London

The New Year rings twice. After my day of being broken up with and losing all of my toiletries to the jaws of airport security, Nick Walsh shows up like a deus ex machina, like William Shatner in the "Priceline Negotiator!" commercials. With Nick, everything is alright. He cabs us to where our bags can be put to rest, he feeds us with proper English food at a one pub when other pubs open their eyes only to revelers with a reservation; he takes us beside Trafalgar Square to a church where Pete Gregg––the founder of the 24/7 Prayer movement––is leading a worship service.

The words could otherwise sound stilted if Gregg didn't say them with all of the invitation and warmth of his heart. This is the "New Year's Eve Prayer Party" at Holy Trinity Brompton, the largest Anglican congregation in England, and the genuine people, exuberant atmosphere on the brink of a new year, and the mince pies immediately extinguish any lameness which might have crept into my cynical heart.

There is much to pray for as we eat our mince pies and sip champagne and apple juice. Praise for Obama as president of the U.S. and Holy Trinity's efforts to eradicate homelessness. Prayers for ending Iraq responsibly and quickly and for so much else terrible in this year. There is music I did not realize how much I missed, there are colors and lots of people sitting on cushions on the floor. I am thankful to be in a church, like Foundry back in D.C., which realizes that Jesus calls us to love God and our neighbors long before we create doctrines about homosexuality, just war, or create ministry strategies. I want to live in this moment in church, where the focus is so right and everything else just falls into place.

A side effect of all this praise: sitting, standing, singing, my rebound desire to make out with every girl dissipates before I can take advantage of bad decision-making that I will kick myself for later. Besides, even afterwards though less communicative, Rachel still gives me so much to be thankful for.

Single

Single man, back in the ring swingin'.

RyanAir has tight weight restrictions. I have to throw out all of my toiletries. We sprint to the plane.

The woman in Bristol gives me a hard time about my passport, though Ryan passes right through. I now have a monitored passport and must leave the UK by March. It should be June.

We catch the Bristol bus, from the airport to the city, with a number of people standing around outside. They are groups of several. There are two seats. Ryan and I board.

The bus pulls in to the Bristol bus station at 1:45 for our 1:45 connection. They've been waiting for us. They toss our stuff in and we take off.

London. Nick Walsh, our friend from college, is amazing. He used to work and serve in the States, which is how we met him. Now we're in his country for New Years. We walk around.

This has been a terrible day. This has been a great day.

Ring in the New Year.

Setbacks

The rocky, arid-seeming mountains of coastal Andalucía are beautiful and surprising, especially coming from lush, green Ireland, but please, always ask the bus driver where he or she is taking the bus. We board the bus at Málaga Airport in the space marked "City Bus", which is precisely where the airport staff told us to find the bus to the City Centre. The price is comparable and all of the kind-looking people with their bags itch to get on board. Yet the ride over sand/rock mountains, olives trees, and white villas over the Mediterranean seems overly long, and when we see the station, we notice the word "Marbella" written over and over...

Marbella I hear is wonderful, and it has a very helpful, utilitarian ATM, but thirty minutes later we were headed back to Málaga, on the right bus, forty-five minutes away.

Yet I believe that God is a great caller of audibles, seeing the way the defense sets up in a football game––and how I have a tendency to mess things up––and working out some blessing or learning experience in spite of myself, like (in a serious sense) some of the ex-offenders in my Spiritual Support Group who, because of their bad calls that led them to prison, do some awesome work with other young guys who are on the path they used to tread.

So we meet Omar, who first tells us we are, in fact, on the right bus, then winds up sitting in front of us. He is a spindly man, with a hair cut like Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible II, though that is where the resemblance ends. I get his name wrong at first and ask, "Oman? Like the country?" "No," he says, "like Omar Sharif!"

Omar is a professor of pottery at La Universidad Polular in Málaga and lives across the city in Old Town, just three blocks away from our hostel. So, when I ask him if he knows of La Calle Victoria, he smiles, buys a pack of cigarettes and, smoking as we go, proceeds to lead us across the high rises of the new, touristy beach city, over the river into Old Town, through a very old, traditional bar of wooden barrels of wine which also sells fish in the morning, past the Roman theater and the Moorish palace behind, past the wells between buildings where house construction has stopped with the advent of new ruins. He also, on our roundabout route, leads us into one of twenty-two houses which protect the barges and vestments the Easter parade. In the middle of this house––really a small cross between a museum and a warehouse––stand two large barges of wood, overlaid with gold and silver. On top of the gold one shall sit the Christ and the silver one the Mary, each of which has four large beams extending to the front, back, and underneath, with name stickers for each monk who will carry it.

He tells us about the vestments the priests wear in the ceremony, and all through his broken English to me and my broken Spanish back to him. When I ask him if his pottery is beautiful or functional, he says he only makes beautiful pottery. I believe it, and eventually he even helps us find our hostel, which was advertised by one tiny sticker on the intercom and was very quaint and nice, undoubtedly because it is hidden in upper stories, the tree fort of hostels.

We meet Nicole from Switzerland and Henry, whom I think is of Asian descent, from Sweden. We wander the old streets under fabulously bright Christmas decor made of lights and a Nativity scene of flowers and life-size camels made of woven branches. I feel awkward because, at dinner, I am both the only one who orders Málaga's special sweet wine and, when the server plops down a plate of free olives, the only one who eats olives; but hey, free olives.

Nicole has a significant other back home, as do I, and we swap stories. I get to tell the story of Rachel's own adventures, and it brings joy and fascination. Additionally, Nicole and Ryan and I connect deeply over Scrubs, and she is thrilled about getting back home, when the 8th Season will have come out in German. Henry may think we're crazy, but he also thinks we're cool, and he is cool as well.

Yet the bus debacle and the fact that I killed my battery charger and somehow left my cool car towel in Ireland (yes, I dry with a car towel––it is small, absorbent, and awesome) turns my mind to wily schemes: How does one legally make money while abroad? By content writing for the internet? By asking for it for Christmas? Is it selling of one's soul to let a company place ads on one's blog? In spite of all this, God has brought us this far, and we trust we will be brought farther, so long as we're good stewards of goods and no longer leave cool towels for the Irish.

I'm still scheming, though. I ask Ryan if we can save money getting to Madrid by convincing a wizard to turn us into a horse or leopard so that we can run to Madrid, so long as the spell is undone when we reach the city. He thinks this is dumb, so I suggest, perhaps, his spell could be like that of the Frog Prince, where a Spanish girl would have to kiss him for the spell to be undone, and they could live happily ever after. Instead, he suggests (unimaginatively) that we just catch a bus there.

Ballymacoda & Magpie Cottage Dairy

Monnica and Patrick see us off at the corner next to a green, closed-down sports store where Ben, with whom I’ve only spoken on the phone, is going to meet us. Joe is with us too, speaking of the rugby tickets he’s just bought for 80 Euro to see Ireland and Australia in one of the last games at Cork Stadium. The first two are setting off in a rental car for Patrick’s family history to imbibe from baptismal records.

Once Ben arrives, he takes us through incredible countryside to the Magpie Cottage Dairy, where the goats stand outside and favor us interestedly in the beautiful weather. Ben’s here for a few weeks finishing his parents’ kitchen, and the parents – Phil and Chris – run the small place, which just won second place at the World Cheese Awards. They’re English, settling down in Ireland when Sussex got too dangerous.

The males eye the female goats wantonly from across the field, trapped by their own pens. Occasionally they let out a bleat, and the ladies don’t pay them half as much mind as when Ryan and I bring food. Running with Dusty, one of four greyhounds, he almost skips side-to-side to play with me, and I’m running full tilt. There are two Irish wolfhounds, four pigs, chickens, and Fred the horse.

Here, we eat our first home-cooked meal since Rachel sent us off. It’s delicious and a wondrous departure from peanut butter, sausage, bread, apples, cheese, and sardines.

Zigzag back through these states

I'm aboard the train and I choke the shaking of my hands with a solid four hours of "Rome". I'm on a fifteen-day rail pass to see Taylor and Phil's wedding in Jacksonville, visit Christina Schafer in Miami, see Duke Divinity School, Candler School of Theology, Boston University, and Emerson College before I join Rachel on the peace pilgrimage for a few days before hopping the train back to DC, working for a week before I move out during the weekend, live as a wanderer for a few days and then fly to Dublin. Yeah...

So while I hop public transit to Union Station in DC, I'm carting as many of my worldly possessions as I can fit into my big, blue duffel bag, and I'm a mix of afraid and sad. Afraid because I'm moving too fast, am starting so much over, don't have much money, sad because I'm leaving my church, my friends, and I've packed up so many of my favorite things to not see them for six months.

But Taylor is beautiful and she and Phil look iconic, the rower and frisbee player like the strong, smiling figures on top of the cake. Mr. Bayer plays a beautiful "Be Thou My Vision", his folksy voice sliding cordially over everything, and he backs me up on "Your Love is Extravagant," me on guitar, him on mandolin, my parents on BGVs. Later, Christina and I make Cuban Coladas by pouring a tiny bit of coffee into sugar, making a paste, then pouring the rest in. Jenny comes to visit, and songs are sung and adventures are had in Miami's 95˚ Autumn.

Blessings are felt at Duke, Emory, and BU, with Sarah, Keri, Brett Fox and the camp crew, Jon Gaylord & Clare, Aaron Garner, Billy Krolick, Kasey Cox, and some dear others. I like Duke better than Emory because of its field placements and support for the arts, though Boston has a dear place in my heart and cements the discerning characteristic of this year. Film school at Emerson is great, and when I get back to DC no questions are answered, but I feel more wise and encouraged. It is snowing in Boston when I arrive and I'm surprised at the length and breadth of the east coast.

I join Rachel and the peace walkers at the home of two former nuns who provide the best food of the whole trip. People ask, "What program is she doing it with?" in the same way that they ask me how Ryan and I plan to do our Europe trip, but the beauty of the Peace Pilgrimage is that there is no program, no hierarchy. Some walkers are around for the whole walk, others for only a few days, others for only a few miles. An old veteran who read about them in the paper found them and presented them with a giant peace flag, which they proudly carried with them the rest of the way. I am impressed with the people who honk in support, the housepainters who ask, "What are you walking for?" "For peace." "Right on!"

The deepest part of the walk for me is during a potluck at a United Methodist Church outside of Boston. I combine two thoughts: Adam, the brother of one of my youth, being killed in Iraq and the first time I thought of being anti-war; and Werner Herzog, director of "Rescue Dawn", having his actors wade through dangerous rivers and actually eat maggots because, in an age of digital effects, he "wanted audiences to be able to trust their eyes again." When I see bombs going off above Baghdad, it's so often just nightvision fireworks to me. People are being killed, families are huddled in their homes fearing a miss-strike, and it's entertainment to me. I want to be able to trust my eyes again. I want to be able to see war and let my heart go out in prayer for those on both sides. The man after me was shaken up and spoke of news as "info-tainment" and how so few of us feel the actual cost of war, little did I know it was his job to survey the battlefields of Desert Storm directly after a carpet bombing.

I'm not saying that war will stop now, but rather that it's by simply breaking bread with people and having dialogue that we not only understand our differences, but also have more fun. As Christians, I believe we are called to this, to stop the idea that people in the Middle East, or democrats and republicans, or ex-offenders, etc. are somehow not as human as we are. Back in DC, sitting across from an ex-offenders in Spiritual Support Group - sitting across from some of the most inspiring, spiritual (and changed) people that I know - I feel like I have learned yet another thin place where Holy Spirit moves in the world, between our differences and the learning of something new.

Rachel has finished her walk, taken some needed days resting in Connecticut, and arrives in DC. It's good to see her.

Rachel

An important part of my trip: Rachel smiles in that big, recognizable way in the 8th Day Faith Community of Church of the Saviour. I know her as this before she begins to come to Spiritual Support Group with Sarah and me. Rachel is headed for what she describes as her "Sabbath Year", which she'll start by stepping out into a Catholic Worker community in her home state of Connecticut, and she'll go from there.

I tell this story in this way: she is taking the time to dive into things, from faith to family, that all of us deal with but don't often take the time to deal with. It challenges me as I prepare for the trip in many ways: because I am a writer with no poems finished, a traveler who hasn't traveled to half the places I yearn to see, a lover of language who only speaks English.

Rachel encourages me a lot in this, and I get to encourage her a lot in her stepping out. Sarah gets busy for a few Thursdays nights in a row and Rachel and I wind up going to Julia's Empanadas after group by ourselves, instead of the three of us. One Sunday, after a Church of the Saviour picnic, my plans fall through, Rachel and I end up hanging out, and by the end of it - well, I'm not sure how it went down, but I tend to think we held hands, looked at each other, and thought: "Crap! We're dating, aren't we!"

Catholic Worker led to a silent retreat, and that to a friend in a monastery, and eventually to a 50-day, 1000-mile Pilgrimage for Peace all around New England, walking and inviting churches, schools, and passerby to join in the dialogue of how we can contribute to a more peaceful world, a world in which we act more like Jesus taught us to act toward one another. And after that, maybe take seminary classes in Nicaragua, and perhaps I'll be in Spain by then.