What is the reason?

I have been reading a book (I know,
big surprise), a father-son memoir by Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez titled, Along
the Way.

I picked it up because of their
movie, The Way, the story of a father walking the Camino de Santiago
in Spain to connect with his deceased son. They wrote the book a couple of
years after making the movie, and I read it because I wanted to go deeper

This sort of thing happens to me a
lot. I’ll see a movie, hear an interview, or listen to a podcast, and then go
hunting for more information. I don’t think it’s more detail or more history
that I want, just more insight and understanding. If something causes my heart
to vibrate or my brain to ruminate, I naturally want to go deeper. Who doesn’t?

So, back to the movie. After their
visit to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, the traditional end of the Camino,
the story follows our pilgrims into an office next door. They are entitled to
receive a diploma certifying they have completed the 500-mile hike, joining
other pilgrims who’ve been making this journey for more than 1,000 years. One
of the requirements is to answer a question for the official record: “What is
your reason for walking the Camino?”

This, by the way, is not the same as
asking, “What is your quest?” That’s a destination question. “What is your
reason?” is a motivation question.

In the movie, Tom, played by Martin
Sheen, stammered a bit before saying something like, “I needed to travel more.”
He was a bit embarrassed that his answer was so trivial and that he couldn’t
articulate his real reasons. Sheen later wrote that he was personally confronted
with the same question once he got back home to Malibu, after the movie was
finished. “What is your reason …?”

I think it was the most important
question of the entire memoir. Maybe THE QUESTION of all memoirs. Of all
writing.

Well, as it turns out, I cannot read
a memoir without putting myself into every story. Maybe that’s too self-serving
to think about myself while reading someone else’s book, but isn’t that the
point of all memoir writing? An author tells his personal stories hoping the
reader will connect with their own stories, and so author and reader learn
together?

That’s certainly why I write.

When I read the question in Along
the Way, I knew that for me it was about life and loving and God, my
journey with Cyndi, my changing relationship with my dad and my mom, my years
as a writer and a teacher, my decades as an engineer, my role as father and
father-in-law and grandfather, and even my current stint as Uncle Hub. Those
are all parts of my own personal pilgrimage, my Camino.

And my immediate answer to the
question, without thinking or blinking, an answer that surprised me in its
simplicity and clarity, yet made complete sense as the words rolled through my
brain, was this: Further up and further in. It’s a phrase from The Last Battle, C. S. Lewis’s final book
in The Chronicles of Narnia.

I don’t know how Lewis intended the
phrase to be interpreted, but I think of further up in regards to knowledge and
wisdom, and further in in regards to relationships. I want to go further up –
learn more, know more, experience more, live more, and study more. I want to go
further in – love more, feel more, and understand more. I want more of both.
That’s why I’m walking.

But that can’t be the end of it. As
Erwin McManus wrote, “Your life can never be simply about you.”

So, my real reason? To bring a crowd
as we go further up and further in together. To pull back the curtain and show
a bigger, wider, deeper, and longer view of God’s world. To enjoy the
companionship of fellow travelers.

As the movie tagline says, “Life is
too big to walk it alone.” It make me happy to know many of you are walking
alongside.

QUESTION: What is your reason? What
is your Camino?

 “I run in the path of Your
commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32