Traveling in Place

Traveling Out of Place (Part 5)

(If you have not already done so, please scroll down and read parts 1-4 before reading this entry.)

August 19, 5:00 p.m. in Northern Nevada

Leaving Roseville, the train began its ascent into the Sierra Nevada Mountains, climbing from just above sea level this morning to the highest point on the Union Pacific Railroad, just under 7,000 feet in elevation. On the way, we followed the ridges of the mountains overlooking several deep passes, and prior to reaching Truckee, we passed by Donner Lake, named for the nearby pass and the party who died there trying to get Cailfornia in the winter of 1846-47. The track descended 600 feet into Truckee. From there, we followed the Truckee River through the Truckee Canyon, where we were treated to jaw-dropping beauty as we wound through the bottom of the canyon on both sides of the rapids-filled river. 

Traveling Out of Place (Part 4)

(If you haven't already, please scroll down to read parts 1-3 before reading this entry.)

August 15, 8:00 a.m. in Seattle

We’re at King Street Station awaiting our next train. Martha bought a copy of the Seattle Times, and the front-page story is about the smoky haze from wildfires in Washington and well up into British Columbia. Locals are lamenting that this is the second summer in a row when the Puget Sound has become nearly invisible, and wondering if the haze is a “new normal” for Seattle summers. But as climatologists are warning, these wildfires are not merely a new normal, which would imply that we have reached a new stasis. The situation is likely to become much worse unless human behavior changes dramatically.

 

2:15 p.m., Portland, Oregon

This morning we boarded a new train heading south for San Francisco. Just south of Tacoma, Washington, the tracks hug the edge of the lower Puget Sound. The wildfire haze persists, but this part of the Sound is narrower and marked with islands, so long-range visibility is not quite as critical for appreciating its beauty. The best moment before leaving the Sound was when a bald eagle soared toward the train out the Nisqually Flats and then turned to fly alongside us!

We continue to meet interesting people during meals. Today at lunch, we shared a table with a couple a few years older than us who live in Florida, but previously lived outside of Albany. We told similar stories from each others’ lives and our level of mutual understanding helped us to see the humor in those experiences. That in turn led to conversation about what’s funny about other things we have observed. I haven’t laughed so hard in months. I’ve heard that the last thing to come in learning a new language is humor. When you meet someone whose sense of humor melds so easily with your own, you’re already “speaking the same language.” It’s one thing to meet interesting people. It’s something else to meet people who could have been your friends your whole life.

Minutes ago, we re-boarded after an extended stop at Union Station in Portland, a venerable old historic building that is stately and attractive inside and out. The same can be said of King Street station in Seattle. It’s nice to see these older public gathering places being well maintained and well-used. Their intricate classical architecture and high ceilings transform spaces from functional containers of people to artistic expressions of human society. Like cathedrals, they create a sense of sacredness for those who enter.

Traveling Out of Place (Part 3)

(If you haven't already, please scroll down and read parts 1 & 2 before reading this post.)

August 12, 4:30 p.m., in north central Montana

Even though we afforded ourselves the luxury of a private sleeper for this excursion, we still interact with lots of other people, including multiple attendants who enjoy banter with passengers, fellow travelers in the cafe lounge and observation deck, and meal partners in the dining car.

Since the dining car always fills up, couples are asked to sit on the same side of a table to make room for two on the other side. Last evening over dinner, we met two fellow empty nesters who, just like us, are journeying to places they haven’t been and mixing in visits with adult children. We shared breakfast with a Mennonite farmer and agricultural missionary to Senegal and his Senegalese companion. At lunch, we chatted with a brother and sister, one a senior in college and the other a senior in high school, who are on an adventure before little brother leaves home for school. These long train rides are designed to encourage lots of mingling between people who don’t know each other, which is another feature of train travel that recommends it above driving, riding a bus, or flying.

Building relationships, even for the short term – even for the length of one long conversation – is not the domain of extroverts (which I most certainly am not). It is as basic to our humanity as eating and sleeping. We are made for each other. The creation account in Genesis – as prelude to the long divine history of covenant-making – teaches us that none of us is capable of reflecting the image of God all by ourselves, but only as we live in community with others. But this God-given potential, which is also a necessity if we are to mature into our potential, requires practice and intention. Before the digital age, before television and radio, social practices and customs developed our social muscles from an early age. Most people learned things like manners, courtesy, social graces, and even the art of small talk (which, as I learned in my days of rural ministry, is actually a bit of a dialogic dance that, if pursued well, leads to big talk about important things). The best entertainment consisted of storytelling and shared music (which was all “acoustic” and unplugged before anybody knew anything different).

Traveling Out of Place (Part 2)

(If you haven't already, please scroll down and read Part 1 before reading this post.)

August 12, 9:30 a.m., in northern North Dakota

“O beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain...”

 “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it.” (Psalm 24:1)

We’re in the Great Plains. The sky is spacious and amber waves of grain stretch out for miles. Everything is vast – the wheat fields, the hayfields, the corn fields – all except people, who are sparse, living in remote houses on well-kept lawns.

Last night, while we were eating in the dining car, we crossed and then followed the Mississippi River where it forms the border between Wisconsin and Minnesota. The craggy hills on the Minnesota side feature odd outcroppings that jut out toward the river. In Winona, a pinnacle, aptly named “Sugarloaf,” shoots straight up out of a bluff, the result of 19^th-century quarrying.  The river was beautiful at sunset. Several lighted marinas along the way and nice homes overlooking the water suggest the area is coveted resort territory.

We woke up this morning in the flat farmland of North Dakota. Out here, the railroad tracks often cross long, straight dirt roads with no crossing guardrails. The train horn always blows, but I’ve yet to see a vehicle kicking up dust on any of those roads. Most of the settlements we’ve passed since the sun came up have been just a collection of a few houses. But once in while, there’s an honest-to-goodness town with a main street fronted by brick two-story buildings on both sides for about a city block, a diner, a post office, and a modest rail yard. One memorable town was Rugby, boasting itself as the geographic center of North America. And Minot (Where we stopped long enough to get out and stretch our legs) looks like a substantial commercial and industrial center for the surrounding country. (I looked it up. Minot has a population of nearly 50,000, which must be enormous by regional standards.)

Traveling Out of Place: Notes and Reflections from My Journey to Places I've Never Been (Part 1)

Martha and I just returned from a nearly two-week excursion of train travel and visiting two West Coast cities. I had thought of posting something to my blog every day we were traveling, but that proved to be impractical. For most of the trip, we had no Wi-fi, and for much of it, not even cell service. When we were in places with full Internet access, we were busy soaking in the sights and sounds around us and pretty much crashed at the end of the day. I did, however, keep a log of our trip (including some reflections along the way), and now I’m going to post it in its entirety in six parts over six days. This will be a little confusing since the dates of publication will not line up with the dates the entries were written, but I hope you’ll derive some vicarious enjoyment from them. - JML

August 11, 8:30 a.m. in northern Indiana

Traveling by car along superhighways is boring. These huge arteries, largely insensitive to the landscape, strategically avoid getting too close to anything interesting. Signs let you know about “attractions” that are somewhere out of sight, but mostly they direct you toward motels, gas stations, and chain restaurants that look the same no matter what part of the country you are crossing.

Airplane travel is fast, but the novelty of seeing the landscape from up high is only available to half or less of the passengers and is seriously compromised by cramped seating, sinus pressure, and occasional turbulence. The view from six miles up can certainly be beautiful, but it is mostly monotonous and, of course, lacking the richness of detail.

America looks more real through the window of a train car. No gaudy billboards, no plastic retail strips or cheesy tourist traps. The tracks pass by sprawling farms, largely abandoned hamlets, and tall church spires in the distance marking rural crossroads. The large picture windows afford close-up views of vibrant downtowns in small cities and villages that remain unseen from the freeways. Passengers sidle up close to working and abandoned factories, gritty working-class neighborhoods with 70s-era sedans parked along curbs, backyards littered with toys or manicured with gardens sloping away from houses that appear to have been expanded multiple times, with far more attention to function than form. Older neighborhoods with stately but not overstated homes and newer subdivisions with well-kept front lawns also come into view.

Of course, you could see all this from a car if you stayed on two-lane roads, but on a train, somebody else is doing the work. You don’t have to stop at red lights, pull over for gas, wonder where you’re going to eat, wait at railroad crossings(!), or keep your eyes on the road. How about a bus? You’re not driving, so you’re free to watch the scenery, but buses follow roads. Trains – and only trains – follow tracks, which means they sometimes parallel roadways, but often make their own paths where no other form of transportation goes, affording perspectives of urban and rural landscapes and natural beauty unattainable any other way.

Puritanism Redux

“A dangerous movement, undetected by many, is now challenging and eroding our great tradition of religious freedom. [This movement] must be confronted and stopped.” – Attorney General Jeff Sessions on the establishment of the “Religious Liberty Task Force” within the Department of Justice.

I serve as a pastor in the United Church of Christ, a denomination that in part traces its roots to the Mayflower Pilgrims who are celebrated everything Thanksgiving. This group of 101 religious “Separatists” (so named because they separated from the Church of England) had already escaped religious persecution in England by crossing the channel and settling in Holland, where religious toleration was the law. But since all sorts of other licentious behaviors were also tolerated by the Dutch, this devout group of believers decided to risk a voyage across the Atlantic to the New World, where they hoped to form a new community free to practice the Christian faith as they saw fit in what they believed would be a more pristine environment. They named their new settlement “Plymouth.”

The pilgrims’ understanding of “religious liberty” was simple. All people should be free to worship God as they chose. No one should be coerced to accept a particular faith tradition, but all should be free to express their beliefs without fear of reprisal. It didn’t take long for this principle to be tested. The pilgrims soon realized the New World was actually very old and populated by people with their own traditions and beliefs. For roughly half a century, the pilgrims and natives engaged in sometimes tense but always hopeful dialogue and a rich exchange of practices and ideas.

This peaceful co-existence would soon be overwhelmed, however, by another colonial enterprise just to the north. The Massachusetts Bay Colony was formed out of a mixture of commercial and religious interests. Puritans (not Separatists) came to the New World with the stated intention of creating a “New England,” purifying English religion with a more biblically-based church. These Puritans also sought religious freedom, but only for themselves. When confronted with the presence of natives, they were quite clear about their intention either to convert them to Christianity or drive them away. The Massachusetts Bay Congregational Churches were determined to create a new Christian society, a theocracy supported by local taxes. Citizenship and church membership were one and the same.