DAYS 107-109 - Topeka to Bloomington-Normal, IL - 2110 miles from home
- Esther Lisa Tishman
- 4 days ago
- 4 min read
Friends, I think that the proverbial house is on fire. My co-pilgrim for these last 109 days and counting - Bob Hall - does not.
In other words, despite our shared and strenuous endeavor: Bob and I have some serious differences of opinion.
I've said before that the "microcosm is the macrocosm." This little world of our camper van enacts the very same realities as the big old world of the United States of America. Faith in "We the People" begins with the "We" that we actually are... It begins with the people that happen to be right here, beside me, on the open road and in this tin can we lovingly call our Libby.
Bob and I almost never talk politics, but it's clear that we are reading different things on our little devices - and that we are responding in different ways to what are also different headlines. We also eat differently, walk differently, talk differently, pray differently, sleep differently, pass our downtime differently. Bob and I met for the first time just a few weeks before the pilgrimage began, when he was passing through Eugene. He'll point out that I gave him all of 20 minutes of my time that day. I'll point out that I was busy seeing clients that day as part of my counseling internship. So we even have different impressions of that first meeting. And from there we went on to this epic adventure together - perhaps not quite a Fellowship of the Ring, but something powerful and binding and potentially life-transforming.
It may even be world-transforming to forge connections across differences such as these. Microcosm, macrocosm.
How do Bob and I manage? How do the two of us - this odd couple that we've formed over the past 109 days - how do we create a stable and welcoming base in our camper van, with our Hoka shoes and our oatmeal for breakfast - so that not only we get along, but so that the Walkers who join us feel safety and love and, even, joy?
It's like that old joke: How do porcupines play leapfrog? Very carefully.
In truth - we do it very very imperfectly. But we're getting better.
Porcupines that we are, I'm learning more and more acutely (no pun intended) that you've got to pay attention to the sharp and pointy bits. You've got to notice where your own spiny quills are triggered and dart out - you've got to become mindful of the other's quill-iness. And then when you do, inevitably, find yourself or your comrade stuck with a hide-full of quills, you've got to take a deep breath and one by one pluck them out.
Okay - maybe that's a crappy metaphor. But you get the point. (Haha. Couldn't resist.)
Bob and I have forged that unlikeliest of all things: a friendship. We would never have been drawn to each other "in real life" - but, Lovely People, this is real life. And we've all got to become more proficient, I think, at leaning into the unlikeliest things.
None of this would be possible, of course, if either one of us weren't up for the challenge. So you start where there's willingness. You don't try to debate the differences. You don't try to argue your way through. It's like that old saying of exasperated parents to their squabbling kiddos: "You don't have to like each other! Just get along!" But we've had that saying backwards for years. We're never going to get along unless we again find ways to like each other - or at the very least, to once again touch base with what's likable in each other.
For me it begins with curiosity - which is the flipside of the coin from awe & wonder. Each day I spend with Bob allowing myself to be curious - to not-know who he is, to not-know the why and the what - I allow both of us to be liberated from our narratives. From our silos and preconceptions. And I allow both of us to connect with the exhilarating and awesome truth of the human heart.
And oh - on day 109 we found ourselves in the welcoming embrace of yet another United Methodist community, with Pastors Kent and Kathy King-Nobles in Normal, IL. Their vibrant and active church is smack dab in the middle of Illinois State University. I've rarely been in a church as alive and energized - full of the life of the town and of the campus. As we left the church after an engaged dinner with congregants, we could hear tuba music resonating in the halls. Tubas! A professor of music, himself a tuba player and church member, was leading a practice session with his students in the choir room.
Tuba music!?
Life is improbable. Let's begin there. (More about Kent and Kathy in my next post...)
And all afternoon I had roamed the campus of ISU (Go Redbirds!) - my heart soaring. College campuses are my happy place. Despite all the controversies, despite all the problems and questions.... It's on college campuses that I first came to understand the beauty of curiosity - and the possibility of awe and wonder. I first began to study the curriculum of my own porcupine self. I first began to learn there, amid the red brick buildings and the student protests and the science labs, that all manner of unlikely things are, perhaps, actually likable.
