Preamble to My Peregrination

Thoughts on Vanlife and the Joy of God

“It is a terrifying thing to have been born: I mean, to find oneself, without having willed it, swept irrevocably along on a torrent of fearful energy which seems as though it wished to destroy everything it carries with it.

“What I want, my God, is that by a reversal of forces which You alone can bring about, my terror in the face of the nameless changes destined to renew my being may be turned into an overflowing joy at being transformed into You.”

— Teilhard de Chardin, The Hymn of the Universe, page 28

I remember one night many years ago, standing alone under the stars on the deck of my home on the shores of Horsetooth Reservoir, I slipped into a laughter that swept me away, as if falling into a rushing river, and for the better part of an hour wondered in surprise and delight at how the laughter in me kept bubbling out so that by the time it finally faded my sides were sore and my whole face was wet with tears of joy. As everything gently settled into peace, I realized it was God’s Joy that had swept me up, unbidden, in its flow, and that God is always in that Joy; that He is, in fact, always laughing, that this river of pure unfiltered delight runs through the very essence of His Being, and that life in the Spirit means, on the most profound and essential level, life in Joy.

“In Your Presence is fullness of joy.” — Psalm 18

This is not how I have lived. But it is how I’m beginning to live now.

A week from now, I’ll be moving into a van, and taking to life on the road. There are many reasons I’m making this move, all of which I’ll share here over time. But maybe the most important of them harkens back to that experience on my deck all those years ago. I want to find that River again, and when I do to dive into it with my entire being, and be swept away. I’ve no clear idea how to find it—only to be on watch for the waypoints of Joy I encounter on the open road that may lead me to its banks, and to honor those waypoints as sacred beckonings from Christ.

I have loved my life so far, truly. But as I look out on this final stretch of years yawning out before me, I’ve reached the point where I cannot afford distractions anymore. I cannot any longer accommodate, satiate, or placate the whims of society’s will for me, regarding neither who it wants me to be, nor what it wants me to do. My own deep heart is crying out for Joy, and I must listen. So I am embarking on a holy peregrination to find it. There simply isn’t enough time or enough energy available in me for anything other than that One True Path, that specific Beautiful Way God is calling me to travel.

So begins a new season of what I hope will be real and lasting transformation—of both my soul and body—to come into a truer alignment not only with who I am meant to be, or who God really is, but also of who We are meant to be, and what We are made to be about.

P.S. I’d really love it if you came along.