Donald Miller - Through Painted Deserts

Five years ago this August I boarded a Greyhound bus to Abilene, TX. Why? A cheap way to see the USA... Actually no, but 4 days, 6 states offers a whole lot of interesting encounters. There is something about the road trip kind of journey that makes you think. Not in the deep continually kind of way that maybe 4 days in a monastery or some secluded local would have. It is in the moments, like at the LA bus depot, or 2am in the Phoenix bus station that you are faced with truths, bizarre and possibly deeper ones then could be obtained in a lotus pose at dawn. The world is ugly, broken, hot, muggy (San Bernadino at 1am, still 30 degrees). It's also immensely beautiful, in ways we do not understand. I still marvel at the way it all worked out . I took the bus from Abilene to San Antonio and then the train home from there. Couple after couple took me in, talked to me, ate with me, shared with me. I met a retired army nurse on her way to she her daughter, a lady in her late 60's, single and loved to travel and was taking Amtrak around the US, married couple who'd been on the train since New Orleans - heading for San Francisco, their son had bought them the tickets. A couple, the husband nicknamed me Miss America. I could continue, but the point was genuine community and the divine interaction. We miss those moments when we aren't forced to see them. It was not by coincidence that I sat next to a guy at breakfast, my last morning who was studying Russian at a university in Eugene - we talked about orphans and Russia as the couple across from us looked cross eyed. So what does this all have to do with Miller's book? Journeys - both the mental as well as the physical. This work is written like the others in the sense of his style, yet the there is also the physical progress from Dallas to Portland, that parallels Don's journey of sorts (as there was too a journey for me from Vancouver to Texas and back). He attempts to deal with what was his life in Texas - money and all that driven, and what his life was going or could become in Oregon, while in part dealing with just plain old life - getting older, supposedly maturing etc.

He does not come to any grand conclusions or answers, which is not surprising because he does not in Blue Like Jazz either. He does however, at least give you comfort while you work your journey out. Comfort is a good thing especially when Greyhound seats or even the floor of VW van in Miller's case offer reality. So enjoy on your journeys this summer wherever they may take you - as he says "Leave. Roll the word around on your tongue for a bit. It is a beautiful word isn't it? So strong and forceful, the way you have always wanted to be. And you will not be alone. You have never been alone. Don't worry. Everything will still be here when you get back. It is you who will have changed."