Oh, The Places You’ll Go!...or Not

In 1990 “Dr. Seuss” published his last book during his own lifetime, Oh, the Places You’ll Go!, about the amazing and inspiring journeys of life, including the bumps and the slumps, all peppered with strife. 1990 was also the year that I graduated from college (…thirty years ago!), and one of the graduation gifts I received from my family was a copy of that very Dr. Seuss book, Oh, the Places You’ll Go!  My family had already instilled in me from an early age an adventurous wanderlust. To this point in my life my New England family had lived in Boston (MA), Lompoc (CA), Grand Forks (ND), Boston again, the Marshall Islands (South Pacific), Boston again, Sierra Vista (AZ) and Phoenix, and I had even spent a summer teaching English in northwestern China in 1988. Going places was written into my DNA. My family knew this. Yet, I could barely have imagined the places I’d go…or the places to which God would lead me.

At this time of year, I’ve been reflecting on all the summer work and travel I’ve done in July and August. Three years ago, I spent ten weeks circumnavigating the globe learning about grass-roots economic development in the Philippines and East Africa. Ten years ago, I spent six weeks exploring Berlin, Germany and its environs. Sixteen years ago, I left Princeton Seminary and drove in a zig-zag pattern across the US and Canada on my way to Phoenix. Twenty years ago, I taught English for six weeks at a Palestinian, Islamic college along the Green Line in Israel. And twenty-five years ago, I spent ten weeks in South Boston, MA, doing my summer seminary internship at Fourth Presbyterian Church.

Of all the places I went, I think that this latter experience had the profoundest effect on me. When I first arrived in South Boston, I thought I’d landed on another planet, even though I’d spent seven of my childhood years living in the suburbs of Boston. Folks there talked funny…and I don’t mean just the accent. They used words like spuckie (submarine sandwich) and packie (a liquor store), and they said anything that came to their minds, “Hey, Mikey, you’ve gotten fat since the last time we saw ya.” Fourth Presbyterian Church is situated between two historic housing projects, riddled with poverty and drugs. Around the corner from the church was the “headquarters” of the infamous Irish mobster, Whitey Bulger. The church served a lot of people living on the edge…and yet, repeatedly, I saw the in-breaking and transformative grace of God creating pockets of the Kingdom, erupting on the scene of the Wednesday-night barbeque/old-time camp-meeting, right on one of the busiest streets in the city. The ministry I saw and participated in there set the bar for me for trusting that God is up to something amazing, despite all appearances to the opposite.

I was so inspired by the ministry of that place that I went back 9 more summers in a row to work with the children served by that church and its members. I became a close friend of the minister, Burns Stanfield, his wife Lorraine, and their children. I fell in love with little Elizabeth, Nathan, and Grace (all grown-up now). One summer, when I was leaving to head back to Princeton Seminary, the children gave me a xeroxed copy of a page from Dr. Seuss’ book, One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, which the kids had colored on themselves. The lines from that page read:

We like our bike; it is made for three.

Our Mike sits up in back you see.

We like our Mike and this is why:

Mike does all the work when the hills get high.

My heart broke every summer when I left to return to my work and life at Princeton Seminary. Life at seminary felt somehow unreal and disconnected from genuine existence. I rarely felt the in-breaking kingdom of God while researching and writing in hallowed halls of academic theology. But up there in Boston, where life was hard, ministry was genuinely essential and vital, even though it was exhausting and enervating. God was in that place. I am grateful for how that little church on the corner of Dorchester and Vinton Streets formed me for meaningful ministry.

In our own time, in the midst of this pandemic, a book title like Oh, the Places You’ll Go!, feels like it should read, Oh, the Places You Won’t Go!  As I reflect on all the summer travel, work, and adventures I’ve had in the past, I find myself a bit wistful, longing for new adventures out there in the great beyond…beyond the metropolitan Phoenix area, that is. And as I lament not being able to travel, I remember too the words of the psalmist who says, “Where could I go from your Spirit, O Lord. If I travel to the ends of the sea, you are with me.”  I would add a line, “Even if I am home for now, O Lord, your Spirit is with me, leading me into great adventures right where I am.”

We will go places again. Some day. But for now, I claim the knowing that wherever I go and don’t go, the Spirit of God is leading me in genuine ministry (transformative love of God and neighbor) right where I am…and where you are…guiding us on adventures of faith and trust, love and compassion, and genuine encounter right where we are.

O Lord, you search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. ~ Psalm 139:3