Quo- Vadis
 
Re-reading Nelson DeMille’s revised novel, The Quest, I happened on a couple of pages that were quite stirring and theological. I missed these things my first time through the book. For instance, he talks about faith and wonders how human beings can hold faith in a world of utter contradictions. His summation, in my words, is that it is impossible unless you can see love. If one can love, one can believe in God. Simple, but true, I think.
 
In another place DeMille talks about the Quo-Vadis chapel outside Rome, (Chiesa Del Domine Quo-Vadis). The chapel is on the Appian Way as you leave Rome. According to the Apocryphal Gospel of Peter, Jesus appeared to Peter at this place. This happened as Peter was fleeing persecution in Rome. Peter being surprised by Jesus’ appearance said, “Lord where are you going, (Quo-Vadis)?”  Jesus replied to Peter, “I am going to Rome to be crucified again.” Peter, of course, did not want Jesus crucified a second time. So, Peter turned, followed, and went to his own crucifixion. There is a marble stone in the church that has two footprints in it. They are said to be, miraculously, Jesus’s footprints. I am just saying, “It’s a good story.”
 
About that point in reading The Quest, I stopped and took a breath. In and out. It is an apocryphal story after all. I was finding it difficult to suspend doubt about the story I was reading. As you probably know, an entire theology is built around the crucifixion of Peter in Rome. I do not doubt that this backwater fisherman from the Sea of Galilee was crucified in Rome attempting to make up for past bad behavior in relation to his betrayals. I have no doubt at all about that. If you have ever betrayed anyone or anything, and if you are sentient, you spend the rest of your life if trying to make things right. Or, conversely, you deny what you did and compartmentalize the experience. Then, you bury it in a tight corner of your mind. Peter, I believe, never got over what he had done. He remembered. That’s the point of the story. So, off Peter goes, back to Rome. He finished his quest of following and serving.
 
I started thinking about this Latin phrase, “Quo Vadis,” quite apart from Peter. I thought about it in relation to myself. I turned it around and asked the question of myself, “Where are you going?” I thought, crazy man that I am, “I am on a hero’s journey to find the truth of myself.” The book, The Quest, is about the search for the Holy Grail. DeMille says the quest for the grail is not a quest for a holy relic, as much as the inward quest for the truth of ourselves. So, where am I going?
 
Finding myself in my eighth decade, I answer the question differently than I would have forty years ago when I thought I needed love. I looked for love everywhere. No matter how much I had, I thought I needed more. I was greedy. When I experienced love, it seemed transitory. It did not seem to reside in me. Somehow love was transitory. It felt like Teflon; it did not stick. I thought I needed to grasp love for fear of losing it or not being able to keep it. I’ve lost love on numerous occasions because I yielded to false illusions, believed in various delusions, and found myself as so many do, clueless.
 
I woke up one day with an empty hole in my heart. My heart was broken, and I did not know how to mend it. It had been like that as long as I could remember. I found myself one day sitting with my head in my hands. For some reason of which I am not conscious today, I opened my hands and said, “Show me the way.” Nothing appeared or happened immediately. But I found a stirring in myself.  I wanted to let go of what I had. It was not much at the time. I wanted to make a difference to someone else. I began by being kind to someone I thought I was beneath me. I found myself caring for people who were different than I was. It no longer seemed important to only love and care for people who could give me something in return. One day, looking in a mirror, I saw someone looking back at me. I no longer loathed that person. I smiled at him and saw him smiling back at me. I said, “I love you.”
 
Since that time, I no longer look for love outside of myself. I also am no longer stingy with love, nor do I hoard it. About thirty years ago my mother was visiting me. Because I think differently – politically and theologically – from most of my family members, I suggested that she had taken the wrong baby from the hospital. I thought I was someone else’s child. She said, “I don’t think so.” Then she said, “You are just different.” Being a little paranoid, I said, “Different how?” To which she responded that I was always searching for what I did not have. She said, “Make it work for you.” She hugged me and said, “Jack, there is enough love to go around.” I have found that to be true.
 
Today, I am going to luxuriate in all the love given me, whether that love is deserved or undeserved, and tell the whole world that it is available to everyone. If you can see it, it is yours. If you can’t see it, can you at least imagine its possibility? I am convinced that most of the things I have messed up in my life were messed up because I could not see what is around me.
 
We are all Grail searchers. If you too are on a quest, stop and ask yourself as I have myself, “Where am I going?” The answer to that one question can make all the difference in the world. Your quest and mine are different. However, they are both valid in my mind. Let yourself be drawn into finding the answer to whatever it is that has eluded you or is eluding you. It may take a while to figure out. I think that inside of yourself, you will find all you have ever searched for. Ready? Let’s go.

Ciao,
Jack