The End of Our Exploring
A Visit to Wittenberg's Schlosskirche Provides a Chance for Reflection
NOTE: The following is a combination of the author’s recollections and quotations from T.S. Eliot’s poem, “Little Gidding.” The latter are displayed as block quotes.
“Why did I come here?”
The question seized me as the train came to a stop. Why indeed had I come on this strange pilgrimage to a place that was said to be the end of pilgrimages? But there is no end of pilgrimage for those who have not yet seen the beatific vision.
I stepped onto the platform where the sign read “Lutherstadt Wittenberg.” A place transformed by a person, as places always are. I too was changed by that person, but not by that person alone.
“Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.”1
So long, I had imagined what it would feel like as I walked into that town, my body far too anxious to tolerate the slightest lack of speed. For my heart was spinning, churning up the memories: the things that had propelled me toward that place.
A town borne and burdened by history. How many had made this pilgrimage before me? Did I have some kinship with them? But this felt so different—so personal. I was not that crudest of things: a tourist. Or if I was, I was unwilling to acknowledge it to myself. Yet, what claim did I have on that place? What claim did it have on me?
“And what you thought you came for
Is only a shell, a husk of meaning
From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled
If at all. Either you had no purpose
Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured
And is altered in fulfilment.”
I remember the beginning. How precious was the beginning! Hearing things that grasped me by the soul, racing out to buy books like the reckless youngster I was. My purpose altered—a fire lit in my soul. And there were others who felt the same way as I, and they befriended me and told me, “Here you belong.”
But the end is never clear at the beginning. The road seldom runs smooth. It is the nature of a pilgrim to be driven on through wild places—deserts far from communion, valleys of deepest shadow, ascents which wear one’s soul with the effort. My soul has been worn to the point of bleeding, yet I do not hate this change in myself. I do not hate any of it, but I mourn what I have lost.
As I walked along Collegienstraße and began to see the familiar places, the memories hit me wave by wave. For nearly as soon as I was told, “Here you belong,” I was also told, “You do not belong here.” It had been the struggle of a lifetime to believe that I belonged. Did I really belong to that place, and did it belong to me?
But here it was—the church!
“You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid.”
I take photos in every historic church I enter. It helps to preserve the connection—to feel that sacredness in my bones for years to come. But in this church, I did not only take photos. I sat and prayed. Yes, I thanked God for bringing me to that place. I thanked him for the ones who had led me there, in whose debt I pass my days. I thanked him for lives that blazed so brightly, they continue to light my way. I could not be in that place without praying.
And I saw the gravestones on the left and right, looking just as they had in the pictures that fill the books upon my shelves back in Dayton, Ohio, a land far away. I touched the gravestones—first the left, and then the right, the one without flowers, then the one with them—and I prayed to God in the words of my ancestors, “Grant them eternal rest, Lord God, and may perpetual light shine upon them.” For I knew what it was to walk in those shoes, or I imagined that I did.
The words of my ancestors hold power.
“And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.”
I stepped toward the altar, where a ring of flames was already lit, the fires uniting in a mutual glow. All things come round at the end. Still the fire burns.
For years, I had lit candles in each church I visited where an ancestor was buried—a tradition begun spontaneously in Salisbury Cathedral, wishing to somehow acknowledge that these were bone of my bones. The Lord never commanded candle lighting, but I felt compelled to do it.
In Wittenberg’s Schlosskirche, I stood in a church that was not my own, among people who were not my own. No one in that place was bone of my bone. And yet, I felt a kinship of faith uniting those separated by space and time, making a circle of all our longings.
I lit a flame for them, and I knew it resided also in me.
“What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make and end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.”
I never thought it would be like this. I imagined I would reach that place—that end—with all of them by my side. The people who had taught me, who had walked with me through difficulties. How I longed for their communion in that moment!
Perhaps time can make an end of pride, or perhaps only in death can hearts be reunited. I do not know, but I see that God is making something of me. For I would burn brightly, sharing the love and grace of Jesus with everyone I meet.
That is what I was taught. That is what I have been given. And in that place, I remembered it. I felt the flame within me rekindled.
The pilgrimage continues. The race is not finished, for the prize still lies ahead. Only in the end will I understand it all, and I must endure the waiting: the quiet hours, the lonely hours.
Yes, I would endure that fire, for love is worth the pain, and it is love which propels me forward.
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
Can’t get enough of me here? Why not follow me on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram? I am also now on Threads with the username amy_mantravadi.
You can find the entire text of “Little Gidding” here: http://www.columbia.edu/itc/history/winter/w3206/edit/tseliotlittlegidding.html