Please finish the following phrase: “any way you want it…”
If you finished with “that’s the way you need it,” then, you too have one of Journey’s greatest hits burned into your psyche. Like the gentlemen in the State Farm commercial, I’d say we just had ourselves a little Journey moment.
For many people, summer is a time to journey: a time to travel, to hit the road, and to explore. Throughout the summer, TJP will bring you stories about these journey moments. We’ll hear from young women who are walking across Spain on the Camino de Santiago de Compostela. We’ll accompany Jesuits who are following the Latin American migration corridor to the United States. We’ll also follow Journey’s Steve Perry as he…no, wait, nevermind. He turned us down.
There are plenty of reasons to start a journey: to seek a refuge from violence and turmoil; to seek greater self-understanding, a sense of who who we are and where we come from, to seek a better life for our families or our children. The list goes on and on and on and on (apologies for the continual Journey references)
When we journey, we are seekers.
Princeton sociologist Robert Wuthnow has argued that we moderns have been moving away from a ‘dweller mentality’ and towards a ‘seeker mentality.’ This is especially true in the United States since World War II. The dweller emphasizes stability, values unity of minds within a stable community, and maintains boundaries between sacred and secular.
The seeker, by contrast, negotiates between the complex and often confusing symbols and meanings of daily life. The seeker esteems experience and emotion, and encounters the holy in fleeting yet seemingly mundane moments. The seeker is the explorer of unknown spiritual (and physical) territories, and tends to shy away from shared, comfortable and cordoned-off sacred spaces. The seeker’s is the faith of the pilgrim, not that of the established temple.
A Little Journey Moment
We’ll be having quite a few journey moments this summer, so join us as we continue to highlight the experiences of these seekers, these pilgrims.
In our first installment of this journey series, we’ll join a group of Jesuits who are following the path of Central American migrants to the United States. Check out Journey Moments: The Migrant Corridor
