"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime."
Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
That's been true for me whether it refers to my travels abroad, or within the Christian communion. I've worshiped in Christian churches of no fewer than 20 denominations, and on native reservations, overseas, and in the inner-city of major metropolitan centers.
I've also traveled a bit of the world, having traced my roots in Norway, studied the peace process overseas in Northern Ireland, and seen 25 of our fifty states while traveling for work or pleasure.
I've lived in the inner-city of the most segregated city in USA for 10 years now, and have worked as a volunteer in urban projects from Cabrini Green to Milwaukee's North Side.
I've also served the homeless, worked on an AODA unit with conduct-disorder juveniles, worked with gang-bangers in residential facilities, worked as a parking enforcement office, built telecom infrastructure in 10 states, taught technical skills, been a SME, audited the technical work of a telecom company in three states, worked in university admissions, worked in customer service, done lots of writing, created a bit of art, become an uber-geek in several realms, learned to play German strategy games, learned Spanish, and learned to love Nordic noir...
I've also become as diverse in my musical experiences and tastes: Milwaukee urban technopunk (a term I coined); 80's alt; bluegrass; celtic; George Winston; Norwegian groups like Royksopp and Madcon; Gnarls Barkley; Justin Timberlake; Shakira; Sixpence None The Richer; Grits; Sup the Chemist; SFC; Keith Green; Petra; alt-country; and so much more. Too much to try and do more than simply sample.
I'm a complicated person, and tend to be a contrarian/devil's advocate when I encounter absolutism or narrow thinking. This leads me to Twain's next quote:
"I have found out there ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them."
-Tom Sawyer Abroad
I was once responsible for the stopping of a car on a narrow Fjordside road in Norway. I was with four good friends and we had begun talking about faith and politics and I had said, "I don't know how George W Bush gets up and prays to the same God I do." I was trying to say that there was no way that a Christian evangelical as Bush claimed to be (now proven to be a hoax) would be able to seek the Lord and find the go-ahead in prayer to start a war in Iraq, or to do some of the other things he was doing.
This went over like a lead balloon.
I don't take joy in bursting bubbles or upsetting apple carts, at least not when I am doing so with friends or family. I also make some effort to be civil and diplomatic for those who do not fit those categories. However, I have a tendency to use words as weapons when attacked. Sometimes even when I perceive wrongly that I have been attacked. It's a real character flaw of mine, one which I hope to work out with some counseling.
It's so pathetic that even playing strategy board games brings this evil out from within me. I can be thoroughly enjoying a game with friends and someone makes a strategic decision in an attempt to win the game which costs me something that I have built and I can quickly qualify for the DSM-IV diagnosis of bipolar.disorder.
Honestly, lately I think that there is a tangible possibility that I have nothing short of signs that I have some amount of bipolar tendencies. It runs in my family. Let's just say that I wouldn't be the only one with a manic-depressive/bipolar.diagnosis if that were to occur.
That said, I also feel closer to the divine than ever before, and don't feel so much guilt and shame as I usually do. I've been paralyzed by such things for as long as I remember. Fear, guilt, shame and self-loathing have been my companions, like the little sheep in Hinds Feet on High Places by Hannah Hurnard. Lately I have been feeling like the Shepherd is close to me, keeping me safe, and it's been a real source of joy.
But that joy is borne of such ingrown anger and bitterness from my past that I have to tend it to keep it from being suffocated by my old self. The tendency to tread back down well-worn paths of despair always remains for me. These habits are poisonous to my spirit, and they pollute the life around me so that other suffer on account of my despair.
One thing I have always tried to avoid is causing the suffering of any other person. In my dysfunctional home as a kid I was the "hero" for much of my childhood. I tried to steady the waves and keep the peace on behalf of my sisters, but most of all trying to engineer situations where chaos and conflict would not have a chance of arising. I usually failed, but this was still my strongest motivation.
So now when I am struggling with some of the same tendencies to create suffering for those who love and know me, I am confounded, and it kicks me deeper down the path of sorrow. It's actually made me a bit troll-like, rationing my interactions with other people so that they might not know who I am, often paranoid about what sort of things they think of me based upon what poor behaviors I have already displayed. I seek to make it through social engagements without episodes, and ask friends and my wife about "how I did."
But I have digressed. Let me conclude with a statement and a final quote from Twain. I believe that my inner wanderlust and plethoric search for my identity is tied to my fear of becoming either bipolar and manic-depressive or an ingrown, bitter person, locked away in a basement of my own creation. I'm neither an extrovert nor an introvert. I'm a perfectionist and an artist. I'm a writer and a reader. I'm so often overwhelmed with anything short of simplicity, but yet I seek complexity. I don't know what I want or who I am yet.
"It liberates the vandal to travel--you never saw a bigoted, opinionated, stubborn, narrow-minded, self-conceited, almighty mean man in your life but he had stuck in one place since he was born and thought God made the world and dyspepsia and bile for his especial comfort and satisfaction."
- The American Abroad speech, 1868
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