Eden and Mecca

GeoMagnetism.

I’m sure this is an actual scientific phenomenon having to do with the earth’s polarity and such, but for my own purposes I’m going to botch that and make it my own.  This is what I’m calling something I’ve noticed about the places we seem to be drawn to inexplicably.  Some of us feel that life won’t be complete without a pilgrimage to Paris.  Others have to make it to the Big Apple before they die.  Why does this happen?  Why are our souls drawn to a place we’ve never before been?   

Why do we feel so at home in a far away place?

My wife loves to travel.  Being an evolutionary biology buff, one of her several personal Meccas is the Galapagos Islands.  She also dreams of going to Istanbul, Cambodia, New Zealand... the list goes on.  We have a map on our wall that is speckled with stickers indicating our eventual travel destinations.  I want more than anything to be able to take her all over.  I want to give her the world.

She was able to break away from work one Saturday and we made the mistake of buying a National Geographic special issue describing the 100 most beautiful places in the world.  We were depressed the rest of the weekend.  There is so much this wonderful world has to offer, and we can’t afford to break away and have adventures while still in school.

But I digress.   

I think there are two reasons we can be drawn somewhere:  

(1)    We feel like we were made from that patch of earth. (Edens)

(2)    We won’t feel complete until we make it there. (Meccas)

Not the same thing. 

Just because a place is pretty doesn’t mean we feel incomplete without going there.  Reaching one's Eden instills a sense of inexplicable return, as if we belong there, as if we've somehow been there before and have come home.

Not so with Meccas; going there fills a void we were born with.  Going to the Mecca(s) of our souls does more than check off an item on our Bucket list- it fulfills an inexplicable, very personal longing.  I want to kiss my wife underneath the Northern Lights, but I want that for us, not for myself.

I’ve found several personal Edens while I’ve traveled.  A dock by the James River in Virginia.  A brisk pine forest in Colorado’s mountains.  But regardless of where I am, I feel most at peace when I’m near the water and the woods.   

Which is why, if pressed to choose one place, my Eden would be here:

I was fortunate enough to go to Scotland with my family over Spring Break in 2011.  We saw wonderful things, gorgeous countrysides, vast lochs, misty glens, rolling hills, sparse, harsh rocky cliffs… It’s the only place I can think of visiting and hoping for bad weather.   When it’s sunny, it’s a lovely sight.  But in the drizzle and mist and fog and rain – magnificent.  

 I love it there.  I hope when God took the dust with which to make me, He scooped up Scottish soil.

My Mecca, however, is not a tourist hotspot.  I don’t want to vacation there, I want to help there.  This place has held a special place in my heart since I was 16 years old.  I remember learning a lot and growing up a lot when I took a class called Advanced American Studies my junior year of high school (isn’t your disillusionment/fall into Nietzsche-inspired atheism supposed to happen in college?), and in my studies I came across reports about Rwanda, Darfur, the LRA, Sudanese civil war, and the bajillion other troubles Africa has.  I remember seeing a photograph of children captured by Joseph Kony’s LRA trapped behind barbed wire.  I had recently learned a lot about the Holocaust as well, so what kept me up at night was the burning question: 

Why isn’t someone doing something?  I thought we’d learned better.

Then I thought:

Would the world be more upset if the children behind that fence were white?

I remember staying up late telling my poor little brother about it, trying so hard not to cry at the injustice of it all.  I can’t explain why this bothers me more than other problems in the world.  The truth is, I’m still more shaken by pictures of child soldiers in Kenya or news of unrest in Sudan than by a tornado or a hurricane or something that "should" hit closer to home. 

Maybe I’m the racist.

I’ve felt Tyndale’s fire in my bones since learning about the troubles Kony has caused.  I don’t think my soul will ever rest until I am able to go there and physically help these children.  That is my pilgrimage.  That is my Mecca.

There are a myriad of reasons we can be called to the far reaches of the globe.  Some we can trace back to revelatory moments of self-discovery, some are more abstract, slipping through our fingers every time we try to grasp why that particular spot on the map holds more sway than others.


What are your reasons?

Where’s your Eden?  Where’s your Mecca?

S