10.23.2010

walked

it seems, for the people in my life, that october is the month to go on vacation. right now, i have friends and family in Egypt, Israel, Texas and California.

as envious as i am, given that i always want to travel, there seems to be a bit of a theme woven throughout some of these vacations, and even crossing over into some of the books i have read this year.

more than one friend who was going to Israel told me that for them, the crux of the trip is to walk where Jesus walked. to see things He would have seen with His eyes.

this morning i received an email from my dad, who, with my mom, is finally living his lifetime-long dream of visiting the Alamo. in it, he said,
"What a feeling to be standing where all those heroes stood. To cross the line and stand with them. The feeling of hopelessness as you realize they were all going to die yet stayed there to serve their country."
my dad is living his dream, walking in the footsteps of his heroes.

after that, i read my friend Phil's blog post, and in it he has a video where Francis Chan talks about going to Oxford and getting a crash course in church history, actually seeing where some lived, and some died.

combine all that with some books i have read this year. A Walk With Jane Austen, for one, where a young woman drops her life to go to England for a month to visit the places where the famous author lived her life and wrote her words. and then there is the book i just finished, Juliet, which while it is a novel, is about a woman who discovers that she is related to the original Juliet, of Shakespeare fame, and returns to Siena, Italy to discover the truth, and her rightful inheritance.

there is something so compelling about connecting the past with the present. about standing in a place and wondering how many fascinating, or just plain normal people through the years have also stood in the same place. about wondering what they did, who they loved, how they faced down their own fears.

...as a child, i walked through forts on vacations with my family, where people of bravery took stands and fought to keep invaders away from their land, teaching me that the way things are now, is not they way they have always been. that there are things that are worth defending.

...i have wandered a Parisian garden where both my favorite sculptor and favorite poet wandered themselves, looking for inspiration and solace, hoping the garden would pass its magic into my own words and art.

...sadly, i have found myself standing in a gas chamber in Auschwitz, unable to keep the tears from flowing for all the lives that ended in that cold, cement room, and all the ways the world could have been made a better place had that room not ever been built.

there are still so many places that i want to touch the ground. so many people, long dead, whose ghosts i want to will my eyes to see. so very much history that i want to connect with.

so many places to walk...


where do you want to walk?

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Suzi. One day, I'd love to go to Israel, and walk where Jesus walked. England is another place I'd love to go, so much history and beauty to see and experience. And of course, I'd love to return to Italy!)

Somehow I felt oddly close to my mom there; as if being there helped me to understand more about her and her life. Strange, isn't it?
-Angie

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