Just Traveling: God, Leaving Home, and a Spirituality for the Road

by Jaco J Hamman

Just Traveling celebrates overcoming distance and seeking difference as defining human traits. Following the scriptural witness of God as the Earthroamer, the book explores the liminal qualities of traveling through six anticipating, leaving, surrendering, meeting, caring, and returning. To travel is to move at the speed of being present to one's experiences, bridging distance and difference through acts of care. Drawing on personal experience as well as the wisdom of theology, anthropology, psychology, philosophy, and cultural studies, Hamman reimagines travel in a welcoming and beautiful, yet also complex and troubled world. Whether leaving home serves our wanderlust and curiosity or has personal or spiritual purposes; whether we travel a few miles or cover vast distances, we travel best when we contribute to human flourishing. Care--the compassionate reaching out to someone or something--is the practice that allows one to travel differently. The spirituality of roads is filled with hopeful restorative potential, and life is best lived with the Earthroamer.

168 pages, Hardcover

Published August 17, 2021

Reviews

[Morgan Walker Annable · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read most of this book just before a big international trip and read the last chapter on "returning" upon my own return home. This was a great framework to think about travel in an intentional and spiritual way, and truly deepened my travel experience as I was immersed in a culture different from my own. I highly recommend for anyone who will be traveling soon, or those who have that wanderlust feeling!