It’s approximately 10:00 PM—13 hours in to our trip. Through the window on the right-hand of the bus, I watch the majestic sunset paint glowing orange and purple stripes over the bare Patagonian landscape. I take a deep breath and shift in my seat, knowing that in just a few short hours, that same sun will reappear on my left. I begin to doze off as my mind tries to comprehend the
dimensions of this cosmic tango.
In general, I found that traveling by bus over so much terrain gives a person a special sense of perspective that is hard to come by via any other means of travel. When you fly, for example, you cover so much ground so quickly that it can even be disorienting; you can fall asleep over New York and wake up several hours later in Madrid. But when you’re on the 23rd hour of a thirty-hour bus ride—when your back has absorbed each bump along the journey—you start to appreciate the sheer hugeness of the world you’re traveling across.
In a bus, you travel fast enough to cover a lot of ground, but slow enough to appreciate what you’re seeing: the vast expanses of land, dotted every now and then by a house or a horse or an undulating oil well. The high mountain snow melting slowly but surely enough to feed crystalline creeks and serene azure lakes. The elegant, polyrhythmic dance of the sun, moon and stars. In this sense, I found this trip to be a profoundly humbling experience.
Staring out the window as the landscapes melt slowly one into another, one appreciates the enormity of the world. In these moments, it’s hard not to think about God—who else could have created something so huge? It makes you feel insignificant in view of the His awesome creative power. But at the same time, the Gospel tells us that we are not insignificant, but rather that each and every one of us is immensely important to God. He created each one of us out of love—a love that He proved in Jesus’ sacrifice—and He yearns for us to spread His light in this world of darkness.
As we ascend into the snowy cordillera, my iPod randomly chooses a movement from one of Beethoven’s symphonies, and the music seems to echo forth from the mountains themselves. I lose myself in the moment, which leaves me with the following insight:
It is foolish to think that you will change the world alone; that is hubris, and you are setting yourself up for disappointment. Rather, we ought to go about our work peacefully and contently, with faith that it is part of a greater project that is not accidental and is indeed going somewhere.
We are like musicians in a huge orchestra: while from our perspective our individual parts may seem small or incomplete, only the conductor can see all of the music (in fact, He wrote it!) and we must have faith that He will direct it toward a harmonious whole.
Even though we may not always hit all the right notes, it is up to us to play our parts—no matter how humble they may seem—as well as we possibly can.
