SPIRITUAL PLIGRIMAGE: GOING HOME

When you leave home (or home leaves you) to take a journey of self-discovery, you discover new strengths and dimensions of yourself among strangers and in threatening spaces. This journey can be exciting, scary, lonely and exhilarating. It is a gift of possible insight and new hope. It is a time of wandering, tasting, seeing, listening and feeling.

But, at some point, the pilgrimage comes to an end and you go home. You return to familiar door that has welcomed you time and time again after you have been away. There at home are the familiar people who said good-bye in the not too distant past, who adapted to life without you while you were gone, and who are here to greet you as you return.

But, odds are, they are  not the same as they were when you left. They have had experiences that you didn't share in. They learned that they could do some of the things they had always counted on you to do. They didn't see you every day, but created an image of you  in their thoughts as they imagined you on your pilgrimage. And they don't look the same to you because you see differently.  You have new eyes to see dimensions of them that you might know have seen before.

And when you get home, you realize that you have changed too. You have been influenced by the road. The sights and sounds have increased your awareness of new things. You see your home differently because you have seen other homes along the way.  Your home might seem more tired that you remembered.  Or it may seem warmer and safer than you thought. The treasures of your own home, once hidden under the covers of familiarity, become clearer.

So, when you have opportunity to leave home and discover new dimensions of yourself, return to your familiar spaces blessed with new sight and new life. 

SPIRITUAL PILGRIMAGE: COLLECTING TREASURES

When we leave home and begin our journey to the sacred future, we discover that we have to grieve the loss of home and open ourselves to a world where we can't rely as much on the way things were done at home as we have to rely on strangers to help us find our way. Thus we discover strangers who help reveal new dimensions of ourselves to our own self-understanding.

But, when we are out on the road to that unknown future, we also have the opportunity to discover some internal strengths that we didn't know we had. When I was in an important transition in my life and the familiar people and roles were not available to me, I had to try to survive in new ways. Before the changes occurred in my life, roughing it was staying in a Motel 6 rather than a Holiday Inn. But, as I was making my way around the country discovering my new sense of self, I traveled with a tent and a cook stove. I learned to sleep on the beach under the stars and cook a great cup of coffee over a fire.

In traveling outside my familiar spaces, I discovered that I had not only the capacity to survive on much less, but that I liked the feeling of strength and freedom which that discovery offered. In the wilderness of the soul, I discovered treasures within my own make-up that I had never seen before. The familiar things that I had surrounded myself with had insulated me not only from having to adapt to the discomfort of traveling light, but also insulated me from the treasures within myself that I discovered in the discomfort.

So, as you journey through life and occasionally leave home, or when home somehow leaves you out in the cold, see what you might pick up on the road. See what strengths you might have that you never knew you had. Those discoveries can enrich your life when you return home. They can enable you to live with less fear because you know strengths you may not have known before.

SPIRITUAL PILGRIMAGE: WELCOME STRANGERS

Our journey into our souls is often intensified when we leave home or home leaves us. This soulful journey is a spiritual pilgrimage. It is a time when our senses are heightened and we are more conscious of the life we are living than we are many ordinary days of our lives.

When we leave home and enter strange and unknown lands, we become conscious of how strange everything and everyone is.  At home we see more people we know. On a journey away from home, we find our days filled with more people we don't know.  The people in the bus next to us, the people in the restaurant where we eat, the person who checks our passport, the cab driver who takes us to our hotel. These are people who live life in a different world.

But, when we are in unfamiliar places, we often also find strangers within. We discover impulses and desires that might not be noticed when we are in our familiar pattern of daily life. When we break the pattern of work and home, of routine and ritual, we glimpse other parts of ourselves. 

Strangers, without or within, can be insightful companions in our pilgrimage of soulful discovery. They see us differently than do those familiar with us. They do not need us to be what our family needs us to be. In seeing us with new eyes, they reflect newness back to us. We see ourselves with new eyes as we are reflected in the eyes of strangers.

This is why the Jewish/Christian faith has a strong directive to welcome strangers. We welcome them first because others have welcomed us when we were strangers. It is the hospitable thing to do. But, it is also good for our discovering our deeper selves.  Strangers give us eyes to see ourselves differently and maybe more completely. A spiritual pilgrimage opens us up to our fuller selves and gives us a broader perception of our rich and complex personalities.

Be open to the strangers you meet. The world could be a better place when we show hospitality. But, we could also gain deeper insights to ourselves as well.

SPIRITUAL PILGRIMAGE: LEAVING HOME

I put the trash out last night. Rather a ritual each Sunday evening. It seems like I just did it yesterday, but somewhere while I wasn't looking, the week passed by. There are moments like this when it dawns on me that life has been lived and I didn't even notice it. We journey through each day, each week, each month, living life as normal as we can make it.

But, sometimes something happens to cause us to wake up and notice our journey. It is often when we lose something or when we feel what is normal for us is threatened. Our senses stand on tip-toe and we are alert to the healing gifts of grace or the painful gifts of fear. We notice each moment. It becomes a vivid tattoo on our memories. This is when we know our daily journey has turned into a spiritual pilgrimages. 

Pilgrimages begin when our longings are intensified. We long for something that we don't have. We long for something more. And that longing gets formed into a decision.  We decide that we are going to act, to do something that leads to exploring our longing. Pilgrimages then become a reality when we leave home (or when home leaves us). Home is where the time slides by on the familiar patterns of familiarity. When we leave home, we are uncertain what is around the next corner, so our senses are heightened.  We notice. We pay attention to our life.

Some pilgrimages are chosen. They begin when we decide to make a change. Some are foisted upon us by circumstances in our life that we can't control. They begin beside a fresh grave.  Either way, they are spans of time in our journey of life when our eyes are opened to reality, when our heart feels more deeply, our souls expand in songs of lament or ecstasy, and our bodies are alive to the touch of earth. Don't let these moments go by without discovering greater insights into  yourself and your relationship to the mystery of life itself. Soon enough the familiar will seduce you back into familiar days that seem to go by way too fast.

CONVERGENCE

Converging experiences provoke unsolicited thoughts. Deborah and I watched the space movie "Gravity" the other night.  In the midst of exploding space ships and storms of space garbage, Sandra Bullock traveled perilously through space trying to survive. The eerie silence of the sound track provoked thoughts of vast emptiness.

This past weeks scientists reported discoveries through telescopes at the South Pole that they now believe can prove what happened less than a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. They described the rapid inflation of the creation instantly after the Big Bang some 13.8 billion years ago.

Here I am reeling from the impossible task trying to comprehend this expansive space and the eternal sense of time and I went to a church this morning and sang hymns and heard a sermon about God. And I sat there aware of how incredibly inadequate the human mind is and even less competent is human language when it comes to speaking about the vast mystery of reality. I once read somewhere that words are terrible miners and even more terrible astronauts when it comes to trying to describe the unspeakable mystery of creation (and I would add, the creator).

And yet, we have  no choice. It is a part of the human character to be conscious of ourselves in relation to the fullness of creation. And it is our blessing and curse to need to understand in some small way our relationship to all that is around us. To be human is to be a meaning maker.  We have a compulsion to make sense of life. That is what drives science and religion. As inadequate as we are with words, we have to keep trying.

So, I sat in church today and gave thanks for those who have the courage to try to help us understand. I felt grateful for those who dared to guide us in getting just a glimpse of possible understanding. To form a word and cast it into the vast silence of time and space is such a foolish and courageous act that I was in appreciative awe. 

Funny how convergence of experience messes with the mind.