Pilgrimage

   Picture this: two fit 70 year olds climbing the Pyrenees, ten miles up and then three straight down, having eaten a roll for sustenance. The wife of the duo is now sitting in the woods at the side of the trail weeping like a crazed mental patient while the man is slumped beside. She is barely able to think but just knows her husband is embarrassed by her as others trod by. Then he turns and says: "I want my Mommy" and she bursts out laughing." The Camino, that 500 mile walk in Spain, is saved.

 After her hero passes she finds notes he made on other trips. One struck her, how he believed that we shouldn't be tourists but pilgrims. What does this mean? It meant a lot I think for John : it meant travelling with purpose, to find what service God wanted him to engage in. To make a difference on his trips to Ghana, Central America and South America. 

  I must need metaphors because I have clung to the thought that I am on a pilgrimage still with John but different. In the corner of this room are our two hiking sticks, Camino shells, his running shoes, sunflowers. This is where I pray each morning. It reminds me that if I could do 175 miles of that walk in Spain I can do this hard last few years left to me.

On this walk so far I have encountered many trail angels who have helped me keep going just like on the Camino.Like on the Camino, I have cried over small things, then dropping my soap in the shower, now, not being able to get the cartridge in my printer. The first line of Scott Peck's classic "The Road Less Traveled" is this: "Life is difficult." I don't think we expect that, do we.

 I will end, clinging to my metaphor, with something that happened on the trail: "Mass at the stunning Leon Cathedral. When the homily is given in Spanish I try to open my mind and see what appears. I keep getting the word "profound". Then the message became clearer. We are all profoundly significant in this life. We ALL matter so much to the world,  to our world."  We are all pilgrims. Amen.

 

 

A Darshan moment

 

  

So long ago. A moment of liberation. 

     Leaving Mass, annoyed. Prayers for the Viet Cong to convert? Really? When did prayers work, I thought ? What good has this faith done for any of my unhappy, drink sodden relatives including my family? Enough, I'll sleep in and find my own way. How many have gone down that road ?

   Then marriage to my love and Denver. "Please come to Denver in the Springtime." Yes, we will. "Hey, rowdy boy why don't you settle down, Denver ain't your kind of town." A baby girl in tow and then another child to be born there. Looking sadly down I70 towards home a thousand miles away. 

Pack up and west to California, land of beauty and all that is good. A lovely tri-plex, walks to the library with toddler's hands held, sandy beaches near by, nasturtium growing in the front, a garden. What more do you want ? Oh ,but want is who we are. There's a hole that no one ever talked about. Oh, maybe St. Augustine did. But how long has he been dust?

Then this happened, with everything I ever wanted surrounding me and in the quiet of a rented living room, I said this: "God, if you are there, help me. " Nothing happened but I felt better. 

  I have told this story before but I came across a word today that says what happened next so well. A week later I picked up a small book as a gift. The cover said something about love but when I started to read I was hooked. A story about a saint's statue never getting greasy after years in a kitchen piqued my interest. The essays were from another book that somehow I got my hands on despite no Amazon. "Quantity of a Hazelnut"

 It was darshan." It's a gift; it's like there's a moment in which the thing is ready to let you see it. In India, this is called darshan. Darshan means getting a view, .....as if the clouds blew away and you could finally see the Himalayas. They are letting you have their view, say the people of India, darshan. This comfortable, really deep way of getting a sense of something takes time. It doesn't show itself to you right away".(Gary Snider)

I blew the clouds away with an invitation, help me, whatever that means.

From then on for all these years sentences in a book would mean something, they would jump out. So many guides :Merton, CS Lewis, Fae Melania. The clouds were blowing away and I could finally see.

What a treasure to have found that metaphor.