Travel Guide

Travel Guide

Anyone who has traveled a lot, generally has several means of exploration at their disposal. The standard organized tours, the less structured sight seeing tours, and the option of picking a direction or place with a sense of adventure or purpose. All are good in their own way, some guarantee information, others offer it, the last one has no guarantees. The first provides a sampling of destinations or exhibits with a guide who provides information as to the history or notable stories associated with the sights. The second, the sight seeing tour, is a more informal approach to visiting the destinations or exhibits. One example is going to a museum and instead of listening to the audio headset tour, a traveler can pick and choose how long to stay in one place, reading the information provided or not while focusing on points of interest of their own choosing. The third is where a traveler may or may not visit a formal setting such as a museum, he or she may take a number of detours to get to a place and might get lost on the way, or sidetracked completely, ending up at a different place altogether.

Personally, I've had experience with all three, but especially the third way, so it's no wonder that that approach to develop this website began with a haphazard series of observations of locations, related destinations and their  points of interest along the way. The orginal direction was exploratory, but having been through thus far the process of discovery, the road feels easier and the variety of sights make more sense in their interconnectedness which is not obvious for those seeking an organized tour. That being said, while I cannot offer a specific organized tour at the moment, (nor had I really ever wanted to) I can attempt to offer one framework for those who aren't interested in experiencing the labyrinth of observations haphazardly.

The framework that I've discovered for myself in exploring the figurative war torn country of ecumenistan is that of tugging on idealogical threads at one point of interest in the tapestry that is ecumenism and following the "run" in its historical fabric. I feel confident to say at this point that the ecumenical movement for some is a vehicle for politically driven groups seeking to steer the movement toward their destinations that may or may not have anything to do with the religion or aspirations of the passengers (some may call that hijacking). Following that thread one can observe revolutions, propaganda and very worldly agendas of power struggles. For others, the movement was intended as a more organized attempt at converting the Christian world to their methodology of spreading Christianity in the sense of a particular set of beliefs, that is evident in the early mission groups in the 1800s leading up to the more formally recognized modern ecumenical movement as realized in the World Council of Churches. There is still a lot more to be learned from that time period, in that it leads into the formative years of modern ecumenism through the major world events of WWI and WWII, and the idealogical political fallout from them.

The question of where ecumenism takes any given group, is most pressing for those Christians who subjected themselves to this global experiment in the hope of attaining unity and healing through a vehicle that is in essence a historical rollercoaster. The climb of a summit drops suddenly into freefall, and may in it's momentum jerk into a tight curve; it may travel through a dark tunnel and splash through water, leaving some wet and exhilarated, and others cold and slightly sick. So ecumenism has covered a large piece of historical time, but the ride seems to cycle back to the beginning as far as ground covered. The point being, beyond the sense of treading water and wanting to go home as some do, was there anything besides time that was spent or lost on this journey? If so, is it worth retrieving and is this vehicle really the means to get anywhere?

--ecumenistan