There is also the old phrase “Good fences make good neighbours.” Robert Frost in his poem “Mending Wall” subverts this notion: “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.” Yet in the old phrase is the idea that a certain kind of neighbour can limit your independence and freedom and invade your privacy. Just because people dwell near you, they have no right to control your life. The ideal neigh-bourliness means a balance between caring for those near you, but also keeping space free to engage and inhabit your own life. The atmosphere of the neighbourhood should never cripple the longing of the soul to wander.
The Wanderer
The wanderer is one who gives priority to the duties of longing over belonging. No abode is fixed. No one place is allowed finally to corner or claim the wanderer. A new horizon always calls. The wanderer is committed to the adventure of seeing new places and discovering new things. New possibilities are more attractive and intoxicating than the given situation. Freedom is prized highly. The wanderer experiences time and space in a different way than the native or the neighbour who remain faithful to a place. Time is short, and there is so much yet to be experienced. While each place has its own beauty, no particular place can claim to settle the longing in the wanderer’s soul. Space and distance are never a barrier. Travel is the adventure. The purpose is never directed towards a specific destination. The journey itself is the ever-changing destination. The wanderer travels light, carries none of the baggage of programmes or agendas, and feels an openness and hospitality to new places and new people. The call of longing is always answered, often to the detriment of achieved belonging. At its extreme, the wanderer can be like a butterfly, having an obsession to explore things with an over-lightness of touch. The journey need not be a real journey, merely a circular route around the same repetitions, each, of course, differently packaged than the last time.
The wanderer has been a great theme in literature and film. An old and innocent, but very subtle, film which explores this theme is Shane. He is a wandering cowboy who comes to work for a family—husband, wife, and little boy. He helps them fight their enemies. He keeps to the honour of his task despite the warmth and attraction that is growing between him and the woman. When the difficulties are overcome, he wanders off again. Shane is wounded, a symbol of his awareness that he can never belong in the one place where he felt at home. A great number of Westerns have the hero riding into the sunset at the end. He is the modern version of the knight. He is honourable and courageous and remains completely dedicated to the adventure of the longing, wherever it will take him. No one frame of belonging is large or flexible enough to contain him.
Wandering is a very strong tradition in Ireland. In mythic times, there were fabulous journeys to strange lands; such a journey was known as an immram. In the early centuries Irish monks went into “green exile”; many of them wandered the continent and laid down the basis for medieval civilization. Ireland has also suffered great depletion from the wandering called emigration.
The wanderer travels through a vast array of experience. The word “wander” derives originally from the verb “to wind” and is associated with the German word “wandeln,” to change. The wanderer does not find change a threat. Change is an invitation to new possibility. The wanderer is as free as the wind and will get into corners of experience that will escape the settled, fixed person. It is interesting that the word “wander” covers the movement of persons, animals, objects, thoughts, and feelings. Wandering is the natural and indeed native movement of the predominant majority of things in the world. The wind is the great elemental wanderer that roams the universe. In a fascinating passage in the Gospel of John, the nature of spirit is described in terms of the unpredictable dance of the wandering wind:
The wind blows wherever it pleases;
You hear its sound,
But you cannot tell where it
comes from or where it is going.
This is how it is with all who are born
of the Spirit.
John 3:8–9
The human body is a physical object held down by the force of gravity in a physical world; it is always in some one place. However, the vibrancy of its presence is unmistakable. Thought is a permanent wanderer. No frontier is too far, no depth too deep. The body always belongs in some one place; the ancient and ever-new longing of the soul can never find satisfaction in any one form of belonging. Delmore Schwartz has a poem in which he calls the body “The Heavy Bear who goes with me.” It is a poem full of affection for the body, yet impatient with its awkwardness and gravity. The soul is full of wanderlust. When we suppress the longing to wander in the inner landscapes, something dies within us. The soul and the spirit are wanderers; their place of origin and destination remain unknown; they are dedicated to the discovery of what is unknown and strange.
The Stranger
The stranger is an unknown person, one whom one has not met before. The limitation of human individuality means that we know only a few people. Most of the world remains unknown to us. Most people remain strangers. This is one of the shocking things about travel; we can descend from the sky into a different country and people, right into the middle of an ongoing life. We know nothing of the people’s names, lives, or place. Yet into the journey of each person there is the occasional intrusion of the stranger. We immediately recognize the stranger as someone we have never encountered. When a stranger approaches, we usually exercise caution and keep him or her at a distance. This is the fascination of encounter. Humans are ancient creatures with millennia of experience in their blood. We are rational animals. The animal side of our nature knows the danger of the intruder, stranger. Every friend was once a total stranger. The stranger can bring blessings and encouragement and can become the most intimate anam-Cara and companion of our deepest intimacy. New life can come through the encounter with the stranger. Destruction and negativity can also arrive with the intrusion of the stranger. There is always danger in the stranger. Because we sense this, it usually takes a while before we open to let the stranger in. Strangers circle each other for a good while before familiarity begins to build. Each one of us enters the world as a total stranger. No one had ever seen you before. You came without a name and yet you entered fully into the belonging of your life.
It is poignant to remember that even the most intimate anam-Cara friendship cannot dissolve the strangeness between and within two people. The friend remains partly stranger. It is a naïve acquaintance that presumes that two people can ever know each other completely. Real soul friendship acknowledges the mystery of the other person, which can at times delight and at other times disappoint you. This strangeness keeps the passion and interest alive in a friendship. It is when two friends become predictable with each other that the kinship begins to fade. This is why space and freedom nourish and enrich friendship. Each person remains always partly a stranger to himself as well. Part of the wonder of being a person is the continual discoveries that you find emerging in your own self, nothing cosmically shattering, merely the unfathomable miracle of ordinary being. This is the heart of longing, and what calls ever to new forms of belonging.