On the Difference Between Visiting and Being Received

There is a kind of travel organized around acquisition. You see the thing, you photograph the thing, you move to the next thing. The self that travels comes home essentially unchanged, only more full of opinions about airport lounges.

Formation travel is organized around reception. You go to receive something. Maybe a question you couldn't have been asked at home, a saint whose life reframes something you thought you already understood, a place that asks something of you and waits.

This is harder than it sounds. Most of us, most of the time, are tourists even when we think we're pilgrims. We want to be moved without being disrupted.

Poland is not interested in that arrangement. It has been through too much. You go with open hands, or you miss it.

← Back to the Journal