Nómada.
Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.
~ Jesus
Blessed are those whose strength is in you, whose hearts are set on pilgrimage.
~ Psalmist
I’m learning what it feels like to live as a nomad. I looked at the calendar today to notice that over the last 12 weeks, I have spent only two nights in my own bed. Instead, we have stayed in 14 different locations throughout North Carolina, Oregon, California, New Jersey, London, Paris, the Netherlands, and Spain. It is an experience both privileged and disorienting. And then, surprisingly, reorienting.
When we were in Spain recently, savoring the vast stores of inexpensive, delectable Spanish wines, we came across the bottle pictured above: El Nómada. “The Nomad.” Kellie seized upon its significance for our current lives, that both geographically and spiritually, we have become intentional wanderers.
I told her recently, “I feel like I don’t really have a home anymore. On the other hand, I feel like the world is now my home.” There’s a lot of emotional content in that, layered strata of unmet desires for stability of place and the surprising delights of instability. Maybe this is just a blip of crazy before life settles back down or (and perhaps more likely) the beginning of an extended season of mobility. Impossible to know, but I’m getting more comfortable with not knowing. Which is why I’m writing about this: Unknowing is a lesser-known but highly-transformative spiritual practice. Have you experienced that yet?
I watched a quirky, slow-burn film yesterday (on a plane) called Nomadland about a 60-something widow who spends years drifting around America living out of her van. It’s not a feel-good flick, but neither is it a tragedy. It’s a poignant look at the economic and social displacement (I would add political and spiritual displacement) that is rising within the American psyche these days. I think we could rightly say that we have largely become a generation of psychic nomads, whether we ever leave “home” or not.
And how do we even define home anymore? Is it where we grew up? Is it where our parents or children live? Is it where the job takes us? Is it a chosen, adopted geography? Is it a spiritual community? After countless generations of deep identity with place, we have experienced a slow-motion explosion that has flung us apart across counties, countries, and continents. There’s no going back.
There are losses here… yet there are also surprising gifts.
Much of our spiritual heritage, Old Testament and New, was marked by pilgrimage and wandering. Jesus himself identified as a nomad. A whole medley of monastic traditions was formed around a nomadic posture called mendicant, that is, marked by poverty and itinerancy. What could possibly be the spiritual benefits of such rootlessness? Here are a few possibilities…
Our own micro-mendicancies invite us to relocate our rootedness from external comforts and predictability toward a much deeper experience of Christ-in-me. An inner, more portable rootedness.
Spiritual nomadism (that welcomes but doesn’t require travel) softens our human proclivity towards tribalism and awakens us to the universal, reciprocal commonalities of being human, regardless of culture.
The nomadic life reinforces the spiritual postures that Jesus praises in the Sermon on the Mount: inclusion, compassion, generosity, nonattachment, nonanxiety, nonviolence, etc.
The more we move beyond the boundaries of all we know geographically, emotionally, and intellectually, the more our hearts open to the wonder and humility that Jesus recognized in children. In this sense, adventure itself is a spiritual practice when it helps us be a traveler more than a tourist.
As we get less attached to possessions, which travel helps us with, nomadism invites us to attach more fundamentally to the Kingdom of God that alone reorients us toward that which is most enduring and uniting.
In the spirit of these ideas, I am preparing to backpack alone for a week or two… as soon as I enjoy a few nights in my bed first! Whether your “nomading” is more external or internal, I hope you will explore the gifts it holds for your journey.
growing your soul
What ways might there be for you to soften your attachment to comfort and predictability in order to awaken richer spiritual realities?
serving our world
How might a nomadic mindset help you be more sensitive to and available to the needs of those around you?
takeaway
Wander more.