Voyage and Return.
The Voyage and Return story begins with disruption, and quickly moves to confusion and disorientation. Instead of setting off on a mission or a quest, we’re trying to keep our head above water, to right ourselves after wandering, or stumbling or falling into a strange world that’s foreign to us.
How do we know we’re writing or living this story in our lives? Well, we’ll be saying things like:
- “I didn’t choose this.”
- “Everything feels strange.”
- “What do I do now?”
On this strange journey, we will have to figure stuff out. We’ll have to make order out of chaos. And through it, we’re not challenged by tasks and obstacles as much as by our own confusion and need to find a way. And when we journey through this unknown, we find, like in other story arcs, something about ourselves – a wisdom, a humility, a grounding, perhaps.
Through two example stories: Jesus in the wilderness, and Evelyn Wang’s unsettling journey through the multiverse in “Everything, Everywhere, All at Once”, we explored our own wilderness experiences, wondering what we’ve learned there that can help us when we are thrown into disorientation again in our lives.
Nobody chooses these wildernesses. But they do shape us. And the questions are our questions:
- What will define me?
- How will I respond when life feels out of sorts?
- What values will I hold onto when everything else is shifting?
- Who am I becoming in this disorientation?
Questions for Reflection:
- When in your life have you found yourself in a “wilderness” you didn’t choose?
- What part of your identity felt most tested or uncertain in that season?
- What old strategies or assumptions stopped working when everything felt strange?
- Who or what helped you stay grounded while you were navigating the unfamiliar?
- What wisdom eventually emerged from that time that you couldn’t have learned any other way?
- How might that wisdom guide you now as you face new thresholds or uncertainties?
Be Part of the Conversation
Feel free to leave a comment about whether these questions were helpful or any of your thoughts as you reflected.