1. One of the safest countries in the Middle East

While many Muslim countries in the Middle East have experienced continuing unrest, the small Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan has managed to maintain peace and safety. As a proof for that, many immigrants have fled from the neighboring countries and settled in Jordan during the wars—Syria, the West Bank, or Iraq. Therefore, Jordan has doubled its population and this also means its territory is safe and a great opportunity to explore its sights.

Throughout Jordan, you will see royal gendarmes who carefully guard and make sure everything is ok, especially in the touristic spots. Tourists bring one of the main incomes for the country (see the next point for more on this) and they are well protected. During my stay, people living there told me that if I experienced any problem, I should immediately look for a gendarme and tell him my issue. Rules and punishments are very severe in Jordan and nobody would risk harassing you and get many years in prison.

2. Support the country’s economy

Situated in one of the driest regions in the Middle East, Jordan is among the top five countries in the world that experience a shortage of water. The country doesn’t have many (or almost any at all) natural resources of fresh water. Converting salt water from the Dead Sea (which has a very high salt content of 31%) is time-consuming and pricey. The only viable source of water in the country is the 130-km-long Jordan River (in the North of Jordan).

During my travel to Jordan, I ended up staying with a local family in Amman and they shared with me more about this issue. They have big water reservoirs on the rooftop of their houses. Each family receives a monthly water ration and they have to somehow deal with that. My hostess, Salam, was working at the Ministry of Waters and she told me they had recently considered exploring even the 20km of coastline along the Red Sea (in the South of Jordan).

Tourism is one of the most powerful industries for Jordan’s economy and compared to other industries, it doesn’t create pollution. So, next time you’re thinking about whether to travel to Jordan or not, consider that visiting this country is helping its economy.

3. Christian sites in a Muslim country

If you’re potentially unsure about what you’d like to see in a predominantly Muslim nation, remember Jordan has a community of Christians too. This is due to the fact that many religious sites from the Bible are located on Jordan’s territory. If you travel to Jordan, will find proof that religious tolerance is possible!

You may be interested to go to the Baptism Site of Jesus in the Jordan River, Moses’ memorial at Mount Nebo, or Herod’s Castle. Also, the small town of Madaba (half an hour from Amman), has several churches with incredible well-preserved Roman mosaics. Among them, Saint George’s Church houses the famous Mosaic Map—the oldest map with historical insights into the region.

4. Low-cost flights to Jordan

For a long time, the flights’ cost was pretty high if you wanted to travel between different continents. Nowadays, airline companies have a wide range of offers and if you know where to search, you may find the most incredible prices. At the time of writing this article, a simple search into any popular flight search engine will bring light cost round-trip flights as low as follows: €21 from Cyprus, €51 from Italy, €62 from Austria, €75 from Romania, or €96 from Belgium. If you are not living in Europe, this is not a problem. When you visit this continent, keep this tip in mind and travel to Jordan too. You will experience a totally different culture.

5. Visit Petra—one of the new Seven Wonders of the World

The former capital of the Nabataean empire and a trading center in ancient times, the Rose City carved into red-hued sandstone has been declared one of the new Seven Wonders of the World. Walking the main trail in Petra, you will have to go through a narrow canyon, then you’ll suddenly enter an open space in front of the great Treasury carved into a high sand-cliff. If you are fit and can walk more (remember to bring sports shoes), you will have the chance to explore many other Roman monuments, Nabataean tombs, and Bedouins’ caves.

Almost 85% of ancient Petra is still uncovered and untouched by archaeologists. Despite this, visiting Petra in just one day is not enough time and it’s worth reserving at least two or three days. Beside the main trail (8km in total), there are many other 2-3-hour trails that go up to key sights located in the surrounding mountains. The Treasury Vista, the Place of Sacrifice, or the famous Monastery are the most popular ones. They require more time to be reached but once you get there, you will enjoy some of the best views in Jordan.

6. Venture into the desert of Wadi Rum

If you travel to Jordan, you can see a bit of everything. You have ancient tombs and Roman ruins in Petra, modern beaches and coral reefs in Aqaba at the Red Sea, and Crusaders’ castles in the far east. In the southern part of the country, you will find an incredible combination of reddish rocks and sand dunes in the desert of Wadi Rum. Listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, this desert spans over 720 sq km and features deep sandstone canyons, natural arches, and even prehistoric carvings.

Jeep tours or camel rides are available to explore the sights of the desert. Numerous Bedouins have set up their own camps for tourists in the desert and you can easily book an overnight stay in a traditional tent there. Not only you will experience the desert lifestyle (expect rudimentary restrooms and showers!), but if you are a true explorer, you will return with the astonishing memory of sleeping under the roof of a “million star hotel.” You can actually bring your sleeping bag and sleep in the sand, but pay attention to scorpions (especially in summer).

7. Experience the Bedouin culture

While you will meet many Bedouins in Petra or Wadi Rum, the Bedouin tribes are spread throughout the country. You will have a deeper insight into the Bedouin’s culture, customs, and traditions if you go to lesser known places in Jordan. Bedouins are very hospitable and will certainly invite you for a glass of tea—or the “Bedouin whiskey,” as they call it. Some of them may even invite you for lunch or dinner, and this is a great way to see how a real mansaf (a traditional dish) tastes.

If you are open to travel to Jordan and trust your instincts, you will have incredible experiences in this country. I was invited to join a Bedouin dance in Ali’s cave located at the foot of the Shobak Castle. Abu Ali danced and played the flute for me and even let me film him. Then I decided to stay for a couple of days in the Bedouin village of Dana in the middle of the Dana Nature Reserve (the biggest one in the country). In the nearby Wadi Dana, I had the chance to meet Bedouin shepherds and see how they live between mountains and desert.

Suggested next reading: 6 Not Well Known Places You Should Visit In The Middle East

The post 7 Reasons Why You Need To Visit Jordan Before You Die appeared first on Modern Trekker.

These reflections are prompted by my recent visit to the shrine of Our Lady of Fernyhalgh, near Preston, in the county of Lancashire in North-West England. Tucked away in the midst of fields, one gets a sense of just how remote this place would have been in its day, though the constant whooshing—faint but audible—of the nearby motorway reminds one that, in Western Europe, it is almost impossible to escape modernity altogether.

To go to Lancashire is to go to a place abundantly blessed in its rugged and rolling hills and in the—still today—cheerfulness and warmth of its people, and this despite the dourness and decline of many of its towns. Though it lacks the majesty of the Lake District to its north and the Peak District to its east, it is still a charming county with charming scenery and folk. It might be “grim ‘oop North” on a rainy day, but the Lancastrians can usually laugh it off with a jolly chortle. And I like to think—but I am a Catholic priest, so assume I’m biased—that this cheerfulness has something to do with the region’s history of Catholic faith, first through many brave souls who stood firm in their beliefs in hard times and then through the Irish immigrants who flocked to the county in the 19^th Century.

Fernyhalgh—also known as Ladyewell—is a witness to this fidelity. It is an ancient centre of devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, much loved by Catholics in these northern climes. If Lud’s Church spoke to me of fear, defiance and dissent (which, as I wrote in my previous post, also have positive sides to them), Fernyhalgh breathes a different atmosphere. One can still sense in its tranquil serenity something of the faith and courage of those Lancastrian Catholics who continued to go to pray at the shrine even in the worst years of persecution in the 16^th and 17^th Centuries. Bear in mind that at this time Catholics risked being hung, drawn and quartered (only look up what this means if you are not squeamish) for celebrating Mass (if priests) or staying loyal to the Pope and Church of Rome. To go to Ladyewell was, therefore, to risk being fined, imprisoned and even potentially killed. But go they did. All for the love of a woman, Mary, the Mother of God, as Catholics revere her.

What is amazing about the faith of these people was their devotion to a rite which many modern Catholics find boring and invent all sorts of excuses to avoid: I mean the Mass. This Catholic sacrament had been outlawed by the government and replaced by a new Communion rite based on a more Protestant theology. But many Catholics were determined to keep attending it and did so in secret sites up and down the land. Numerous country houses, run then by Catholic gentry, bear witness to this, with the hidden chapels and hiding holes for priests in case of a raid by government agents. Scores of young men went abroad to train for the priesthood and returned in disguise to minister to the clandestine Catholics, knowing it was only a question of time before they would be arrested and executed. Ordinary lay people—men and women, like St Margaret Clitherow, a butcher’s wife in York—risked and finally gave their lives to hide these priests. All for love of the Mass. Fernyhalgh has numerous relics of these martyrs.

Of course, if one really believed what the Mass is, one would not be surprised at this. For us Catholics the Mass is the re-living, the making present each day, of Jesus’ death on the Cross and his rising from the dead. When, at the Last Supper, he showed bread and wine and said “this is my body which is given for you” and “this is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many”, and added “Do this in memory of me”, he was instituting the Mass. The Mass makes present Jesus’ giving and pouring out of his body and blood on Calvary Hill, anticipated in that supper and then re-enacted through this sacrament. If you truly believe that this is God in human form offering his life and whole self to you, then risking your life for him is no longer such a big thing.

I appreciate that all I have said thus far could appear to some readers as a form of Catholic triumphalism, basking in the glory of these illustrious past co-religionists. While I think that anyone who actually checked the facts of what I have written would find them to be correct, I certainly sympathize with this concern in that it is also true that we should never travel to blame others. To travel to fuel prejudice is almost the antithesis of the purpose of traveling. To travel is to open one’s mind, not to close it. While it is perfectly valid to travel in order to grow in faith—which is precisely the point of that particular genre of traveling we call “pilgrimage”—we should remember that faith must never become fanaticism. It should be a journey to a new place, not a return to old grievances. A pilgrimage should aim at the conversion of heart, not its hardening.

And so while I go to Fernyhalgh to be inspired by the bravery of these ancestors in religion—to try to live my faith today with the same courage they showed then—I also realize that I must not go to nurture a grudge or a victim complex. Besides, I am fully aware—to my shame—that while many Catholics have suffered great brutality in history, not a few have inflicted it on others. Thus, living faith should never be fostering resentment. As much as one might have suffered, collectively or even personally, the only way forward is to seek one’s own conversion, and not spend one’s life expecting others to say sorry. If we turn to God and virtue ourselves, others might in time follow our example. This “turning” is why we go on pilgrimage.

So, let me finish these reflections with some words from an ancient Christian writing attributed to a certain St Dorotheus. Put simply, the text’s advice is: blame yourself, not others, a self-blaming which, I would add, is an absolutely essential way forward in any ecumenical or inter-religious dialogue. In what way do I need to change to overcome the pride, greed, insecurity, bitter zeal or narrow rigidity which might lead me to mistreat others, in the name of religion or any other apparently noble cause?

But let the text speak for itself: “The reason for all disturbance, if we look to its roots, is that no one finds fault with himself. This is the reason why we become angry and upset, why we sometimes have no peace in our soul … We hope or even believe that we are on the right path even when we are irritated by everything and cannot bear to accept any blame ourselves. This is the way things are. However many virtues a man may have … if he has left the path of self-accusation he will never have peace: he will be afflicted by others or he will be an affliction to them, and all his efforts will be wasted.”

Suggested next reading: Questions You Need To Ask Yourself Before Traveling

The post How Travel Can Help Us Move Past Prejudice, Pain & Resentment appeared first on Modern Trekker.

The Oxford Dictionary defines travel as, “Make a journey, typically of some length.” But, if travel is simply to “make a journey”, then why do we love and crave the word? After all, we make journeys and travel every day. We travel to work, we travel back home from work, etc.

So what is it about the word “travel” that carries such excitement when the word itself can describe so much of our mundane activities?

A Code Word

In reality, there is little doubt that “travel” is actually a code word for adventure, exploration, discovery, escapism, new experiences, and more. Hidden away in the small word “travel” is a vast ocean of possibilities, dreams and fulfillment.

But then what happens if our travels provide none of these sensations? What happens when our vacations, travels or escapes from the mundanity of life are, in actual fact, a real let down? Then what is “travel”?

Perhaps some travel synonyms, in this case, could be presumption, wishful thinking, or even misplaced hope? We as humans often feel like we’re missing out and that the grass is greener on the other side, so perhaps “travel” simply hides and covers our own self-deficiencies and dupes us into thinking the problem is external rather than internal?

After all, if I could just be somewhere else, change my city and start over, then everything would be fine and dandy…right? This idea is explored more here. And what about inward travel? If one contemplates life are they “traveling”? If, as the Oxford Dictionary puts it, travel is just to ”make a journey”, then can you travel into yourself? And more on that idea here.

And why is it that some of us yearn for “more” out of life? What is it that we’re actually looking for? What is it about travel that seems to tap into that vein of longing? And why can’t I shake off the wanderlust? Why is it that, with Bono, I’m left saying (or singing when in the shower), “But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for!”

But let’s just brush aside all the artsy fartsy rhetoric for one moment, is travel simply just for “fun”? Perhaps I’m overcomplicating it?

But then what is travel when we, as tourists, spoil the “fun” for locals, make fools of ourselves and bring discredit to our home countries by acting like idiots? And what about the loved ones we leave behind? Is it “fun” for them hardly ever seeing us?

Moreover, perhaps “travel” is to learn and grow as an individual. But how do we know if we’re “growing” in the right direction? In short, my friends, what IS travel? What is it, really? And why do we ACTUALLY do it?

Well, sorry to disappoint, but I don’t attempt to answer all those questions. However, at the very least, here is the etymology of word travel and a few travel synonyms I’ve taken from a Thesaurus that may help us understand a bit more about what this travel business really is all about.

The Etymology Of Travel

Our English word “travel” comes from the 14^th Century ye olde French word “travailen”. This word means, in essence, to make a difficult journey.

This word is also closely linked to our modern word “travail”, which means “work, labor, toil, suffer”.  The word “travailen” emphasized the difficulty and danger that often accompanied travel in the Middle Ages.

In short, for our great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents, “travel” was a bit of a pain. It was difficult and arduous.

Sure, it had positives such as fleeing danger, finding work, or escaping to find a new promising, hopeful and better life, but, in our modern day and age, how many of us actually travel to start a new, promising life or to escape any real danger? And, if we do, are our reasons as justifiable as our great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents?

In reality, probably not for the majority of us.

I cannot help but think that, in actual fact, our travel can often be quite selfish and consumeristic in comparison to these travelers of old.

That’s not to knock travel at all (I’m writing in a TRAVEL magazine after all!)

But I just wonder if, perhaps, we can sometimes be so consumeristic in our traveling that the very traditional notions of “work, labor, toil, suffer” never enter our minds. Perhaps “travel” is supposed to be hard and arduous to some degree? To include a bit of work among the joy? And, if we never find our travels difficult, demanding or stretching, can we really even call it “travel”?

Travel Synonyms

I know, I know. I’ve just asked even more questions rather than provide answers—I promise I’ll stop. And so, taken from the Oxford Dictionary, here are a few travel synonyms alongside a few personal reflections (and a few more questions…yes, I lied):

1. “go on an excursion” (that certainly has the travailing vibe mentioned above!)

2. “roam” (that interestingly sounds a bit aimless, I suspect a few of my “travels” were more accurately “roams”)

3. “wend one’s way” (so perhaps “My Way” by Frank Sinatra should be on every traveler’s playlist?)

4. “gallivant” (that certainly encapsulates the consumeristic thinking I mentioned above)

5. “odyssey” (now I feel like Captain Kirk from Star Trek)

6. “go” (fair enough, this one at least makes sense to me)

7. “trek” (had to include that for our namesake)

8. “progress” (what if you get lost and go the wrong direction? Can negative progress be a thing? Anyway, I thought travel was supposed to be a break from all these performance markers?!)

9. “roll” (I personally opt to walk rather than roll, but each to their own…)

10. “backpack” (that’s an interesting one, more on that here)

11. “go round“ (I’m sure Genghis Khan told the Chinese they were just on their innocent travels when he and his Mongol horde decided to “go round” the Great Wall of China)

12. “go rapidly” (semi-true: although airplanes are getting faster, airports are DEFINITELY getting slower)

13. “pilgrimage” (as a Catholic, I like this one. Surely shows the otherworldly side to travel and how, in going somewhere new, one can learn more about their old predictable selves, while even traveling into the very depths of God—if one has faith, that is. PS. I really, REALLY want to go on a Joan of Arc pilgrimage. Just throwing that out there)

14. “exploration” (we begin life curious, so is it any wonder that we find ourselves curious of other cultures and people later in life too?)

15. “jaunt” (as an Englishmen I would use this word if I wanted to take a stroll to the pub for tea—and by “tea” I mean dinner)

Conclusion

So many questions, so little answers. However, just like me, I hope you found some of these travel synonyms interesting and mildly helpful in coming to terms with this whole “travel” business!

Thanks for reading and comment below if you have any more interesting travel synonyms or your own thoughts on why we’re all acting like irresponsible adults by avoiding life with travel!

Suggested next reading: Why You Need To Ditch The Noise & Escape Into Silence ASAP

The post Travel Synonyms And What They Reveal About Travel appeared first on Modern Trekker.

Lud’s Church—which is anything but a church, but more on that later—is part of the Roaches escarpment in Staffordshire, in the West Midlands of England, and is geologically speaking a “chasm”. It’s a splendidly atmospheric slice into the Millstone Grit rock of the area, with sheer walls covered, to quote the site, in “algae, mosses and ferns in varying shades of vivid green, all dripping with moisture in this perfect, damp micro-climate.” If you visit it alone on a rainy day, it’s also a bit spooky with a sense of the secret sect which used to meet there in bygone days.

Secret sect! What’s all that about? Now it’s getting interesting, and maybe that’s why it’s called a church. When one goes there, one feels dissent and fear and can imagine people watching nervously at either end of the chasm while surreptitious worship took place in its depths. And that indeed is what appears to have happened.

It would seem that a 15^th Century heretical group known as the Lollards used to meet here for their services, led, according to some accounts, by a certain Walter de Lud-Auk (which might explain the place’s name: Lud’s Church). Followers of John Wycliffe—a Protestant avant la lettre (to put it pretentiously)—and persecuted by the authorities, the Lollards came here for their illegal gatherings. Wycliffe (ca. 1320-1384) was the driving force of a translation of the Bible into English, a revolutionary move at a time when reading Scripture in the vernacular was not encouraged. He also criticised wealth and worldliness in the Church (which at that time in England was uniquely Catholic) and he attacked both monastic life and the papacy. Thus, in every way he appears a forerunner of Martin Luther, except that he wasn’t as well-known or successful as his German counterpart (had you heard of him before now?) He eventually died of a sudden stroke, though his body was posthumously dug up and burned by Church authorities in 1428.

You might wonder why I, a very non-dissenting Catholic priest, like to come to this spot. The answer is certainly firstly for its natural beauty. But the second reason is to drink in something of that mix of fear and defiance which must have gripped these religious rebels as they stood confined by these damp and narrow walls hidden high up in the Peaks. What was actually going on here?

Simplistic analyses are not helpful in these cases. A black and white reading—with no real knowledge of the historical period—of Wycliffe’s life as a tale of a brave rebel fighting a corrupt institutional Church would do no service to the truth. No doubt there were faults on both sides. For all his valid points, Wycliffe was very extreme in a number of his positions and appears to have been used by the powerful nobleman John of Gaunt as an unwitting tool in the latter’s self-interested fight against Church authorities.

Nor we can we necessarily call this a period of religious decline with, therefore, Wycliffe as the unique luminary. Indeed, it was in many ways one of fervor in the Catholic Church. Great spiritual figures like Julian of Norwich, an Englishwoman despite her name; the mystic and Church reformer St. Catherine of Siena; and the now-classic writer Thomas a Kempis, were all on the planet at around the same time as Wycliffe, as was his fellow rebel in Bohemia, Jan Hus, who largely followed Wycliffe’s ideas. None of them were blind to problems within the Church but whereas the former three believed passionately in spiritual reform from within, the latter two favored more open opposition. Were these right for being so radical? Given what I am, you won’t be surprised to hear me suggest they might not have been, but I willingly recognize that they raised important questions and had these been answered in their time, the later split into Catholics and Protestants might never have happened.

But were our Lud’s Church Lollards heroes or villains, enlightened or dupes? We must have someone to accuse: either them or the authority which persecuted them. No doubt, there are numerous secret sects today which we would probably all agree are harmful to society and are best repressed—or “made illegal”, as we’d now put it (though most of us, I hope, would not favor burning their members, alive or dead, as the means to do so!) If you disagree with what I have just written, try substituting the word “sect” by “cult” and see if your opinion stays the same.

And as for the Lollards being “heretical”, what does it mean to be a “heretic” anyway? Today’s heretics are sometimes tomorrow’s heroes. When is a heretic a courageous revolutionary and when is he a blind and stubborn fanatic? Or he might be a bit of both. It’s also a striking thought (it strikes me at least) that whereas in the past a heretic was someone who denied specifically defined doctrines, a heretic today could simply be someone who stands against fashionable opinions. So I could be a heretic, a deviant from the “norm”, simply by upholding traditional moral values which have enjoyed universal acceptance for centuries but which no longer suit contemporary palates. A heretic in the past was someone opposed to what was considered objective truth. A heretic today is someone who dares to claim that objective truth might still exist and require our consent.

I come here to Lud’s Church to grapple with all these questions and to try to learn a bit of subtlety. Yes, to be challenged by “heresy”, the frequent daring of its proponents and the validity of many of their claims, but to learn also that there are usually two sides to every argument and the underdog is not necessarily the innocent victim. Might is most certainly not always right, but nor is it always wrong. Too easily we have a prejudice against “the institution”. I am perfectly prepared to believe that individual bishops could have dealt heavy-handily with this or similar situations (the Catholic Church can be as incompetent as any other organisation), but I will not condemn them simply for seeking to check the Lollards’ doctrines if they genuinely believed they represented a threat to the people under their charge and to society’s stability as they saw it. Yet it is also the case that while, as a Catholic priest, I believe in and seek to be deeply loyal to my Church, I have come to appreciate that we have a lot to learn from those who oppose it, also from within. They too may well have a valid point to make.

The place certainly speaks to me of fear more than faith. Were these Lollards theologically literate dissidents—I think, unlikely—or were they hoodwinked in their turn by somebody, perhaps the above-mentioned Walter de Lud-Auk, who wanted to enjoy religious authority over them? We will only find out in the next life. And yet, these clandestine worshippers were in their own way brave people who were ready to take significant risks for what they thought they believed in. I doubt that anybody went to Lud’s Church for earthly gain, and they probably had a lot to lose. So, questions abound and, in part, we travel to prompt ever further questions, constantly challenged by what we see and experience.

So, leaving open the question as to whether this really is a holy site or not, I think we should always be open to the possibility that places can be sacred. We can visit them to feel faith in the stones around us. For someone with religious sensitivity, spiritual grace can be touched in the very rocks.

Numerous fantastic stories have attached themselves to Lud’s Church. Some claim that it was used by Robin Hood and Bonnie Prince Charlie or was the site the anonymous author had in mind for the final showdown in the 14^th Century poem “Sir Gawain and The Green Knight”.  Today, there are not a few people who would see religion as just one more fantasy tale. But places like Lud’s Church call on us not to be so simplistic. First of all, some study is required to know the facts; how ignorant we can be of what we blithely disregard. Then one needs at least some sensitivity to sacred sites, which have spoken to many people throughout the centuries and surely not all of them were complete fools. And finally one must be ready to be challenged by the convictions of others, whatever you might believe—or not.

Suggested next reading: Discovering Beauty In Liverpool: A Gallery Definitely Worth Seeing

The post Faith Hidden Among The Rocks: Lud’s Church In The Peak District, England appeared first on Modern Trekker.

I am here to do a retreat. But isn’t it curious that we talk of this most spiritual of activities—in my case, five days of silent prayer guided by a priest preaching to us—as a “retreat”? I thought the whole purpose of prayer was to take us up and forward, not back, which is what the word “retreat” implies. It is usually a defeated or at least an unsuccessful army which retreats, not a victorious one. But silence is a form of retreat and, in fact, to advance one needs retreat. One needs to step back from one’s daily activity and all its hustle and bustle to try to discover the meaning of it all. Only in silence can one discern the sense of so much noise which our everyday duties require from us, and very often the more you try to live for others, the more you must immerse yourself in their noise. Mothers of small children will know all about this.

Though I have spent numerous hours in the house chapel praying before the Blessed Eucharist, I have also enjoyed long walks in this God-blessed countryside with the South Downs as backdrop and nature all around me bursting back into life after its long repression by winter. Walking, I am convinced, is a way to God. As a Christian—and so a firm believer in Jesus Christ as truly God made man—it matters a lot to me that my Lord Jesus actually walked on human feet and made long journeys over very real, and no doubt very dusty, dirt tracks. Journeying was an important part of God’s way to men. And so my retreat has included walking. It is also, of course, by walking that one actually makes contact with nature which so dynamically and powerfully reveals God and his beauty to us. So, you see, I started talking of an interior journey and have slid into a physical one, be it simply my daily two-hour strolls in or near Ashdown Forest. It is a virtuous circle, as it always is. Exterior and interior movement must flow into each other and then into God, who, as the psalm puts it so beautifully in its Latin form, “ascensiones in corde disposuit”. He has put into our hearts a desire to ascend, to go up.

I enter into myself to discover the still, silent voice of the Holy Spirit: God is more intimate to us than we are to ourselves, as St Augustine so memorably put it. Silence settles on me like soft rain on dry ground. I pray with Scripture: “Pour down, oh heavens, from above!” “My soul longs for you like a dry, weary land in which there is no water.” This hardly applies to the squidgy, muddy soil I have been treading over, but it does apply to my spiritual state. May the rain of your grace journey down and into me, o God.

Silence involves listening, which means accepting that I don’t have all the answers, there is a wisdom beyond mine, there are parts of the picture I failed to see. Listening to God might lead us to realize we have to listen more to others: we have too casually, too stubbornly disregarded their opinion. I have been blind—and deaf. Silence involves overcoming the interior monologue, the interior accuser who wastes his or her energies on blaming others. Ultimately, I must change, not they. Accepting this is a big step forward on my journey.

Silence includes taking the risk that in response to your silence you find…silence. Your silence is met by what seems an even greater silence. Your efforts to pray draw an apparent blank. But if we persevere in that silence, some form of answer makes itself heard, a glimmer of light in the cloud. Gradually something like a way forward begins to appear. God’s touch makes itself felt, so incredibly gentle but unmistakable.

Where do you want to take me, Lord? There might be doors we don’t want him to open, with goods behind them we don’t want to surrender, comforts we don’t want to relinquish, vices we don’t want to abandon. Pope Francis has put it beautifully in his recent exhortation, Gaudete et Exsultate, using also the journey metaphor. He writes:

“When, in God’s presence, we examine our life’s journey, no areas can be off limits. In all aspects of life we can continue to grow and offer something greater to God, even in those areas we find most difficult. We need, though, to ask the Holy Spirit to liberate us and to expel the fear that makes us ban him from certain parts of our lives. God asks everything of us, yet he also gives everything to us. He does not want to enter our lives to cripple or diminish them, but to bring them to fulfilment.”

He talks of “an authentic process of leaving ourselves behind in order to approach the mystery of God”, and I would add to this, in order likewise to approach the mystery of others. Seeking God has traditionally been described as going up a mountain, either metaphorically or at times in the Bible very literally. Yet, as we all know, you can’t climb a mountain dragging a treasure trove. The view we attain, however, the beauty we discover, are worth far more than all those bits of metal and stone. My strolls in Ashdown Forest were hardly mountaineering but in the silence of the countryside and of the chapel, I like to believe I edged a bit closer to God and to some form of personal and spiritual growth. Journeying requires leaving a lot behind in order to gain even more. The journey into silence, for those brave enough to undertake it, teaches us this.

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Wherever we go or stay, we travel—that is, if we do so as rational and sensitive human beings. Why waste money on flights—and give one’s country a bad name—if it’s just to drink abroad. To travel is to look, to wonder, to contemplate, to ask why, to be challenged, to convert. You will be affirmed by or made grateful about some aspect of your life. You will feel the need to change others. A man or woman who cannot appreciate the beauty of a local pond or wood doesn’t deserve to travel. If you haven’t rejoiced over sunrays sparkling softly on a local river, don’t bother adding to your carbon footprint. When you can begin to enjoy beauty around you, you might start to value it abroad. When you begin to be curious about the cultural diversity in your neighborhood, you might have some hope of understanding something about a culture across the sea.

How deeply do I consider the world around me? How much do I notice? What questions do I ask myself? To travel is to go out of oneself, to go beyond one’s confines, to break out of one’s prejudices. But to do that one must have something to go out of, some substance of personality, some depth of thought, some firmly held values to question. A cloud does not go out of itself. It simply forms or dissipates under the wind’s influence. An empty person does not really journey, he is merely blown about by advertising or peer pressure. Only by knowing where you stand—culturally, morally, socially—can you take a significant step to move somewhere else.

Wherever we go, we travel. A deep person doesn’t need to go far to go a long way in exploring life’s mystery. Then the further such a person might travel abroad, the more he or she will advance inside. A shallow person might fly to the furthest extremes and go through life like a Neanderthal knuckle-scraping the narrow stretch of land he dare not go beyond. The real journey is inside. Ultimately, the question is not how far you want to go but how deep.

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