On the Road to the Promised Land
June 10, 2007
Kids' Day
Andrew Frantz

I recently came across a new magazine, or at least it was new to me. Apparently, it's been around for some time now. It's called Wanderlust, and it describes itself as "Real Travel For Real Travellers." Real travel? I'll let you be the judge of that. Here are a few titles of some of the articles found in a recent edition:

"Track Crocs in Zambia."

"Island-hop Like A Greek." I guess this is for people who want to channel their inner Zorba.

"Hop On The Old Patagonian," which I thought sounded rather painful, especially for the old Patagonian, until I read that the Old Patagonian is a train.

"Walking With Rhinos." Walking with rhinos? "An elephant-back safari offers a unique perspective on Kaziranga's grasslands - and a better way to get close to a"rhino." Forgive me, but I didn't realize people were looking for "a better way to get close to a rhino," did you?

Regardless of whether any of those articles appeal to you or not, wanderlust - that strong, innate desire to rove or travel - is everywhere. It's an invitation from Frank Sinatra to "come fly with me, let's fly, let's fly away." It's getting directions from Nat King Cole: "If you ever plan to motor west/Travel my way, take the highway that's the best/Get your kicks on Route 66." Unless, of course, you're riding along with the Boss, Bruce Springsteen, out on Highway 9, where "the highway's jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive. … Someday, girl, I don't know when, we're gonna get to that place where we really wanna go, and we'll walk in the sun. But till then, tramps like us, baby, we were born to run." Bruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuce!

Wanderlust is going On The Road with Jack Kerouac, taking a Walk Across America with Peter Jenkins, or maybe just A Walk in the Woods with Bill Bryson. Perhaps you're traveling with Charley and John Steinbeck, who reminds us that "we do not take a trip; a trip takes us."

Judson is full of wanderlust. Several years ago, during our annual Judson Weekend, the Friday night question was, "If you could live anywhere in the world, other than New York City, where would it be?" Those of you who were there that night might recall that what made that question so difficult to answer was having to limit yourself to only one place.

With so much wanderlust in the world, it makes you wonder what we're all looking for. Not too long ago I was "netflickin'" - which sounds like one of those southern expressions Roy Blount collects, like "squoz": the past tense of squeeze - when I came across a little documentary called (what else?) Wanderlust, which was about the history of road movies, everything from Preston Sturges' Sullivan's Travels and Frank Capra's It Happened One Night, to Easy Rider, Thelma and Louise, Rainman, The Motorcycle Diaries, To Wong Foo Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar by Judson's own Douglas Carter Beane, and many, many more. One of the directors interviewed in the documentary, Chris Eyre, who directed the native American road movie Smoke Signals, said, "We love the road movie in America because it's about the ideology that we founded this country on. We wish we could just keep going, but we all want to get to this place of sanctuary, of home. For me, the road movie was really a metaphor for finding your way home."

I grew up Air Force and so wanderlust is in my genes - and that's spelled "g-e-n-e-s," not "j-e-a-n-s." Get your minds out of the gutter. Growing up Air Force meant that we were constantly on the move. From Georgia to Germany; from Michigan to Montgomery, Alabama; from Summerville, South Carolina to Breese, Illinois, we lived a nomadic life, migrating from Air Force base to Air Force base, from small town to small town, wandering about like a band of Baptist Bedouins. I counted it up once: we moved ten times before my fifteenth birthday. I mentioned Montgomery, Alabama - that's where I was born. That's also where my mother's family is from and where we would return in between assignments or when my father was stationed overseas to places where we couldn't follow, places like Vietnam or Turkey. We lived in five different homes in Montgomery alone, three of which were on the same street.

When you grow up on the run, as I did, wanderlust comes to you naturally. No matter where you are, knowing you'll be moving soon, you have a tendency to long for the perfect place: the "dream" house; the friends who won't leave you or you won't have to leave; happiness; fulfillment; Promised Land. But whether you grew up on the road or lived your whole life in one place, anticipating a "land of promise" is probably something we all do. We tend to grow up believing that the Promised Land is not where we are right now but somewhere up ahead, just around the bend.

When we were very small, we couldn't wait to go to school because we thought school kids were having all the fun. School was the Promised Land. When we were school children, we couldn't wait to become teenagers because teenagers were cool. "Coolness" was the Promised Land. Of course, it didn't take long to realize that if you weren't cool at twelve, you probably weren't going to be cool at thirteen. As teenagers, we couldn't wait to turn sixteen because that's when you got your driver's license and could date. A mobile sex life - sounds like the Promised Land to me. At sixteen, we couldn't wait to turn eighteen, they were seniors, and as high school seniors, we couldn't wait to go away to college because everybody knows the Promised Land is not living with your parents. But then you're in college - and you quickly realize, this ain't the Promised Land, this is college. It's close, but there are no required courses in the Promised Land. And on and on it goes. From "if I can just graduate" to "if I can just pay off my student loans." From "if I can just meet the 'right' person" to "if I could just meet a different 'right' person." From "as soon as I lose these twenty pounds" to "you know, once the kids have grown up and are on their own," to retirement, etc., etc., etc. And one day you wake up and realize, as John Lennon sang, that life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.

I love the story of Annie Dillard's father sailing down the river, which was used in this morning's New Testimony. Who among us hasn't had a similar dream? Later this summer I am finally getting around to going some place I have been dreaming of for many, many years but have never been before. I'm going to Ireland.

I am, as my closest friends would say, "obsessed," although I prefer the word "fascinated," with all things Irish. Besides having Celtic connections on both sides of my family, when I was in college I was cast in a production of John Millington Synge's Playboy of the Western World. We had a guest director visiting from County Cork who filled our heads with tales of the old country. When I first moved to New York City as a young actor many years ago, one of the first gigs I got was in a rather avant-garde dance production in the East Village. (Don't worry, I didn't have to dance.) A director and choreographer had set a bunch of William Butler Yeats' poems to dance, and I was cast as Yeats. I was surrounded by all these beautiful dancers, and in between their dance numbers I'd stroll out onto the stage, looking like I'd just stepped out of an Irish Spring commercial, wearing me tweed hat and coat, and in me best Irish accent I'd recite poems like "Brown Penny," "To a Child Dancing in the Wind," or "The Lake Isle of Innisfree." I have to tell you, I don't know if it was the poetry or the dancers, but the whole production was quite intoxicating.

If you're ever around my apartment any Saturday morning or Sunday afternoon, you'll hear the sounds of WFUV 90.7 on my kitchen radio with its Irish programs like "Mile Fáilte," "A Thousand Welcomes," "The Thistle and Shamrock," or "Ceol na nGael (Music of the Irish)," playing traditional Irish music by The Chieftains, Solas, Altan, Danu, Lunasa, Déanta, Gráda, De Danann, and many, many more. I'm afraid that, as my neighbors would attest, for me, St. Patty's is not simply a day but more a way of life.

Anyway, as the Roches would sing, "I'm going away to Ireland soon," and I'm not planning on taking a GPS. I'm hoping to lose myself up in Yeats' country around Sligo, or over on the Dingle Peninsula near the Blasket Islands where Synge's plays are set, or in the Lake District, the home of my favorite Irish writer, the great, great John McGahern. And I plan to visit the places I have been singing about all these years, places whose very names are songs: "The Rose of Tralee," "The Kerry Dances," "The Hills of Connemara," "The Isle of Innisfree," "Carrickfergus," and "Galway Bay."

No matter whether you feel the same way as I do about Ireland, I'm sure each of us has our own idea of where the Promised Land lies: some place or something which calls to us, night and day; that no matter where we might be, as Yeats would say, we "hear it in the deep heart's core."

You know the story of Moses - or at least you've seen the movie. From a burning bush, Moses hears God's voice telling him that God has heard the suffering of the Israelites and wants Moses to lead them out of Egypt to the Promised Land, to this "land flowing with milk and honey." Well, to make a long movie short, Moses goes back to Egypt where he confronts Yul Brenner, yada yada yada, with the plagues and the miracles and Edward G. Robinson, and finally Yul says, okay, you can go. So Moses and the Israelites flee Egypt, only to discover that apparently Mr. Brenner had his fingers crossed and is now in hot pursuit. Waters part. Israelites scoot through. Here come the chariots. Waters close. No more chariots. End of story. Except, of course, that this only gets us to Exodus, chapter 14. We've still got 25 more chapters of the Book of Exodus alone, never mind the 27 chapters of the Book of Leviticus, 36 chapters of the Book of Numbers, and the 34 chapters of the Book of Deuteronomy, all of which have to take place before these people can ever get to the Promised Land.

If only Moses had had a map, we could probably have wrapped this story up in about, oh, three or four more chapters - say, somewhere around Exodus 18, maybe 20, at most. But he didn't. He chose to follow this "pillar of cloud by day" and this "pillar of fire by night," which meant that instead of taking the quickest route to the Promised Land, which would have been northeast, along the Mediterranean coast, they went south, toward Mt. Sinai. Now folks, I'm no geographer, but this is the equivalent of going from say, Manhattan to the Bronx by way of Texas! It's no wonder it took them 40 years! This brings to mind the old joke about Moses - Dave Barry used it in his book, The Complete Guide To Guys: "What is the most reasonable explanation for the fact that Moses led the Israelites all over the place for forty years before they finally got to the Promised Land? Because he was a guy and refused to ask directions."

Now, because I am on staff here at Judson, and, therefore, required to minister to you people, I'd like to quickly summarize the rest of the story and thus save you the trouble of actually having to read the books of Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. (No need to thank me. I get paid for this.) I think I can condense these books into three easy-to-remember phrases.

First, the Book of Leviticus. The best way I can summarize this book is with the phrase, "Keep your hands and feet to yourselves!" We've all been on those long family car trips - and isn't that what the Exodus really was? The longest family car trip in history, minus the car, of course. And we all know the importance of a few simple rules of the road. When I was growing up, with as much traveling as we did, you can imagine just how aggravating my sister and I could be. My parents had two rules: stay on your side of the car, and keep your hands and feet to yourselves. The way you knew your side of the car was by the hump in the floorboard of every car we owned. That hump was the Mason-Dixon line. As long as you stayed on your side of the hump, there would be peace in the valley. And that's Leviticus: the rules of the road. Oh, it has a few other little things to say about hats and homosexuality, but trust me, you don't want to read that.

Next, the Book of Numbers, and I'll summarize it with this catchphrase: "Ninety-nine Bottles Of Beer On The Wall." When traveling with small children, whether on vacation or moving across country, you no doubt know from experience that the only way to survive with any sense of your mental faculties intact is to have plenty of activities to occupy your children's time - whether it's a coloring book, or these days an iPod or a portable DVD player. But sooner or later the crayons melt, the batteries wear down, or honestly, how many times can your children watch Dora the Explorer - and then it's time to play the "counting game." "Hey, Suzie, how many cows do you see?" "Hey, Biff, how many horses can you count?" That's all the Book of Numbers is - a long list of everything they saw on their trip. It's the "I Spy" game of the Torah. "I spy 'the descendants of Reuben, the firstborn son of Israel. The number from the tribe of Reuben was 46,500.'"

Which brings us to the Book of Deuteronomy, the book I will call, "You Can't Get There From Here." Now I don't want to spoil the rest of the story by giving away the ending, but guess what? Moses never gets to the Promised Land. Let's put this in some perspective. Those of you who have traveled with your family know that even as sweet as they can be, there are times when a one hour car ride to Great Adventure can feel like the Bataan Death March. The joy of travel lasts about as long as the Lincoln Tunnel, and then it's an endless procession of: "Are we there yet?"; "How much longer?"; "I'm hot!"; "Make her stop hitting me!"; and "I'm telling you I can't hold it any longer!" And that's just from your partner!

For more than FORTY YEARS, Moses leads his cranky family through the desert and wilderness. And you know the joy of this trip must have lasted about A DAY, and then it's "welcome to whineville." Day after day of bickering and fighting, and there's no hump in the middle of this car! And Moses, desperate for some rules of the road, goes up on a mountain to see God. And God gives him ten. And Moses brings these ten commandments back down the mountain, only to discover that his people have forsaken God, having made a golden calf, and are worshiping it - which, when you think about it, was sort of the religious equivalent of not being able to hold it any longer!

For more than forty years, Moses led his people all the way to the very edge of the Promised Land and that's where his story ends. The last chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy tells us that Moses climbed a mountain overlooking the Promised Land and died. And your first reaction upon reading this is to say, wait a minute: I thought God promised Moses that he would get to the Promised Land. But when you read the scripture that was read this morning, you see that when God asked Moses to lead the Israelites to the Promised Land, the only promise God gave Moses was, "I will be with you."

Promised Land means different things to different people. For some it is a land of milk and honey. For others, it's the city life. Promised Land doesn't have to be about geography at all. It could be the passion of one's work, the joy of family, the arms of a lover. In this morning's New Testimony, Annie Dillard's father thought he knew where the Promised Land was - on the river - only to discover that for him, the Promised Land was where he had been living all along.

Moses spent most of his life in search of a land in which he would never set foot. And yet, we measure the greatness of Moses' life not by the place where he stopped walking but by every step he took along the way.

May God grant us the courage of Moses as we journey onward toward our own Promised Land, whatever and wherever that may be, and may we be blessed with God's presence to lead our way.

*****

Ancient Testimony: Exodus 3: 1-12

New Testimony: "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," by William Butler Yeats An American Childhood, by Annie Dillard