train arrives at our destination, wherever that is, we will disembark.

It is precisely at these moments, when such thoughts begin to flicker across the canvas of our minds, that the world around us makes so little sense. We spend our lives focused on the things around us – all too often ignoring our fellow-travelers – too impatient to hear their stories, unaware that as each of our journeys had a beginning, so too, they will have an end. It is one characteristic we share with all of humanity.

Amidst all the distractions, we forget that we are even traveling. Where we came from no longer concerns us. Where we are going never enters our mind. There is only room for thoughts about our level of accumulation and comfort along the way. Travelers before us had fewer of these daily distractions. In their material poverty, they were drawn to conversation with their fellow travelers. Invariably the interchange covered the high points of the journey to date, sometimes the low points. Common ground was established. New and unexplored side trips shared. But when the conversation slowed, it was at these spots that the questions about our point of departure and our final destination arose. Theology dealt with these questions – and claimed as its own the ground covered on the journey in between. That is why for centuries theology was known as the queen of disciplines.

Today we no longer recognize the queen’s presence among us, so hurried are we to reach our final destination, and so ill-prepared to depart. She longs to explore with us the great questions of life, its beginnings and its endings. She longs to unroll the map to its full glory, her finger pointing like the giant tourist arrows on visitor maps, “you are here,” then guiding us to our final destination. But instead we turn to noisier, glitzier fellow travelers: celebrities, scientists, futurists and geneticists, for they seem to us to hold the keys to eternal life. The queen sits alone in her royal car; few there be who stumble upon her and fewer still who ask of her travels and experience. Indeed, hardly anyone seems aware of her existence.

Theology does not have the answers, of course. That is one of the reasons she is not invited onto the weekend talk shows where the poverty of our ideas regarding “life, the universe, and everything,” to quote the late author Douglas Adams, are fleshed out. No, the queen knows only the right questions to ask. We, of course, are too busy to consider questions – so we go straight to answers. Any answer will do. Just reassure me that I’m living in the right neighborhood, worshiping the right celebrity, trusting in the right politician, and donating to the right causes. Don’t ask me any embarrassing questions about why my idols’ lives rarely seem to line up with their words; why their bank account swells with my purchase of their latest answers to my inner needs; and, above all – don’t let me catch the eye of the queen sitting off in the corner of the room, as she silently mouths the words, “Yes, but ask her this … ”

Suddenly the television set crashes to the floor, and I watch in horror as the china tumbles from the cupboards and shatters at my feet. The train wheels are locked tightly against the steel rails, their scream piercing my soul. In panic, my eyes search the room. Then, down the hallway, I spot the conductor making his way through the rubble of our car to my compartment. Then it dawns on me: This emergency stop is me.

But I’m not ready! The television lies smashed on the floor, its incessant babble finally silenced. Around me lie a lifetime of possessions – shattered and worthless on the floor. “What’s happening?” I ask the conductor as he arrives at my side. He uses his hat to brush the debris from his jacket. Then he gently but firmly grasps my elbow. “Excuse the abruptness, Madam,” he replies. “We only just now realized this is your stop. We do hope you’ve enjoyed your journey, have employed your time wisely, and have made adequate plans for connecting service to your final destination. This way, please.”