Category Archives: pilgrimage

Pilgrim’s Hymn

21 Sunday Aug 2016

Posted by in listening, peace, pilgrimage, prayer, singing

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The practice of spiritual pilgrimage has captured my soul’s imagination since I was a young adult; the setting out into the unknown in the company of and the longing for the Presence of the Holy One has been the central metaphor of my journey. This hymn by the late Stephen Paulus captures both the tenor and the essence of my hopes for my life. Tomorrow I set out on a new pilgrimage, that of spinal surgery and recovery. I carry this hymn in my heart, and believe it is one carried by all the other pilgrims of my love and life, no matter what their own words might be. Grace and peace go with us!

PILGRIMS’ HYMN

Even before we call on Your name

to ask You, O God,
when we seek for the words to glorify You,
You hear our prayer;
unceasing love, O unceasing love,
surpassing all we know,

Glory to the Father,
and to the Son,
And to the Holy Spirit.

Even with darkness sealing us in,
we breathe Your name,
and through all the days that follow so fast,
we trust in You;
endless Your grace, O endless Your grace,
beyond all mortal dream.

Both now and forever,
And unto ages and ages,
Amen

 

(Michael Dennis Browne)

 

 

Peaceful Places

21 Saturday May 2016

Posted by in beauty, blessing, music, paying attention, peace, pilgrimage, seeing

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I noticed this week that although I have trusted that peace was first an interior attitude of Spirit, I also come more readily into peace (which passes understanding) when I am in a physical environment of peace. I enter into it whenever I am able to retreat to the Immaculate Heart Center at Casa de Maria in Santa Barbara. I felt it when I visited the exhibit of Agnes Martin paintings at the Los Angeles Museum of Art this week. I am always engulfed in peace when I hear concerts by the Los Angeles Master Chorale at Disney Hall. And I am learning more deeply, and leaning more fully into “the peace of wild things,” as Wendell Berry calls it, as I encounter and attend to the natural world.

This morning as I went out early to pick up the newspaper, as I was musing about the new stalks of irises about to bloom, yet again, I heard a thrilling and joyful birdsong which I was able to follow to a mockingbird perched on a “No Parking” sign directly across from my house. No one else was visible, no other noises were audible, and this moment there was a peaceful beauty as the sun rose in the east, that tuned my own heart to the Peace of the Holy. I sense in my body and soul when I have entered into a place of peace.

I wonder why I don’t seek out these places with more regularity. Between my enslavement to the clock, my anticipatory anxiety, and my restless mind, I find it difficult to follow Wendell Berry, to turn aside into the places and the things that foster peace. I don’t lack possibilities. Several years ago my husband and I each bought each other simultaneously, and unbeknownst to the other, a book called Peaceful Places in Los Angeles (Laura Randall, Menasha Ridge Press, 20010). Each week that summer I explored one of the 110 “tranquil sites” listed in the book. I selected a place for each Thursday morning, setting out with a sacred book, journal, hat, and sunglasses. I sat in the courtyard of Union Station downtown, perused the collection of the Long Beach Museum of Art on the ocean, savored the UCLA Murphy Sculpture Garden, and and browsed Small World Books in Venice. I visited for the first time the Lake Shrine Temple in Pacific Palisades and the labyrinth at the Neighborhood Church in Palos Verdes Estates.

Several things happened in these pilgrimages. I was removed from my quotidian routine and daily distractions; my sojourn was intentionally to seek the things that made for peace in my being. And I discovered delights and challenges right around me that I had never known were there. Not every single one felt like what the Celts call a “thin place,” where heaven and earth intersect, yet every one had things of beauty and interest. Moreover, the time and attention that I gave to this quest brought me nearer each time to that place of peace for which I yearn day after day.

So! my spiritual practice in this ordinary time leading into the summertime is to pick up the practice again. According to the book, there are many place that still await:Amir’s Garden in Griffith Park, the Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook, Jin Patisserie in Venice, Wattles Garden Park in Hollywood, and many more. My guess is there are also hidden places of peace not even catalogued in the book.

And I need to bring my open heart. The apostle Paul write in Philippians that the steps to that openness are gratitude–again and again; gentleness to everybody; letting go of worry and anxiety, and: the peace of God which surpasses understanding will keep our hearts and minds safe (Phil 4:7) as we enter into the peaceful places.

Here’s to a summer of entering the places and practicing the attitudes that make for peace!

Personal photo taken in courtyard, Immaculate heart Center, Casa d Maria, Santa Barbara.

 

Longing for Light to Follow

06 Wednesday Jan 2016

Posted by in Christmas, Epiphany, Hope, illumination, pilgrimage, wisdom

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Today is Epiphany, the daychihulyTampa when the Church remembers and celebrates the arrival of the wise ones who have been following the Light in the shape of a Star in the East and now have stopped over that place where the Child was. I do not envy them the journey over miles and years, but I do envy the vision and clarity of the Star that took them right to the place where their hearts longed to be.

In reading one of my gifts from Christmas, Alexander McCall Smith’s The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine, I saw myself reflected in Mma Precious Ramotswe’s self-reflection after her colleague suggests she might want a holiday:

Mma Ramotswe looked down at her hands, folded passively on her lap. Was she getting stale? She looked at her shoes. at her faithful brown shoes with their broad soles and their flat heels. Were these the shoes of a stale person?  (21)

My shoes are not broad, brown and flat, but  I am wondering if parts of me are stale. I do know that when I have been musing on this part of the Christmas season, my heart is lightened when I think of this part of the ancient story of Epiphany, of wisdom meeting new life, of coming into new territory, of being filled with joy. And I have a longing for some of that lightness.

I didn’t make New Year’s resolutions this year, I usually don’t. However, I did find myself praying for Light and Hope, but the prayers were nestled in vows I took long ago when I was ordained as a Minister of Word and Sacrament. In those vows I promised each time I recited them at each new call,  that I would seek to serve the people with energy, intelligence, imagination and love. So my prayer this year has become that I will encounter the Star of Light that will burnish my energy, intelligence, imagination and love, so that they more shine more brightly in me and through me to the people I am given to care for. I am aware that after thirty years, each of those intentions might have become stale–or maybe are just in need of re-calibration after an encounter with the Holy One.

In this decade of my life my energy is not the same as when it needed to meet the requirements of the rhythms of life that tried to balance my calling at church or seminary, commuting, raising children, caring for aging parents and keeping loving alive. My brain does not retain new information, nor does it remember familiar facts with the facility it once did. In some ways my imagination is more lithe and fantastic than it used to be, now that I put it to use only with taking flight with grand-children or hoping for outcomes not constricted by by-laws; that one glistens more brightly. And there is love! Always the Word–the greatest of these, always coming to me from Grace. But in some places and times it has felt more taxing. Weariness in well-doing has tarnished some of that first love; or that sense that one has lived long enough to say with the Preacher in Ecclesiastes, “there is nothing new under the sun,” and it seems that no new thing to savor, to take delight in, no new face to enchant with affection.

And so my prayer on this Epiphany is that the Star will shine in me, for me and through me:

Star of Wonder, shine on and energize my body and spirit so that I can make the treks over mountains and deserts to offer who I am to those who are ready to receive me.

Star of Beauty Bright, enliven my synapses and retrieve my skill sets, so that I can continue to bring ideas and strategies to the tables of conversation and cooperation in the things that make for peace.

Star of Night, shine through my dreams so that my imagination will be further illuminated with things that my eyes have not yet seen or my ears have not heard, but that add beauty and grace to the world around me.

Star of my Heart, keep the fires of Love burning, stoked and warm, brilliant and comforting, as long as my heart will beat.

In the name of that Bright and Morning Star, Amen.

 

 

Personal photo from Dale Chihuly Center, St. Petersburg, FL.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Advent IV: Love, the Star

20 Sunday Dec 2015

Posted by in advent, illumination, pilgrimage, seeing

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I keep looking to the east this Advent. How I long for a Star in the east that would bring us goodness and light!

Stars, keep the watch. When night is dim one more light the bowl shall brim, shining beyond the frosty weather, bright as the sun and moon together. People, look east and sing today: Love, the Star is on the way. (Eleanor Farjeon)

The promise is that the Holy One has visited/is coming in this season. When I look out east from my prayer corner, I don’t see stars. The ambient light has faded them away, or daylight is overtaking the night sky. The same is true for the anticipatory longing looks in my soul. But I trust that there is a Star shining beyond the frosty weather, bright as the sun and moon together who has appeared and will appear in my heart and in the world. So I pray in these last days of Advent:

Come, O Star of Wonder, fill me with wonder–at your created beauty, at your amazing diversity, at the endless surprises in making a way where there is no way. Shine in me and through me, so that I am a bearer of wonder along the trails that I wander, and bring delight to my companions on the way.

Come, O Star of Night, into our world of opaqueness and myopia–shine into the crevices and crannies where the Light seems absent and impossible. Shine into my own darkness, which I know is not dark to you, and shine through me so that I can go boldly into places along my path that are longing for light.

Come, O Star of Beauty, buoy me with the beauty I see in your star-shine in the world–in faces of peacemakers, in random acts of kindness by strangers, in the artistic renderings of painter, poet and composer, in birds and trees and friendly beasts. Shine your beauty on and in me that I may bring brightness to the neighborhood and city and nation awash with the smudges and soot of trying to make it through the day, trying to make sense of things, trying to make ends meet.

Come, O Star of Grace, illuminate my own own understanding of how you are present in our world, from the knottiest and most complicated issues of the day to the tiniest and most fragile of connections between people and your created world. Shine your Grace upon me that I can walk with Grace, in Grace, gracefully.

May your Love, the Star, keep shining, giving us great Light, in us and around us, until we are able to see it and follow it! Amen.

 

 

 

 

How Will I Know The Way?

14 Saturday Feb 2015

Posted by in Discernment, pilgrimage

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GrowIt’s always important to know where you are going…if possible! But Thomas, the friend of Jesus, poses my question: “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” (Jn.14:5). I am one who is on the journey, but often I am confused or just in the dark about a way forward.

Jesus refers his closest friends back to their journey with him already: “I am the way,” he says. It became a cliche several years back to ask one’s self “What would Jesus do?” But, in many ways we know how to go forward because we have already learned what is important. Jesus taught love, forgiveness, inclusiveness, kindness and compassion. None of those steps or actions can be the wrong steps, no matter where we find ourselves.

And he also promised that his close friends would experience the Spirit living within them, reminding them of the ways of love. In celebrating my retirement, my beloved friend Sandy preached a whiz-bang sermon, in which she likened the Holy Spirit to a spiritual GPS in our travels, giving us course correction, reminding us to back up and turn around, telling when we have taken a wrong route. I have experienced that GPS within me, making itself known in sacred reading, in quiet prayer, in conversation with others. It is a source of creative energy, a fountain which produces ideas that seem to come from nowhere, about how to love, when to be quiet, and ways to think outside the box about knotty problems.

That Spirit also sharpens my senses to signs along the way that I might not be aware of otherwise. While I traveled last fall in northern New Mexico, I came out of my room one morning to see the sign on the grass in front of my room. It invited me to GROW! There were no further instructions at that site, but I was challenged to muse on ways I can still grow. I see that I can still learn to strengthen my body so that I can walk and hike to places I never imagined. I have set myself reading that is beyond my comfort zone, so that my intellect is still gathering and processing points of view that I have never considered. Social media has allowed me to converse with and pray with and for people whom I have not met, but whose view from their location opens me to a wider caring and commitment to the healing of the world that God loves. Signs abound in my life with the Spirit lens with which to view them, and they lead me onward. How could I have known that installing a drought resistant garden in the front yard would bring me a more joyful appreciation of the varieties of creation and prompt me to a deeper commitment to the care of that creation and its resources?

I will know they ways by the journey itself, by the Spirit guide who accompanies me, and points me to signs. The artist Brian Andreas helps me know how to look for them:

 

Rest Stop

08 Sunday Feb 2015

Posted by in pilgrimage, retreat, Uncategorized

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MotheringMost journeys require us to make stops along the way. I had such a need, maybe more of an invitation, to “come apart and rest for awhile” this week. A group of us who have been meeting for 10 years to muse and to pray took our annual retreat at Casa de Maria (House of Mary) Conference Center, in the centerpiece house (in some ways the Mother House) Immaculate heart Center, to reflect and pray with Anne Lamott’s book Stitches. We drove into the beautiful grounds through an alley of trees, turned into the driveway to which the open-armed Jesus pointed us, and rang the doorbell. Even though we have been there before, the opening of the door, the soft voice of welcome and the stone walls layered with the prayers of the faithful and unfaithful, the seekers and the long-time practitioners, the desperate and the certain, made as aware that we had come into sanctuary for the restoration and the replenishment we needed.

We have come to call ourselves the Ammas, after those mothers of Spirit so long ago who went to the desert to seek to become closer to the Holy One. What we found once again on this retreat was that we were there to receive the mothering care of God in the retreat center itself and in one another. The quiet and gifted staff offered us beautifully appointed beds in which to sleep, spacious windows for enjoying either the light coming in or the Tiepolo sunset over the ocean. The flowering of many plants, the flowing of the streams, the polyphonic bird calls, the buzzing of bees, the scent of fresh air and old oaks brought back memories of earlier days or introduced us to new facets of God’s creation which we had never known were there. The meals imagined and implemented by the Amazing Teresa and her crew likewise satisfied and nourished, even as they introduced us to tastes and textures that we had not imagined heretofore. It was a cradle of Grace and Blessing!

In addition to the place, we also found that we were mothers to one another. Lamott’s second chapter is called “The Overly Sensitive Child.” Not all of us would characterize ourselves that way, yet in remembering our childhoods. our earlier years, over the hours together, some of us became aware of the joys we hold close, the paths from which we have separated, and the wounds we have still carried. We are all grownups now, but in our hours of listening and pondering together, we were able to offer one another some affirmations for each one just the way she is; to weep with one another; to hug and to hold those who mourn; and to laugh uproariously with delight in each other. Although we are all mothers ourselves, grandmothers most of us, we played with scissors, paints, gluesticks, coffee filters, and Magic Markers. We sang together “How Can I Keep From Singing?” We held quiet space after hearing a sacred memoir. And we prayed—for those we love, for our communities, for the world, and for ourselves.

In part it was hard to leave, but another part was ready to go back to the flats where we work and love and are Christ’s hands and feet in the world. Yet, we left knowing that we had been mothered by the Spirit is a way that had fed us for the journey and strengthened us for the days ahead. As we left I remembered in my mind’s eye the sculpture I had met in Santa Fe last Fall on the Museum Plaza called “Mothering.” The Mother holds her child close to her, bringing her into the the wonder and work of the world that lies before her. I felt refreshed and accompanied to go with her after this Rest Stop. I re-enter my work, play and love with a grateful heart!

What Will I Take With Me?

30 Friday Jan 2015

Posted by in letting go, pilgrimage

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images-4What do I need for this journey of Spirit? Stories of pilgrimage dance in my head: Wise Ones bringing precious gifts, slaves leaving Egypt in the dead of night with just what they could carry, Jesus’ disciples taking nothing with them. I remember the old adage, “You can’t take it with you.” But I live in an time and ethos of acquisition, where more is better and one always needs to be be prepared. There is a gizmo for everything and every gadget has its place.

Part of the call of the Spirit Road is the call to leave behind things that might seem to be essential for me when I am snug in my dwelling place, not so useful as I journey. Airplanes are making sure that we observe the limits of overload as we take flight from here to there. So they push me to travel lightly, with just what is necessary. On this leg of the journey of Spirit I am pondering what that is.

This week I am getting ready to go on retreat; I am leading the retreat and the pull of habit on me is to add just one more thing—to my basket of books, to my bag of surprises, to my words of inspiration. My shelves are lined with such wisdom, and my closets are overflowing with images and sounds I have saved for just the right time. And I have been sure that I need to shop for one more perfect thing. Yet, as the day of leaving gets closer, I am being directed to leaving some of those “darlings” behind, and to carry just what is necessary.

For this retreat only one thing is necessary: that I trust the movement of the Spirit in me and in the other retreatants. We have read the same book, are at home in sacred Hebrew and Christian scripture. Over 8 years of retreating together and meeting monthly for 10, we bring listening ears, perceptive eyes and open hearts. We bring memories of where we have been and the ways that the Spirit has met us.We also bring hope for what will be done in us and through us. We tote gentle songs in our voices, images in our imaginations and acute sensory awareness for all that will await us. This is the work of the Spirit!

So, I can travel lightly, unencumbered by the anxiety of needing to have thought of everything, free from the worry of covering every base, open to what the wind of the Spirit will blow into our midst. I will still have a few bags in my car, carrying a few things that remind me of the ways that Spirit Grace has brought me safely thus far. And I will bring a Word that has been blossoming me over these weeks of preparation.

However, I can travel with freedom–knowing Who goes with me and with whom I will celebrate and worship. G. K. Chesterton has said, “Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.”  Toward this retreat I would be one who flies…taking myself lightly and presuming on the mercy of the Spirit who lets me fly!

Who Is Going With Me?

22 Thursday Jan 2015

Posted by in pilgrimage

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JColumbaBayPilgrimage has been my metaphor since I was a young woman. Providentially, I learned that image of traveling in faith as one of walking with the Holy One, not as a feat that has to be accomplished or a a goal that had to be achieved. As the late theologian Nelle Morton has said, “The journey is home!” So on this site, I continue a journey begun on another website, but this time I am on my own.

Traveling alone feels risky. However, I am very aware of the Spirit guides that are with me still. In making the transition I have had conversation partners whose questions, probing, and feedback about my blogging have shaped my discernment; they have asked me the hard questions of “why?” and “what are you called to do?” and “where do you experience freedom?” Some are wise ones with much personal experience in listening, then following the Voice of the Beloved as they navigate their way on the journey. Others are pragmatic, expert in technology and practical tips of the social media world. I also have been guided by voices in writing whom I have never met, as I have read poetry, reflections and teaching from writers in this season of Epiphany, those who have led me to pondering what it means to “go home by another way” or those who have invited me to step over the threshold into the next leg of the travel.

I also have as companions on this trek those whose places I frequent with regularity–the congregation with whom I worship, the group of Ammas with whom I meet, and, much to my surprise, I have a virtual community of prayer and reflection on social media and on e-mail. With each group I share prayers, the Word and words that teach me, challenge me and give me hope. No one in this company is taking the exact route that I am taking; some of them are no even aware of my particular route.  But when I let myself rest awhile with each of them, I experience bread for the journey, and often, strength for the day.

Another set of companions hovers over this sojourn–the “cloud of witnesses” that has been the agent of Grace that has brought me safe thus far: family members who imprinted me with Christian thought and practice; teachers and models who explained or embodied a “more excellent” way; previous generations of faithful ones whose legacy remains alive and compelling in my heart and life in word, song, and image.

I remain very clear that wherever I go, the Spirit goes with me and lives in me; She is my Teacher, with a voice behind me saying, as Isaiah observed, “This is the way, to the right, or to the left.”

So, as frightening as it seems to set out “alone,” I take this step, knowing that I am in good company, along with all those who read and muse on this blog. Let the adventure continue!