“There is only one road to Heaven, and it is equally long from all corners of the world.”
— Account of Anselm Adornes’ journey to the Holy Land, 1471
A few weeks ago I discovered a fellow waymaker in an ancient church in Brugge.
On a recent visit two weeks ago with my wife Amanda and several of my children, we discovered the Jerusalem Church, founded in the fifteenth century by Anselm Adornes.
Anselm Adornes was a merchant in one of Europe’s busiest ports, a traveler who set off for the Holy Land in 1470, a mayor, diplomat, and mediator who helped ease political conflicts, and a man who was profoundly influenced by meeting people from all walks of life. He explored and lived in Italy, Brugge, Egypt, Jerusalem, and later Scotland, and each experience left a lasting mark on his understanding of the world.
Back in Anselm’s day, Bruges was a bustling hub for trade, one of the world’s most important ports. The city was already a melting pot of languages, cultures, and religions, with ships coming from all over—Africa, the Mediterranean, the Baltic, England, Spain. They traded wool, spices, silks, and metals. But it wasn’t these goods that really shaped Anselm. It was the marketplace of ideas, beliefs, and perspectives that truly made him someone extraordinary.
As impactful as Brugge was, it was a visit to the Holy Land that truly changed how he saw the world.
On February 19, 1470, Anselm set out with several other companions on a journey that would last more than a year. His son, Jan, wrote down a record, in Latin, of not just the places visited, but of the expansive worldview that was created from the journey.
Traveling to Egypt and the Holy Land in the fifteenth century was fraught with danger. Many of his companions died along the way.
They journeyed through Genoa and then on to Rome, where they had the honor of meeting Pope Paul II. After that, the group had to decide their next move. Many pilgrims took the safer path through Damascus, but Anselm and his son chose to head to the Holy Land through Alexandria. They left behind safety in the name of curiosity and adventure. This decision took them through North Africa and into Egypt, to the Pyramids of Giza, to Sinai, and finally to the Monastery of St. Catherine. Eventually, they arrived in Palestine.
In Jerusalem, they were granted the rare honor to spend two nights and a full day inside the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.
The stay was life changing. It opened up Anselm even more to curiosity toward cultures, to people, to complexity.
One line from the account of his journey has stayed with me:
“There is only one road to Heaven, and it is equally long from all corners of the world.”
— Account of Anselm Adornes’ journey to the Holy Land, 1471
For a man of his time, this is a remarkably generous vision. It refuses the temptation to place one group closer to God, truth, or worth than another.
When Anselm returned home, he re-built Jerusalem into Brugge.
The Jerusalem Church was modeled after the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and embodies the idea that what is sacred elsewhere can shape us here… encounter does not diminish faith—it deepens it.
Standing in that church centuries later, I loved discovering he became a mediator. Mediators cannot hold opposing sides with dignity unless they have first learned to walk among difference without fear. Waymaking is not merely a skill. It is a way of seeing. It is a belief that the humanity of the person I am in disagreement can persist, even when we can’t find a solution.
Anselm’s life is a testament to the idea that openness is not weakness. Curiosity is not compromise. And seeing the humanity of the other enlarges our own.
Standing in the Jerusalem Church, I couldn’t help but think about how urgently we need this way of seeing today.
Anselm’s account describes faith encountered “in many forms and habits,” and the necessity of patience when moving among people who live differently. Engaging humanity, Anselm discovers, is the most powerful teacher. It strips away the illusion that there is only “one” way of being human.
Anselm allowed difference, and the people he encountered, to change him.
In a world of cultural, political, religious and ideological difference can we resist the temptation to reduce people to labels, stereotypes and positions? When we do, curiosity collapses into certainty and humanity shrinks.
Anselm’s curiosity led him to see people who are different from us first as people.
He remained curious about people he didn’t understand. He believed that dignity didn’t depend on similarity.
He was a waymaker. And waymakers know that the road forward—toward peace, toward understanding, toward something like heaven—is long for all of us, and shared by all of us.
Humanity walks on one road.
The road is long.
It stretches to every corner of the world.
The question is never whether we are walking the road. It is whether we have to courage to walk it together.
“that what is sacred elsewhere can shape us here… encounter does not diminish faith—it deepens it.”
Love that expansive and enriching orientation to difference.