The Long Walk Home

Go Here First! Luke 24:13-35

The “doldrums” is a popular nautical term for when a boat is stuck in windless waters. The boat just floats, bobbing along, going nowhere. And before there were engines to motor your way out of them, all you could do in the doldrums was wait it out. It’s super frustrating, and sometimes, even life threatening, if you didn’t have enough provisions to get you through. There is an area around the equator known for them, about five degrees above and below it, where there is no wind to move you along. It’s hot. It’s dreadfully boring. It’s tedious.  If you get caught in the doldrums, you simply float along, and wait. 

Often, this term, “the doldrums” has been used to describe depression. It’s a place of no activity, of waiting, of bobbing along until something changes. It can be disheartening, frustrating, and sometimes, life threatening. 

But for even those of us who aren’t cursed with the dreaded noonday demon, we’re all in our own doldrums these days. This virus has us stuck in our houses, sitting on our porch swings, waiting in the drive throughs, floating along, waiting it out.

Now, some of us are being extremely productive. You’re cleaning out your basements and rearranging the furniture, you’re organizing your tax receipts and scrubbing the baseboards. You’re reading all those novels stacked by your bed and finishing that quilt and those mittens you started ages ago. 

For others of you, life has gotten even more hectic. You’re working from home and teaching the kids. Or you’re going in to work, and your workload has increased exponentially.  For some of us, the stress has been multiplied.

But some of us, we’re paralyzed. We’re stuck. We sleep too much and stay in our pajamas, we let the dishes pile up, we eat all the Lucky Charms, and we forget when we last brushed our teeth. 

And some of us are stuck in our worry, not sleeping enough, forgetting to eat, rocking back and forth in our chairs of anxiety. How will we pay the bills, how will we get through the day, will there ever be an end to this pandemic?  

Whatever the case, I am getting the feeling that all this quarantine business is starting to get old for all of us, whether we’re doing too much or not enough. We’re stuck. Brene Brown says that both over- and under- functioning are results of our anxiety, that they come from the same place of being unsure, uncomfortable, and stressed. Whether we’re stuck trying to think up new projects to keep us occupied, or we’re stuck trying to make it through the stress of the day, or we’re stuck in our own personal anxiety, scanning Instagram and then Twitter and then Facebook and back again for some sign that the winds are starting to move, the waves are starting to crest, but no, we’re all in the doldrums. 

My kids just want to stare at screens. They lose time. They forget how long they’ve been watching or playing, and they forget to eat, they lose their minds. They get bored. They cry, “what can we do?!” And then reject every option we offer. They’re in the doldrums, too.

It’s strange to be in the doldrums during the Easter season. We should be excited and active, moving and praising and accomplishing and sharing and participating in the changing of the world. I mean, it’s Spring after all! But here we are. In the waiting. There’s not much we can do, except wait it out. And we humans are not very good at waiting. We want to be entertained, we want to be distracted, we want something to do. 

Theologian and spiritual thinker Richard Rohr, calls this a liminal space. It’s a space of time separate from the usual, separate from what we once knew, and yet we have not yet arrived at what will be. 

He says, “We keep praying that our illusions will fall away. God erodes them from many sides, hoping they will fall. But we often remain trapped in what we call normalcy—“the way things are.” Life then revolves around problem-solving, fixing, explaining, and taking sides with winners and losers. It can be a pretty circular and even nonsensical existence. To get out of this unending cycle, we have to allow ourselves to be drawn into sacred space, into liminality. All transformation takes place here. We have to allow ourselves to be drawn out of “business as usual” and remain patiently on the “threshold” (limen, in Latin) where we are betwixt and between the familiar and the completely unknown. There alone is our old world left behind, while we are not yet sure of the new existence. That’s a good space where genuine newness can begin. Get there often and stay as long as you can by whatever means possible. It’s the realm where God can best get at us because our false certitudes are finally out of the way. This is the sacred space where the old world is able to fall apart, and a bigger world is revealed. If we don’t encounter liminal space in our lives, we start idealizing normalcy. The threshold is God’s waiting room. Here we are taught openness and patience as we come to expect an appointment with the divine Doctor.

Some native peoples call liminal space “crazy time.” I believe that the unique and necessary function of religion is to lead us into this crazy, liminal time. Instead, religion has largely become a confirmation of the status quo and business as usual. Religion should lead us into sacred space where deconstruction of the old “normal” can occur. Much of my criticism of religion comes about when I see it not only affirming the system of normalcy but teaching folks how to live there comfortably. Cheap religion teaches us how to live contentedly in a sick world, just as poor therapy teaches us how to accommodate ourselves to a sometimes small world based on power, prestige, and possessions. A good therapist and a good minister will always open up larger vistas for you, which are by definition risky, instead of just “rearranging the deck chairs” on a sinking Titanic.”

This liminal space is where we are now. It’s betwixt and between. It’s the doldrums. A space of waiting. And a space of tremendous opportunity.

That’s where two disciples find themselves, on their long walk home from Jerusalem. They’re headed to Emmaus. We’re not sure why. Maybe to go back to life as they knew it before Jesus came and turned their lives upside down. Maybe they’re going back to their tax collecting, their fishing, their scrambling to pay the bills and put food on the table, to return to their life as they once knew it. 

Confused by recent events, perplexed by the stories of Jesus’ resurrection, frustrated and saddened and made hopeless by his death, the disciples are walking to Emmaus, back to what they once knew before Jesus came and called out to them and gave them a new purpose and a new focus and a new fire burning within their hearts. All that has been replaced by confusion. Why is the tomb empty? Is Jesus alive? Where is he? We saw him die. We laid him in the tomb. We saw the humiliation and the gore and the hopelessness of his broken body hanging on the cross next to two thieves. We heard the laughter of the soldiers, the triumph of the religious leaders. What is going on? What is happening? 

It’s all uncertain and unknown. They’re in an unprecedented time. And all they know to do now is to just go back home, start their lives over again, go back to what is known. 

So they walk. They walk and they talk about the weekend’s strange and heartbreaking events. They try to process their grief. They tell stories. They’re in a liminal space, neither here nor there, betwixt and between, on the road, in process, walking, neither in Jerusalem where all this has taken place, nor home, where normalcy resides. They’re leaving and they’ve not yet arrived. They’re in the doldrums, a place of waiting and uncertainty, of watching and observing and being confused and a little frightened. They’re waiting. And they’re waiting. 

And Jesus comes to them. In this liminal space, in the middle of their doldrums, where things are confusing and frustrating and heartbreaking and so unclear. What are they to do next? Where are they to go? What now? 

Jesus asks them what they are talking about and they “stood still, looking sad.” They stop moving. There is no ebb and flow. No gentle rocking of productive waves. They are mired in their grief. 

But Jesus finds them. Jesus tracks them down. 

Jesus walks with them. Jesus goes with them in their grief. Jesus listens to their stories. Jesus tells his own. And nothing really happens. They don’t even recognize who they’re talking to. They walk and talk and tell stories in their grief. And when night comes, when Jesus is about to leave, they ask him to stay. To stay with them in their sadness, stay with them in their loss, stay with them in their grief and their waiting. And so, he stays. What a strange thing for a stranger to do, to stay with a couple of morose, sad, depressed people whom he’s never met. What a strange thing for a stranger to do, to walk with them in their doldrums, to wait it out with them, to join them in this liminal space. Jesus does all this, and they still don’t recognize him. 

It’s hard to see clearly when you’re in the doldrums. So hard, in fact, that I’ve made some pretty destructive decisions just to get myself out of the doldrums. Just to promote any movement at all, I’ve made some awful choices, just because I couldn’t sit in the uncomfortableness of the stillness. 

But, as Richard Rohr tells us, these doldrums, this liminal space is a place of great opportunity. It’s a time when we stop the meaningless movement, the constant distractions, and we sit, and we wait. We tell the stories that mean something to us. We sit in the mystery and the confusion. We wait for God to come to us. 

And God does. God will. And God has. 

We just don’t recognize God yet. 

Jesus isn’t recognized by the disciples until he shares a meal with them, until the breaking of the bread and the sharing of the cup. That is what snaps them out of the doldrums, that is what opens their eyes and enables them to process what they’ve experienced throughout this long walk home. 

While you’re in the doldrums, you can’t tell what is meaningful and what’s not, you can’t see what is life changing, or transformational, you can’t make sense of what’s been given to you. Like my son who just wants to grow up fast, but can’t tell when it’s happening, liminal spaces are places of growth that we can’t measure quite yet. 

The doldrums give us space to be, to see, to stay in our confusion and our doubt, our frustration and our loss. But when you’re out of them, you can look back and say, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road?” Were we not being changed and transformed while we waited it out in this liminal space? 

And then poof, Jesus is gone. Jesus gives us a glimpse, just enough to get us out of ourselves, out of our navel gazing and our contemplation, and then he disappears. Gone. Just like that. But with this new encounter with the risen Christ, we have new stories to tell, new things to ponder, new steps to take. 

After the doldrums, once you’ve gone through the waiting and the frustration and then the encounter with resurrection, then you know what to do. After sitting in this liminal space for awhile, Jesus opens himself up to you, you recognize him in the breaking of the bread and the sharing of the cup. After you hear the stories and tell the stories and walk along, trying to make sense of it all, you know the next steps. For the disciples, it was to turn around and go back from where they came, it was to race back to Jerusalem, back to community, even in the dead of night. 

Our next steps will reveal themselves to us. They will. We just have to wait it out in the doldrums. Christ will come. 

Until then, let us tell and listen to the stories. Let us sit in the mystery. Let us feel all the things we are feeling. Let us ride out the doldrums. Let it be ok. 

The disciples take a long walk home, and Jesus chases them down. Jesus walks with them. Jesus listens to their sorrows and tells and retells their own stories. Jesus reveals himself in the real life tangible, tastable bread and wine. Jesus empowers us back in to community. But for right now, Jesus is with us in the doldrums. 

Thanks be to God.