What next?

The decades-old fortune cookie oracle tacked to my bulletin board caught my attention:

A VISIT TO A STRANGE PLACE
WILL BRING YOU FRESH WORK.

Hmmm ... why not get into my car, drive from New Hampshire to Kansas, visit Presbytery offices to offer my services, spend time with my son and brothers?

Thirty-five years had passed since my new bride and I had left our native Kansas for Boston, where I would attend seminary. The fast-paced East Coast excited us; we chose to build our lives in the region. We raised one child, Ben. As he came of age, Ben chose to build his life in Kansas.

Might times be right to return to my roots to live and work?

I’ll think about life, too, as I drive. I’ll undertake the trip as a Lenten Pilgrimage.

To make a pilgrimage is to set out towards a place where others have reported holiness shining through reality.

To make a pilgrimage is to hope for that same experience of grace.

To make a pilgrimage during Lent is also to follow Jesus Christ as he sets his face towards Jerusalem.

My goal is more modest. I set out to experience again the landscape and climate in which I came to consciousness, to see cottonwood trees lining the banks of streams and straight Osage orange hedge rows marking property lines.

Snow flew as I drove familiar highways and crossed the Hudson River.

I stopped and practiced my ecclesiastical spiel on the Lackawanna presbytery executive in Scranton, PA. He listened attentively and accepted a resume.

Three Pennsylvania Turnpike tunnels with memorable names – Blue Mountain, Kitatinny and Tuscarora – evoked memories of earlier drives west. I turned my car’s heater off that afternoon.

Level farmland – flatter than any parts of Kansas I can remember – passed by my windshield late on day three as I crossed southern Illinois. Chicken fried steak appeared on the menu in a roadside café.

Forsythia bloomed in Independence, MO. Familiar scenery appeared. I turned on my car’s air conditioning, and reached my son Ben’s house in Topeka after four days of driving.

The house is the first he has owned. Ben is an established member of his community. He walks a bit taller than usual.

~ ~ ~

Downtown Kansas City stands tall on its bluff above the Missouri River on a bright Monday morning. The city sparkles. The grass is green. I reach my destination, deliver the speech and present my resume. The city’s fountains dance in the spring light as I head west to the edge of the Great Plains.

Interstate 70 cuts through the Flint Hills, an area of rolling terrain, one of the last remaining expanses of tall grass prairie in North America. Buffalo do roam the Flint Hills.

Salina, Kansas lies on the eastern ramparts of the Great Plains. The terrain grows flatter to the west. Precipitation falls at a rate of less than twenty-five inches a year, less as one travels westward.

The resident church executive greets me warmly. We talk for half an hour. She knows of possibilities. I note them, thank her and head south.

Marion, Kansas lies thirty miles south and thirty miles east of Salina. The Flint Hills lie to the east. I arrive at the house of my stepmother Joyce in time for dinner ... meat and potatoes.

My father and she had enjoyed seventeen years of marriage before Dad’s death. Joyce holds that marrying into the Hett family fulfilled a lifelong ambition. (Perhaps the clan is to her a leading family of the area. I just think of us as a large extended family.)

She asks pointedly during my visits when (not “if”) I plan to return to the area to live and work. “You’re a Hett ... you belong in Kansas.”

I do experience “Hett-ness” when on my home soil. I experience it as a “given,” something defined through my father and grandfather, and by my place in a web of thirty cousins. A distant relative stops me on the street. “You’re a Hett, aren’t you?”

Four of my deceased father’s eight siblings still survive. My eldest aunt, the firstborn, is now ninety-one; the youngest of the family, will turn seventy-four in a few days.

The four, plus their two spouses, three widows of deceased brothers, a stray grandchild and I gather to celebrate his coming birthday. We also welcome him to his new quarters. His middle son now owns the “Home Place” on which the nine siblings were raised. My cousin has renovated the farm’s original house, a stone barn, into a modern apartment.

We talk of the present and future. We have no need to speak of the past while it surrounds us, while we are connected to this soil and to each other. We share a meal, tour the apartment and pose for a snapshot. My aunts and uncles wish me well on my search. I take my leave.

A country church made of rough dark red bricks stands at a nearby crossroads.

Those uncles and aunts with whom I have just eaten, along with other saints, came to faith here. So did I. My parents’ names are remembered on memorials inside.

Our extended family gathers in the church basement for dinner each Thanksgiving. Sixty of us gathered there last fall. Members of five generations shared the meal together.

Today the building is locked, so I resume my journey.

Wichita lies an hour south and west. The church executive there extends a warm welcome. He knows Marion. He, too, has leads for me.

Day eight ends in Wichita at the house of my youngest brother Stan, his wife Denise and their cats Pippi and Toby.

Stan and Denise remind me (without speaking or intending) of their carefully-laid plans ten years earlier to move back to our home town. They returned to Wichita one year later.

Stan and Denise leave for work the next morning before I am awake. I head south to Oklahoma.

Spring arrives in North Central Oklahoma as I do. Crocuses, daffodils, redbud trees, pear trees bloom. Thunderstorms and tornado watches pass. Oklahoma State defeats Xavier to make the NCAA Final Four.

My Oklahoma brother Mel and his wife Damaris had raised two daughters in her home town north of Enid, also on the edge of the Great Plains. Mel had worked his in-laws’ farm when he wasn’t analyzing DNA for the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation.

The three of us drive to Oklahoma City on day ten, combining my business with theirs. No leads.

“Would you like to visit the Bombing Memorial?”

“Okay.”

Downtown Oklahoma City feels densely built and congested. The streets are not broad. Ground Zero appears unexpectedly. Unable to park, we circle the memorial in the car.

Rows of empty chairs were visible below the street.

“There’s the Survivor Tree. It took the force of the blast and lived,” said Damaris.

A ragged elm stands alone, scars facing the empty chairs, leaves flourishing on the side away from the explosion.

The sight of enduring life in the face of death brings my heart into my throat.

Memory of another visit nineteen years earlier rises to consciousness. Mel and I had experienced another shrine together. Both of us had come on business to Washington, DC at the same time. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial had been dedicated not long before. We spent a December afternoon visiting the Wall. We both knew classmates who had served in that war. Mel looked up and found the name of a friend.

We had parted with a hug and gone our ways, he back to Oklahoma, I to New Jersey, where I lived at the time.

Back in Oklahoma City, we leave this memorial, not speaking.

Day thirteen produces a lead and an initial interview for a position in a town within an hour’s drive of either of my brothers’ homes.

Perhaps the way really is clear for me to live and work nearer to my roots ....

Mission partly accomplished, I head east and began the return trip. Another lead turns up in Springfield, Missouri.

Four leads ... one a strong possibility ... excellent results!

Eastbound travel ... “homeward” for thirty-five years ... has always brought somber feelings. Eastbound travelers lose an hour somewhere in Indiana. When traveling by jet, night falls quickly. The light fades rapidly. The plane lands in the dark.

Eastward travel carries memories of funerals and good-byes ... of leaving my son in Kansas as he embarked on his own life as an adult.

By day sixteen, I have reached Pennsylvania and the Allegheny Mountains. Diners next to Interstate 80 feature pirogi and “Happy Waitress” specials on their menus.

This is familiar territory. I have lived my adult life in this region. Why leave the Northeast? Might I already be in that strange place that will bring fresh work?

New England tugs at my heart. A full day’s drive in heavy rain completes the physical journey.

The trip odometer reads 4173 miles.

My inward pilgrimage continues.

Lent is ending. Passion Sunday arrives three days after my return. Holy Week, with its somber texts, darkness and contemplative services, matches my mood this year.

Jesus set his face towards Jerusalem, warning his followers that they were incapable of walking the road with him to its end. He had then gone directly and without flinching down that path.

Followers can only kneel numbly before this mystery.

Easter’s upbeat service comes before I’m ready to sing joyous songs. It disorients me. I’m still sitting with Jesus’s followers, struggling to make sense of a rumor we have heard: “He is not here, he has risen.”

~ ~ ~

How does a returned pilgrim evaluate the journey?

Having set out to reconnect with my son, my brothers, my extended family, I can report that I did so. The ties are strong and affectionate.

Having set out to experience my native terrain, I can report that I saw it as spring began to bloom. I can also report that New England, with its late springs and rocky soil, claims me, too.

Having set out to visit solemn places, I can report that Oklahoma City’s Survivor Tree testifies to hope.

Having set out to find fresh work, I can report that the acquaintance of four executives who know where pastors are needed was made. Or perhaps New Hampshire is that strange place of fresh work.

Having set out to follow Jesus Christ, I can report that I found myself delivered to the foot of the Cross. Here I can only kneel in wonder.

Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.