INNER AND OUTER JOURNEY

After getting released from my “cell,” my wife and I have been walking everywhere. We have not yet taken any public transportation. On our second day of release, I clocked more than 10 miles on my pedometer. Though my feet were tired, I was ecstatic enjoying the freedom of movement. One of my favorite things to do in Korea is to aimlessly walk around outdoor markets that always features irresistibly sumptuous street foods. I imagine that the dumplings, tteokbokki (spicey Korean rice cakes), fish cakes, soondae (Korean blood sausage), and countless other foods are calling my name. Funny, they don’t call my wife’s name. The outdoor markets are often tucked away in between modern high-rise buildings, and the food stalls proudly show their wear almost as if to showcase their timeless wisdom. The reason I am drawn to the outdoor markets is that it reminds me of my carefree childhood, and in addition, it simply and utterly leaks humanity. Comfort and familiarity of the bygone era are what my soul yearns for. I don’t yet fully know what this means to me in my inner journey, so it remains an elusive question mark. In 2012, I walked the streets of Damascus, Syria, and I vividly remember feeling a sense of strange familiarity even though that was my first visit to Syria. It totally reminded me of my childhood back in Korea in the 1970s. I intuitively “know” there is something there that I need to pay attention to. 

When we are younger (that is beyond childhood years all the way into our 30s and perhaps even spilling into our 40s), the outer journey tends to dominate, downplaying and even suppressing our inner journey. The outer journey bestows us certain identities, sometimes disguised as our true self and sometimes represented as our surfacy true self. By surfacy, I mean we don’t yet know what we truly desire and we haven’t discovered our true self, and thus it is in the outskirt of true self. In this state, we often don’t have the language to describe what we are experiencing in our inner journey. Instead, our outer journey unilaterally dictates that that is our inner journey. Or our inner journey is subservient to the outer journey and thus not all that important to us. As the outer journey is more concerned with doings and actions and more fixated on how we want others to “see” us, it can rob and choke any serious pursuit of the inner journey. We move toward pursuing the inner journey from the outer journey largely out of desperation, disruptions, and deeper desires.

Our inner journey initially begins by saying yes to the “cards that were dealt” to us, meaning we are merely the recipient of the designs and decisions by God and our parents. When and where we were born, who our parents were, and the personhood that I am are all given to us. It seems that for us to move forward, we must “go back” and embrace our past. Faithfulness and stewardship of these givens are an essential part of our inner journey. Additionally, we also must steward the decisions and choices we make in life. The problem is that we are guaranteed to make mistakes, wrong choices, and decisions. The initial “problem” can turn into steps of growth and thus blessings. God doesn’t waste anything in life if we let God reign and use our faulty missteps and failures, it seems to me.  

As I am getting older, I have begun to pay attention to my own inner journey with far more gusto and courage. One discernable truth is that our outer journey must be a natural outflow or by-product of our inner journey. Thus, the outer journey becomes the response of doings based on the inner journey. Courage to be must proceed courage to do.

My wife and I stand at the crossroads of this courage to be leading to courage to do. During our sabbatical, digging deep into our inner journey certainly gained momentum and granted us permission and space to pursue without usual distractions and responsibilities. Excavating and mining nuggets of precious jewels from my soul were the main outcome of our sabbatical. As I have shared though, in my previous blog, I did have to pass through death and deconstruction to get to unearthing desire. Remember the scene in The Return of the King where Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli had to pass through the Paths of the Dead which was the only way to get to Gondor to join the rest against the mighty Sauron? When entering the Paths of the Dead, Aragorn murmured resolutely, “I do not fear death.” It seems prudent that all of us practice that resolute murmur to ourselves to embrace death and deconstruction. What awaits after death and deconstruction are life and reconstruction. 

Second to the last day during the 2-week mandatory quarantine, I “heard” from God that my sabbatical is now over. (Though our sabbatical officially ended last November, due to COVID, life wasn’t back to normal and thus we felt like our sabbatical somehow got extended.) I don’t yet know the full implications of the strong sense of my sabbatical ending. But I am now prepared to engage and to do. 

The integration journey of our inner and outer journeys is nothing less or more than our journey toward union with God. Our integrated journey and God journey become the same journey. Because as soon as we operate out of being someone else than our true self, we stand falsely against or even betray the Creator who created us.

There are two major categories of obstacles that stand in the way of pursuing the union of inner and outer journeys. At the outer or macroscopic level, it is the national, cultural, institutional, and/or familial systems resulting in complex and massive proprieties of behaviors and expectations. In other words, they prescribe what and how we need to behave and live our life, almost always fixated on outer journey elements. Recognizing and swimming against such powerful current of cultural and religious proprieties that are not aligned with the Kingdom values requires a great deal of courage and wisdom. Invariably, there is a steep price to pay for such freedom. 

At the inner or microscopic level, there are ample and enough interior distractions that sway us away from what is truly important. These are what John described as “the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life.” (ESV, 1 John 2: 16) Recognizing and admitting such interior tendencies and traps is even more difficult than the outer challenges since we can easily hide and justify our interior distractions. Furthermore, if we disguise them well, we tell ourselves that nobody can see them. Over time, though, we begin to leak and leave a trail of shady interior pursuits.

Freedom from both outer and inner distractions, attachments, and fixations is the very key that allows us to take the journey toward integration. To me, “free as the sky” means saying multiple nos to both outer and inner demands and controls and saying multiple yeses to the immediacy of unfolding life that is simple and untethered.