Lenten Walk Series 7 (Mountain)
My spirit soars in swelling praise as I rise in altitude. I come before these vistas as approaching the Lord's table; the nourishment of sky and terrain feed my soul. The cry of hawk and eagle are hymns directed by the whistling wind. It is within the sky-blue walls of this sunday school classroom where these sainted sierras show me the grandeur of God. Here, surrounded by and in the mountains, I find my many-steepled sanctuary.
“O tall mountainsof confidence in God,you never surrender when the Lord tests you!Although you stand far away from meas if in exile, all alone,you remind me that no armed power is strong enough to best you.Your trust in God is wonderful!”
My spirit soars in swelling praise as I rise in altitude. I come before these vistas as approaching the Lord's table; the nourishment of sky and terrain feed my soul. The cry of hawk and eagle are hymns directed by the whistling wind. It is within the sky-blue walls of this sunday school classroom where these sainted sierras show me the grandeur of God. Here, surrounded by and in the mountains, I find my many-steepled sanctuary.
“The mountain opens its secrets only to those who have the courage to challenge it. It demands sacrifice and training. It requires you to leave the security of the valleys but offers spectacular views from the summit to those who have the courage to climb it. Therefore, it is a reality which strongly suggests the journey of the spirit, called to lift itself up from the earth to heaven, to meet God.”
“The pale flowers of the dogwood outside this window are saints. The little yellow flowers that nobody notices on the edge of that road are saints looking up into the face of God. This leaf has its own texture and its own pattern of veins and its own holy shape, and the bass and trout hiding in the deep pools of the river are canonized by their beauty and their strength. The lakes hidden among the hills are saints, and the sea too is a saint who praises God without interruption in her majestic dance. The great, gashed, half-naked mountain is another of God’s saints. There is no other like him. He is alone in his own character; nothing else in the world ever did or ever will imitate God in quite the same way. That is his sanctity.”
Lenten Walk Series 6 (Fire)
We walked our prayers along a Big Sky catwalk on this night. The children had all fallen asleep and we left them in grandparents' care while we went to crunch our way through the chilled, still winterscape. What was immediately evident was the sensory experience of our supplications. Every prayer was unleashed on a ribbon of breath while the cold night air stung our every lung.
We walked our prayers along a Big Sky catwalk on this night. The children had all fallen asleep and we left them in grandparents' care while we went to crunch our way through the chilled, still winterscape. What was immediately evident was the sensory experience of our supplications. Every prayer was unleashed on a ribbon of breath while the cold night air stung our every lung. With every step there echoed the crunch of Montana-high-country snow, which has its own taste and scent, too. Everything seemed so still. So absolutely frozen and lifeless. Yet, it only took the mere twinkle of a star to remind us of how much dynamic movement there really was going on all about us: our very own earth planet was in cycle, as was the celestial sky above. Every tree contained a dormant energy of growth and renewal. So this became our prayer: That when our lives appear stagnant and still, we know you are moving, O Lord. That when we feel cold and dark, we know that You are our internal life-force. That when we feel nothing moving in our dreams, You are there to light up our inspirations.
And then we came back to the warmth of our Big Sky home and were immediately struck by the presence, warmth and dynamic movement of the fire within the hearth. Its dancing, hot flames were in contrast to Winter's silent setting just beyond the door. This fire, this energy was a display of exuberance and reminded me of Annie Dillard's wonderful words:
If the landscape reveals one certainty, it is that the extravagant gesture is the very stuff of creation. After the one extravagant gesture of creation in the first place, the universe has continued to deal exclusively in extravagances, flinging intricacies and colossi down aeons of emptiness.... The whole show has been on fire from the word go. I come down to the water to cool my eyes. But everywhere I look I see fire; that which isn't flint is tinder, and the whole world sparks and flames.
Lenten Walk Series 4/5
Gratitude for legacy and heritage have been on our praiseful lips these past two daysas we have made our way to Big Sky, Montanta for a week of skiing with family. We overnighted in Butte, MT the birthplace of both of my parents and a landscape both sets of my grandparents intimately knew and loved
Gratitude for legacy and heritage have been on our praiseful lips these past two days as we have made our way to Big Sky, Montanta for a week of skiing with family. We overnighted in Butte, MT the birthplace of both of my parents and a landscape both sets of my grandparents intimately knew and loved. My paternal grandfather, Knute Plate, immigrated from Sweden to Butte and worked the mines here in what is known as the “richest hill on earth.” And, my maternal grandfather advocated and proponed any project or proposal that would keep this motto socially and theoretically true. One of the projects in which my Grampa, Don Ulrich, was critically involved was the restoration of Blacktrail Creek, which runs through the mid-line of Butte. This stream corridor, highlighted by the majestic presence of the nearby Continental Divide, had suffered adverse affects by “channelization” (or the straightening of the stream), livestock overgrazing, highway construction, and other urban development. A primary restoration goal of this project was to improve public access and use of the stream corridor as well as improving ecosystem function and biodiversity habitat. The restoration resulted in a healthier stream and made a valuable natural resource more accessible to the public.
The pedestrian trail was renamed the Ulrich-Schotte Nature Trail and is now a two-mile segment of a Greenway system in Butte. Named after my grandparents, Don and Kathryn Ulrich and their dear friends and civic leaders, George and Jennie Schotte, The Blacktail Creek Restoration Project was completed in 1998. These visionaries believed that this landscape could be more than what it was. They believed that they didn't have to be content with the status quo: a sickly stream that was a regular dump site for neighbors' trash. Over the years, the project grew from a stream restoration project to include a recreational trail used by thousands of area residents and visitors. This grand vision resulted in something that would serve the greater community, humans and creatures combined!
Considering the stewardship work that we are currently about in Seattle’s Rainier Valley, I was struck anew with the realization of all my grandfather did on behalf of Other and the Future. In this context, he spoke on behalf of the healthy biodiversity that hung in balance depending on the health and well being of this stream corridor. He had the insight and clarity of mind to foresee that healthy and vibrant ecosystems would result in a native, beautiful landscape that would mutually enhance the health and well-being of Butte’s people and generations to come. It became clear that we do this work in our lives out of a great hope for the future, but also because of the legacy and heritage of my family’s DNA.
This was an ideal, which Grampa had to champion with both shovel in hand and policy papers in the other to get the City to support this intrinsic value proposal. But I understand now that he had a vision that was rooted in justice. It would be socially irresponsible to allow that stream to dry up due to the City’s mismanagement of resources. It would also be a holistic loss for both the creature’s depending on that landscape for life, and the inherent health benefits that would be available to the people if allowed to enjoy this native feature. Peace is the presence of justice, Martin Luther King Jr. once said. And the peaceful place that is experienced along this vibrant stream attests to the justice advocated on behalf of systems greater than our own.
For the past couple days we have been walking segments of this trail. We have offered prayers of thanksgiving for our heritage and ancestors, the lives that link us to a lineage of justness and action. It has also caused us to reflect more on our own “legacy work”--that great work of making an impact on something greater than, and beyond, ourselves. We prayed that our children would be impacted by a need outside of themselves that would cause them to cry and subsequently stand up and fight for a better way. We prayed that they too would continue to walk in our heritage’s path of faith, always looking to the mountains, from where comes our help (Psalm 121:1), for the vision to reimagine a better way on behalf of something greater than themselves.
Lenten Walk Series 2
Today's prayer walk was under cloudless skies, which is a rarity for Seattle in February. And instead of 10 prayerful feet, it was simply my own and Anna's. Funny thing how as soon as you draw your line in the sand around an intention, circumstances immediately set themselves up against it. I've learned to identify this as the Pilgrim's Path, others may call it Murphy's Law; be it as it may, the boys were unable to get in on the practice today. Whatever laws were against our family participating today in our Lenten commitment, Anna had clarity of purpose and firmly directed our route. These pictures represent the prayers for our community, on Anna's Spirit-led route.
Today's prayer walk was under cloudless skies, which is a rarity for Seattle in February. And instead of 10 prayerful feet, it was simply my own and Anna's. Funny thing how as soon as you draw your line in the sand around an intention, circumstances immediately set themselves up against it. I've learned to identify this as the Pilgrim's Path, others may call it Murphy's Law; be it as it may, the boys were unable to get in on the practice today. Whatever laws were against our family participating today in our Lenten commitment, Anna had clarity of purpose and firmly directed our route. These pictures represent the prayers for our community, on Anna's Spirit-led route.
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Creator of every country, color and kind,
Forgive us when we see difference instead of commonality.
Forgive us when we we react in fear of Other instead of celebration of diversity.
Give us the eyes to see the intrinsic beauty of cultures other than our own, and develop in us a posture of learning, gratitude and respect.
Guide us away from judgement, misunderstanding and offense and bring us to the holy grounds of community and neighborly care.
Amen.
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We pray against fences and barriers of all types.
We pray against the fences that keep people out...and the ones that keep far too many others in. We pray against the chain-links that mark something that some may have, but others may not.
We pray for the sense of safety that can only come from you, O God-that people so desperately need-because there is so much fear in the world and in our own neighborhood.
We pray against the violence that fences are want to proclaim through graffitied messages of hate, intolerance and territory. Bring peace and freedom to those who rally against the barriers in their lives; may their fists shake their confines with justice, and not bloodshed.
Amen.
Pilgrim's Path: Bringing Home the Boon
The challenge and bitter truth of coming home from a pilgrimage is that we soon learn that what is a pearl to us is mere pennies to others. How can we even begin to describe the depths to which our soul has traveled? Ultimately, it is our changed life that must tell the story of our journey; no picture slide show or souvenir will scratch the surface of the truth found at the sacred center.
It is a strange thing to come home.While yet on the journey, you cannot at all realize how strange it will be. -Selma Lagerlog (1858-1940)
We've been home now for a little while; our Easter arrived and our journey through Lenten landscapes appeared complete. With celebrations and feasts, we marked the homecoming of our pilgrimage-- grateful both for the cross and the completion of the journey it represents. But it soon became clear, perhaps a day or so into the return into the daily rhythms of the Eastertide calendar, that the time apart had changed us. The intentional space created by a journey of abstinence or abundance had not only left a mark on our lives, but elbowed out new permanent places in our spirit. So, while home once again, the hearth is not how we left it. And it will stay in a state of strangeness until we are able to assimilate our learnings and experiences into stories of transformation and actions of justice.
The one thing the pilgrim returns home with is wisdom and the responsibility to share the truth gleaned from the profound pilgrimage. The story that we bring back from our journeys is the boon. There is a universal code of sorts, which requires the pilgrim to “share whatever wisdom you’ve been blessed with on your journey with those who are about to set out on their own journey.”[i] The challenge and bitter truth of coming home from a pilgrimage is that we soon learn that what is a pearl to us is mere pennies to others. How can we even begin to describe the depths to which our soul has traveled? Ultimately, it is our changed life that must tell the story of our journey; no picture slide show or souvenir will scratch the surface of the truth found at the sacred center.
In Joseph Campbell’s popular book of essays Myths to Live By, he described something pertinent to our theme of sacred journeys: “The ultimate air of the quest if one is to return, must be neither release nor ecstasy for oneself, but the wisdom and the power to serve others.” This parallels the belief of the ancient wisdom teachers that the ultimate answer to the sorrows of the world is the boon of increased self-knowledge.[ii] Interestingly enough, this responsibility resonates with Frederick Buechner’s definition of vocation as “the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” It seems clear that the great value of a pilgrimage is to return with a knowledge of self that will enable one to engage the world’s needs in an authentic and passionate way.
Because of the journey to the sacred center, and the perils experienced to get there, you are transformed. And because you have changed, so will your home. You have encountered the Holy-experienced God in a fresh new way-and as a result of your epiphany and your struggle, you will not relate to your world or those in it as you did before.[iii] Your challenge is to now live into the new edges of your life, inhabiting the new spaces created by pushing through the trails of your inner-soul landscape. These are the places where dynamic opportunities lay for you to share your wisdom and bring back the boon of your journey.
Reflection
Since you have been home from your Lenten journey, have you had the opportunity to share with anyone about your experiences?
Have you identified the ways in which you have changed?
What were the waymarkers that truly transformed you?
In what ways can you continue living forward out of these places of transformation?
Set up waymarks for yourself, Make yourself guideposts: Consider well the highway, The road by which you went.-Jeremiah 31:21
[i] Phil Cousineau, The Art of Pilgrimage, (Boston, MA: Conari Press, 1998), 216.
[ii] Phil Cousineau, The Art of Pilgrimage, (Boston, MA: Conari Press, 1998), 217.
[iii] Sarah York, Pilgrim Heart: The Inner Journey Home, (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001),149.
Arrival: Holy Week
The traveler has important tasks upon arriving to their final destination. Because the entire journey has been intentionally marked and prayerfully pondered, so must the arrival. This is the time to surround yourself with prayers, poems and hymns that anchor your place and provide the touchstone for this final experience.
We ride into our beloved Jerusalem, the sacred destination of our wanderings these past many weeks. Here we will shout our hopeful hosannas, weep with unexpected sorrow, and celebrate our ultimate Answer. As we look about this place of our arrival, do we feel compelled to echo the behaviors of Jesus as he walked through the expectant streets towards Calvary? What do you feel when you look across your living landscapes, when you touch your city's wealthy and impoverished walls, when you are carried away in the lofty cathedrals? Do you feel joy? Do you pray? Do you weep? Jesus, you wept for the city you loved - in your words and actions the oppressed found justice and the angry found release.... (prayer heading used on Iona)
The traveler has important tasks upon arriving to their final destination. Because the entire journey has been intentionally marked and prayerfully pondered, so must the arrival. This is the time to surround yourself with prayers, poems and hymns that anchor your place and provide the touchstone for this final experience. Phil Cousineau speaks to the essential task of "feeling the thrill of completing your pilgrimage...If we remember that the word thrill originally referred to the vibrations the arrow made when it hits the target, than the pleasure is compounded. There is joy in having arrived, moment by moment." We have come far on this Lenten pilgrimage; we have sacrificed, we have given, we have changed.
There is deep value in going through this seasonal process for what began in our winter, has now come to completion in our spring. With fresh, vibrant colors surrounding us, we too see the contexts of our lives with fresh new eyes. We hear with a new kind of clarity. With this sense of lucidity, comes both gratitude and responsibility. The appreciation for the lessons learned on the long journey translates to a new sense of obligation, a fresh response of advocacy. We have come to love more deeply in this season and like Jesus, we weep with the depth of this love for Others and we know we cannot return to pre-pilgrimage ways. We have been changed by the wintery road, and subsequently, so will be our home-lives. New growth has sprung from the soil of the sojourn. How to respond to our changedness may seem overwhelming; in these moments we must pray and pray according to the lessons learned.
Today I share with you a beautiful Holy Week prayer written by the Iona Community's Neil Paynter. These beseeching words seem a fitting response to the Lenten Labyrinth where we have seen and witnessed the pain and suffering of our deepest selves, which is the pain of so many others. May this prayer be yours today as you anchor into the ancient and present meanings of these most holy days.
Visionary God, architect of heaven and earth, unless we build in partnership with you we labor in vain
Help us work to create cities modeled more faithfully on the plan of your Kingdom -
Communities where children are respected and encouraged where young people can express themselves creatively where the experience of old people is called on where the insights and gifts of all God's people are fully realized where shared gardens and plots bloom in once derelict places where all cultures and traditions are honored and celebrated on soulful, carnival streets where gay couples can dance to the beat of their hearts homeless people are received with loving arms and open borders news vendors cry Hosanna! All are fed and loved and set free...
O God, our maker, open our eyes to new possibilities and perspectives, organizations and projects, structures and outlooks...
Help us to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem:
to break down the barriers in ourselves that prevent us from reaching out to neighbors and making peace; to rebuild communities based on understanding and justice, illuminated with the true light of Christ.
Amen
-Neil Paynter
Labyrinth: The Darkest Wood
I need to tell my truth, my story, for another reason. Many of you today are journeying through the wilderness and traveling without the knowledge of company or solidarity. That kind of isolation can eclipse all hopes in ever leaving the labyrinth. Those of us who have gone before you would be false if we withheld the shadowy parts of our own lives. We have the power to provide community and comprehension for others when we share authentically about our own story.
“Meg suddenly finds herself alone in complete darkness. She has no idea what is happening to her. She seems to have vanished into nothingness. She is lost in a void. Then she hears Charles Wallace saying that they have had quite a trip. Calvin reappears too. Meg finds herself in a sunlit field, where everything is golden with light. There is an atmosphere of peace and joy. …They arrive on a mountain peak, from where they can see a moon of Uriel. As the sun sets, they see a faint shadow of darkness that seems to have a life of its own. The stars come out, but the dark shadow remains. Meg feels how terrible the shadow is,and is afraid." Madeline L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time
Afraid of the dark. How many of us have known that feeling, either as a child in a dark bedroom, or running up an ink-black stairwell, always fearing that someone is coming up quickly behind you to grab at your ankles and pull. Or, even having to take the trash out on a dark night-that skip of the heart, that dread is real and rarely do we dally there. Meg’s fear in A Wrinkle of Time is one based on the immediacy and darkness of evil. But even in her quest to journey to, and confront, this ominous presence, she is brought to a place of self-knowing and light; a kind of self-knowledge to which we can only arrive when we have journeyed through alien lands.
What we call these alien lands in our life may have many names and metaphors, but common themes, however, hinge on the images of wilderness and woods, deserts and darkness. The journey through these themes is often equated to a pilgrimage. Phil Cousineau describes sojourns such as this as “a transformative journey to a sacred center full of darkness, hardships and peril.” We are brought through the wilderness-through the labyrinth, which is often the long way around-to our sacred destinations, to our places of divine answers and self-knowledge and understanding. If we are to arrive at the heart of our pilgrimage, sometimes this means we must enter that dark wood and go into that lightless labyrinth. But we mustn’t believe that we are destined to be lost there. Darkness is just part of the trip. This is the typical point of panic and precariousness. For when are we ever really encouraged to BE in the dark? You know, to be okay with it? At night there are street lights everywhere. In our homes we likely have night lights in the hallways. We are never completely in the dark. But to be well with it is to allow it to be a holy-dark and to surrender to it enables us to journey to the real light.
Dante spoke truly of this journey in the following passage from The Inferno:
Midway on our life’s journey, I found myself in dark woods, the right road lost. To tell about those woods is hard—so tangled and rough and savage that thinking of it now, I feel the old fear stirring: death is hardly more bitter. And yet, to treat the good I found there as well I’ll tell what I saw…. (Canto I)
Traveling through times of darkness will ultimately bring us to that sacred center – full of light and joy. While darkness is not the whole of the story, as pilgrimages often have vistas of beauty and happiness, it is often the part of the story left untold. Parker Palmer writes prolifically about these obscure seasons and offers a mandate that we share with others about our journeys. He wisely recognizes that in telling what we saw in our dark woods, we cross an essential threshold into a place of selfhood and regenerative new life. Furthermore, there is a sense that to tell the whole of one’s story-to illuminate one’s life journey- can actually help to keep us out of the darkness.
I need to tell my truth, my story, for another reason. Many of you today are journeying through the wilderness and traveling without the knowledge of company or solidarity. That kind of isolation can eclipse all hopes in ever leaving the labyrinth. Those of us who have gone before you would be false if we withheld the shadowy parts of our own lives. We have the power to provide community and comprehension for others when we share authentically about our own story.
The tale of my journey through barren wilderness is no more or less important than anyone else’s. Mine is simply mine, and therefore the only context from which I can speak. My dark night began when I was a university student. I was sexually assaulted by someone I knew and called a friend. The darkness of that particular night became that of an endless, starless season. I became pregnant as a result of the rape. Horrified doesn’t even begin to touch the emotional state in which this realization spun me. For so many varied and vulnerable reasons, my overwhelming shock hunkered into my deepest, softest places and alone, in quiet confusion, I made the decision to terminate the pregnancy. I soundlessly screamed against a God who could allow this to happen to me. I reticently raised my fists at systems that seemed to condone such manifestations of mysogony and misappropriations of power. I was in shock. I was in denial. I felt I like was dumped at the trailhead of a trek for which I would never in a lifetime have signed up. But like it or not, my life was taking me into the darkness of a journey that called me to wrestle with dark angels and beg me to ask this question: toward what newness is God calling me?
This assault brought me to my knees, my spirit to the ground. I felt alone and alienated in my pain, and completely unknowable in my experience. This isolation later contributed to factors that diagnosed me with clinical depression. Wise counsel helped me understand that instead of perceiving these attacks as being crushed by the enemy, I could see this rather as an invited time of being laid down on the ground, a place where it would be safe to curl up and cry, but to ultimately stand up tall again as well. I had to discover the ground of my own truth, my own nature, my own mix of darkness and light. This wilderness journey, this labyrinth, wasn’t leading me to hell, but was journeying me towards God.
Now here are where the paradoxes of our faith come into play.
Now, clearly I don’t believe that God willed and allowed me to basely suffer at the hands of that man. That happened because our world is fallen in nature. Nor do I believe that God wanted me to have an abortion and become depressed. There is deep and distracting theology around both those points; here is not the place to delve into either. However, what I do believe is that God inhabits the perilous places in our pilgrimage. The Bible often uses darkness as a metaphor for sin and the absence of God. On the other hand, there are references to darkness being a place where God dwells and seems to take comfort. In Psalm 18:11, the Psalmist describes it this way: “God makes darkness his hiding place, the covering around Him, the dark rain clouds of the sky.” The image of the Creator of the Universe shrouded in darkness with images of distended, dark rain clouds is not our normal frame of reference; the Psalmist’s perspective, though, has sufficiency and solidarity all over it. God in the dark. God living your darkness. Therefore, darkness can feel strangely nurturing, swollen with the mystery of becoming. All of life first incubates in darkness. New development follows and life begins. Darkness indeed is a necessary condition for development. Whenever a new life begins and grows, darkness is crucial to that processes. Whether it is the caterpillar and the chrysalis, the seed and the soil, the wee one in the womb, or the true self and the soul. There is always a time of waiting. In. The. Dark.
In John’s Gospel, there is a story of when Jesus tells a high ranking Pharisee named Nicodemus that in order to see the kingdom of God, he must be born again. This did not mean reentering his mother’s womb; rather, Christ was talking about a spiritual transformation. As Christians, we often just focus on the-life-everlasting after the rebirth and forget to recognize the inherent (and necessary) gestation period. Sue Monk Kidd describes this as a time of “incubating darkness.” I believe that Jesus selected this strongly feminine metaphor not just so we could grasp the power of new life but also to engage in the implications of the womb that precede every birth. If we want to enter the kingdom of God, we will have to enter a place of waiting, of darkness and of incubation. We will have to walk the wilderness. Julian of Norwich wrote that “our wounds become the womb.” This touching image points us to the awareness that transformation hinges on the ability for us to turn our wounds into a fertile place where life is birthed-the womb.
I have now been out of these dark woods for many years now. That devastating time in the desert slowly began to change to seasons of oasis; the shadowy woods became my own personal Tree of Life. I now have a loving, supportive husband and three beautiful children who daily teach me so much about life, our world and how to live well into it. And I have a life that would not be what it is had I not sojourned through that dark, wild forest. The wound of that trespass so many years ago is now the site of great life and fertility. The darkness of that decision and depression has given way to new perspectives on life and the Christ-light. My threshold for empathizing with another’s story and listening without judgement has increased in depth and breadth because of that journey. There is a great sense of light in my life these days and this certainly isn't to say that I won't once again travel in the hard, rocky places. It is simply that I have such a clearer understanding that out of death, comes life. We only know light because of the darkness. I walk in the woods now and I witness a fallen tree on the forest floor and I smile and understand a little bit more; for this wizened wood has now become a nurse log, a fertile place which will provide life, and company, for a gazillion little creatures for a long, long time.
And so today I ask this: let the Christ-life incubate within the darkness of your wilderness. Share your dark journey with a safe-someone else, for it is in sharing our story that we invite others to be light, to be grace, to be hope, and to be Christ to us; thereby bringing us out of the darkness or simply being there to illuminate it.
Labyrinth-The Lorica as Light
As we journey through life, we each come to, and through, seasons of great challenge and often despair. From the time we are children, we face the fears of monsters-real and imaginary-and the dark. We come up against the things that cause us to cringe and curl away from our castles in the air. And we are reminded that in many ways, we are very much like Max, the cajoling, contrary little boy in Maurice Sendak's story Where the Wild Things Are.
As we journey through life, we each come to, and through, seasons of great challenge and often despair. From the time we are children, we face the fears of monsters-real and imaginary-and the dark. We come up against the things that cause us to cringe and curl away from our castles in the air. And we are reminded that in many ways, we are very much like Max, the cajoling, contrary little boy in Maurice Sendak's story Where the Wild Things Are.
In this tale, through a sequence of events that tend to happen to parents of young children between the hours of 4:00-6:00pm, our protagonist, Max, finds himself sent away to his room without supper. That night, a forest grew up in his room, and an ocean roared by, and Max boarded a boat and "sailed off through night and day and in and out of weeks...to where the wild things are." These wild things "gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws," but Max tamed and ruled over them, becoming their king. Ultimately, it is clear to Max that it was time to return home. He sailed back over the same vast ocean, in the same little boat, reappearing in his same childhood home...only he found that he was immeasurably changed, even as he ate his hot supper.
Our journeys will not be without trial and darkness. What we have marked as a pilgrimage will most definitely bring us to-but always through!-turbulent oceans of fear and doubt. Just this week, popular author and pilgrim, Phil Cousineau tweeted, "When you're following your passion, threshold guardians will try to hold you back. Getting past them depends on how deep your passion goes." The image of the labyrinth is an ancient symbol for the meandering path of the soul that goes from light into darkness and emerges once again into light. The soul emanates transformed. This darkness (the wilderness) is the heart of the pilgrimage and always involves an element of inner conflict or struggle. It is the time spent within the wilderness where you meet your fears and confront them-where you come up against whatever prevents you from hearing the voice of God or living a life of compassion and generosity.[i]
We may have not be sent to our room, but we have been sent on a soulful sojourn with the promise of sacred encounters along the way and a bounty beyond belief upon our homecoming. But these "threshold guardians," these wild things, will do their best to frighten and influence us away from our goal. Young Max was wise to use power to command his fears. As we progress through the pitchy places of our pilgrimage, we find St. Patrick's timely prayer, The Lorica, and use it as a lantern to light our way.
The Lorica is also known as St. Patrick's "Breastplate" Prayer. These powerful words call out to God to protect those parts of the soul and body that would be preyed upon by evil throughout the day's ventures. These words become likened to the necessary armor that guards, but they also provide guidance as one explores their private seas. Inevitably darkness and dismay will descend on your journey. It has been said that “patience, silence, trust, and faith are venerable qualities of the pilgrim, but more important is the practice of them.” Along with these virtues, this strengthening prayer becomes the light that will illuminate the darkness and reveal that which is at your sacred center. Godspeed!
The Lorica (St. Patrick's 'Breastplate' Prayer)
I bind unto myself today The strong Name of the Trinity, By invocation of the same, The Three in One and One in Three.
I bind this day to me forever. By power of faith, Christ's incarnation; His baptism in the Jordan river; His death on Cross for my salvation; His bursting from the spicèd tomb; His riding up the heavenly way; His coming at the day of doom;* I bind unto myself today.
I bind unto myself the power Of the great love of the cherubim; The sweet 'well done' in judgment hour, The service of the seraphim, Confessors' faith, Apostles' word, The Patriarchs' prayers, the Prophets' scrolls, All good deeds done unto the Lord, And purity of virgin souls.
I bind unto myself today The virtues of the starlit heaven, The glorious sun's life-giving ray, The whiteness of the moon at even, The flashing of the lightning free, The whirling wind's tempestuous shocks, The stable earth, the deep salt sea, Around the old eternal rocks.
I bind unto myself today The power of God to hold and lead, His eye to watch, His might to stay, His ear to hearken to my need. The wisdom of my God to teach, His hand to guide, His shield to ward, The word of God to give me speech, His heavenly host to be my guard.
Against the demon snares of sin, The vice that gives temptation force, The natural lusts that war within, The hostile men that mar my course; Or few or many, far or nigh, In every place and in all hours, Against their fierce hostility, I bind to me these holy powers.
Against all Satan's spells and wiles, Against false words of heresy, Against the knowledge that defiles, Against the heart's idolatry, Against the wizard's evil craft, Against the death wound and the burning, The choking wave and the poisoned shaft, Protect me, Christ, till Thy returning.
Christ be with me, Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me, Christ beside me, Christ to win me, Christ to comfort and restore me. Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ in quiet, Christ in danger, Christ in hearts of all that love me, Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.
I bind unto myself the Name, The strong Name of the Trinity; By invocation of the same. The Three in One, and One in Three, Of Whom all nature hath creation, Eternal Father, Spirit, Word: Praise to the Lord of my salvation, Salvation is of Christ the Lord.
Sarah York, Pilgrim Heart: The Inner Journey Home, (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001),12.
Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are, (Harper Collins Publishers), Copyright 1963 by Maurice Sendak.
St. Patrick's Breastplate is traditionally attributed to Saint Patrick during his Irish ministry in the 5th century.