Away from Home

I fought back tears in the vestibule of a family restaurant just a few blocks from the Catedral Primada in Toledo, Spain. It was so crowded with soaking tourists, the host had stopped adding names to the waitlist. There I was, starving and shivering, realizing that I had six more hours of walking around Toledo in waterlogged sneakers before I would catch my train back to Madrid.

I am not a “Look on the bright side!” person. When I am grouchy, I prefer to lean into the grouchiness. But in that moment it was clear: I could be miserable or I could enjoy my one (rainy) day in Toledo. If there was ever a time and place I was going to learn this lesson, it was on this trip, to a country I have wanted to visit for years, on a splurge vacation that I planned as an intentional pick-me-up in the wake of the election. And looking back, the afternoon I spent carefully navigating the rain-slicked streets of Toledo’s historic Jewish quarter was one of my favorite experiences of the trip — full of lessons and one I’m so glad I didn’t miss or, worse, grumble my way through.

Being away from home is always full of educational opportunities, and of course not just in the museums. My life has been shaped by the lessons I learned sitting in a schoolhouse in the mountains of El Salvador; during an Uber ride in Jaipur, India; sweating out a summer in Mendenhall, Mississippi; and living abroad for six years in Haiti. 

The scriptures are likewise filled with stories of lessons learned on the road, places marked and named and remembered for the encounters with God and self that happened when our spiritual ancestors took to wandering. So it comes as no surprise to me that Jesus’ instructions for the disciples after his resurrection emphasize staying in Jerusalem.* Not a single one of the disciples was from there. Why they hadn’t already fled after the crucifixion is a mystery to me. But perhaps the disciples sense that they can’t go home just yet, even before the resurrected Jesus tells them to stay put. They have lessons to learn here, things they simply cannot experience back at home.