Twenty-seven steps will take you to the top of the hill in my back yard. It might take you about that same number of steps to walk the gangway to a ship bound for Bermuda or to board a plane to Paris.

   Most of my friends love to travel to faraway places or at least to dream about doing so. In London or Istanbal, they contemplate deplaning into exotic lands that may reveal their "secret destiny."

   All kinds of travel will, of course, tell us something about ourselves. Strange to some, I would rather take the twenty-seven steps than to fly to Tokyo.  

   "The script of individual destiny is secret;" John O'Donohue wrote. "it is hidden behind and beneath the sequence of happenings that is continually unfolding for us."

   I look at my one-year old self and wonder about what secret destiny I have discovered – and what of my then thirty-nine year old dad, now departed, and my mom, who's shadow appears at the bottom of the photo?

   Our most sacred journey can just as likely lead us down a hospital corridor as it can to Rome. Traveling the distance from my eyes to yours in a sacred way can yield more treasure than I could ever find on an itinerary-focused trip to Istanbul.

   It is the traveler, not the travel, that leads to the discovery (or leaves hidden) our secret destiny. The discovery of our destiny turns not on the future, but on our willingness, right now, to find the courage to cross the threshold that both beckons and frightens us.

   It is tempting to think that distant travels can fulfill the our most important life dream. It is difficult to see that the way I approach everyday encounters may reveal my destiny in an even more powerful way.

   "…so often we opt to continue the old pattern, rather than risking the danger of difference," O'Donohue tells us. "Like spring secretly at work within the heart of winter, below the surface of our lives huge changes are in fermentation…you can ask yourself: At which threshold am I now standing? At this time in my life, what am I leaving? Where am I about to enter? What is preventing me from crossing my next threshold? What gift would enable me to do it?"

   It is so easy to toss aside these questions, and so enriching to our existence to embrace them. The old patterns always seem easiest. But the old patterns cannot reveal our finest destiny. 

   Jesus traveled a tiny distance on this earth. His journey around the globe continues.

   We may be so stuck in patterned living that we don't even notice the gold that is laid before us right now. If we don't find the courage to open our hearts we will fail to discover our secret destiny, the one that may be hidden in the journey my hand can make to meet yours perhaps finding, there, Love itself.

-Erie Chapman