… continued from last
week:
TheBoboes entered back onto the pathway of Orgueil. Treufel and his assistants led the travelers onward into there new Land of “Unlikeness” for many days. Morning blended into morning and week into week. The weariness of travel was broken only by the pleasant fellowship that continued to develop among the pilgrims.
Teufel’s approval for these “present gatherings,” as he called them, was broken only when the memory of a few of the elders turned the discussion and story telling toward the land they had left. In response, Teufel was overheard telling his lieutenants, “When you hear them speak of the old country, encourage them to think only of themselves in the present. Focus them on their own lives. Their problems arise only because they don’t realize that in the world of ‘Unlikeness’ it is all about us. Do this and we can easily keep them directed.”
This “here-and–now” attitude was in every suggestion and order that the Teufel gang gave. It permeated the world that they now ruled. The Boboes experienced this in their daily lives— like the times of pairing and as the babies were born. The only disruption to this routine was on those rare occasions when an elder had “a dream.” After such revelations, Treufel’s words and actions were questioned, but in the end, the Boboes growing diversity always postponed open discussion until the groups could agree—a thing that could never happen in the world of unlikeness.
The Boboes’ felt-needs of their traveling lifestyle gave “Teufel’s direction” repeated opportunities. Hunger and thirst was joined by the new experiences of loneliness and that strange continued feeling of entrapment. “You feel this way because you are NOT looking out for your own interests,” … or so “the Controllers” mantra went. The ongoing journey did bring something new—a sign identified it as a “roundabout.” The sign’s circle of multiple arrows forewarned that their road was about to wind around an island to its point of beginning. Thiscircular detour was strange in that it had many new roads and unexplored pathways leading off from it: They carried such names as: Control Circle, Disappointment Drive, and Pride Parkway.
Their self appointed guides worked hard to attract the various groups toward the different and unknown opportunities that lay before them. So, a decision was made to divide the band into thirds and that each group would send out scouts along the roads that led off of the “roundabout.” Their purpose would be to experience, to investigate and then to report back on their findings.
So, off the contingents of scouts went—each on their own assigned treks. For those who stayed behind, the days passed slowly. The encampment was further afflicted by the continual agitation caused by Teufel’s directive; it left them in impatience.
Finally, the scouting parties began returning. At first the news they brought seemed incomplete; then, the incompleteness turned into perplexity. Each of the scout’s conclusions were strikingly similar, “Each of the roads that sprung from the roundabout simply leads to more roundabouts.”
In fact when the official report was given, it spoke of seemingly unending passages of roundabouts. The more the scouts explored, the more there was to explore. During the reading of the report, most scouts nodded their approval to a particular sentence, “It’s like someone forgot to put up the sign, ‘no outlet or exit.’” The road of Orgueil that brought them this far had no return route—so they were stuck.
What a strange place in which to dwell: always traveling, but never arriving; always going, but never resting; always experiencing, but never achieving contentment. Days twisted into years and the single life became generations. Everything often seemed the same. Even when there was a change, it always pricked with undelivered promises.
TheBobo Tribe thus circled in this land of Unlikeness, a land which repeatedly proved itself to be the very opposite of their old home in the “Kingdom of the Being.” No wonder someone had given it the name of “Unlikeness.” This new land of their current lives was quickly turning into a cauldron of discouragement, disappointment and discontent.
It seemed to the beleaguered Boboes that every way they entered and every road down which they went, led them to “no place.” It was beginning to seem to them that the old King of Being’s proverb might be becoming a banner over each of them, “Every way of a man is
right in his own eyes, But the King of Being weighs the hearts.”
We wait for volume four of
“The Journeys of Our Lives –
Boboes and the Way Back” to
appear in next week’s paper…
Each month a member of the
Cook County Ministerium will
offer Spiritual Reflections. This
month’s s contributor is Rev.
Dennis C. Schutte, pastor of
Life in Christ Lutheran Church.
Pastor Schutte has lived in
Cook County (Lutsen) since
2000 serving as Pastor and
Missionary.
Leave a Reply