Discerning The Call That Knocks on Your Door

At some point in your life, you begin to wonder if this is really all it has to offer, or perhaps there is a sense that you have gotten off track and are on a completely different road than you ever thought you would travel. Perhaps life has become tinged with a sense of smallness, a meaningless mundanity; access to the parts of you that still beat with wild wings and startle with wonder at the sound of mystery or at the stars in the sky seem locked away without a key. Or perhaps you have sought after the spiritual life, desiring an ascent that will take you high above and away from the pain and suffering of this world. But no matter how set apart you become, you still feel the snares of sorrow. And perhaps you may already be wise to the game of the conventional life, knowing that intentionality and centeredness is counter to the crazy consumption of our culture.  

And yet, there seems to be something calling to you from a deeper place, calling to you like the trees’ blood of which Rilke writes, to “sink back into the source of everything,” to “to out into your heart as onto a vast plain.”

You’ve recognized that there is a journey you must take that will take you down into the sacred, subterranean lands of your soulscape, a journey that will give you that key to recover the wild and precious parts of you.

The Call knocks on the status quo of your life, and stays knocking until you answer and open the door, surrendering to the invitation to cross the threshold, leave the home you know, and go on your own way towards that desire that showed up, cloaked as curiosity and questions. This knock at your door is an invitation to find the lost and scattered pieces of yourself.

Print by John Bauer 

Questions that I am often asked are, “How do I know if this is really The Call knocking on my door?”  “How do I know if this just isn’t a mood or a distraction from my responsibilities?” There are, fortunately, ways to tell. The great mythologist Joseph Campell who did extensive work around the idea of the monomyth, or the hero’s journey, notes four experiential qualities that accompany The Call.

First, if it is a true call, you will know that responding to it is, in fact, not an avoidance of responsibility, but rather a facing of something difficult; something unknown and frightening is summoning you. Ecopsychologist, author and wilderness guide, Bill Plotkin, describes this as “a compelling need to walk into the mouth of a whale, or out into the night and into a storm.” This isn’t an easy vacation away from your life. This isn't a trip to forget your cares. This is a profound sense that your one true life will only be found, be recovered, in the wilderness, and your survival now depends on the departure. 

Second, Campbell reminds us of the paradox that there is something strangely recognizable about this unknown journey. You have a deep sense of belonging to the journey and the wild edges to where it is taking you; you feel an uprising of ancient memories, the woven fabric of kin and familiarity, that covers you like a favorite cloak. This strange and sacred summons was made for you.

Third, you have an astonishing and incomprehensible sense that the season of life you have been living is suddenly over, whether you want it to or not. In the great myths and legends, this often is when the protagonist is chosen of the journey, instead of she choosing it. Recently I have been doing some personal work with the Slavic folk lore stories of the Baba Yaga. In one such tale, a born-of-a-bear giant named Ivan engages in a transformational journey with the Yaga. In this story there is the adventure that he chooses; however, his heroic transformation doesn’t occur until the part where the descent, The Call, chooses him. 

Fourth, The Call is almost always unexpected, and often unwanted. This is a disruption to life as you have known it, and who needs that when life is already busy, overwhelming and chaotic? However, this is a summons from the soul; a demanding can’t-shake-you command from your future self that you need this for your soul-survival and future flourishing.

Plotkin offers a fifth way to discern if The Call is a genuine. He asks that you imagine not acting on it and then noticing how you feel. “Imagine you are going to ignore The Call, or even laugh it off. How does that feel? Do you detect a building dread, a huge sadness, a guilt that comes from refusing a sacred invitation?” What if you don’t answer the door, or better yet, answer it and after saying, “No thank you,” close it, refusing the needs of your future self?  Another way to determine the validity of the call would be to say, “yes” and begin to take those first furtive steps onto the path that begins to suddenly manifest before each tentatively placed step. With each step that is taken, a sense of assurance is gained, a feeling of rightness grows.

If it is a true call, you may feel like your going out is actually a return towards your true home for the very first time. 

By Kay NiELSON "East of the sun and west of the moon" 1914

Know this though: while The Call’s knocking may never stop, you will become deaf to its solicitation over time. It is essential that you act on The Call as soon as you are ready as the window of opportunity may not remain open for long. It is a sacred aligning of serendipitous circumstance when you are at a place to both hear the knock, and open the door to it. You, however, must make the choice to walk out the door. 

Either you will
go through this door
or you will not go through.

If you go through
there is always the risk
of remembering your name.

Things look at you doubly
and you must look back
and let them happen.

If you do not go through
it is possible
to live worthily

to maintain your attitudes
to hold your position
to die bravely

but much will blind you,
much will evade you,
at what cost who knows?

The door itself makes no promises. 
It is only a door.
~Adrienne Rich

---

Rainier Maria Rilke, from Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, trans. Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy (New York: Riverhead Books, 1996), 95-96.

Joseph Campell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (New York: Pantheon Books, 1949), 55, 58. 

David Whyte, from “Sweet Darkness,” in The House of Belonging (Langely, WA: Many Rivers Press, 1997), 23. 

Bill Plotkin, Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche (Novato, CA: New World Library, 2003), 57-58.

The Return: How Returning Home Requires An Open Door

For years I have been challenged with the notion that ultimately, the pilgrimage calls us to return home and live forward on behalf of something other and greater than ourselves. This idea that the road out actually causes us to be beholden to something back home is a critical aspect of the becoming that this rites of passage initiates.For our lives to truly reincorporate and reflect the stories of our journeys there must be effects behind and beyond our front doors; if there isn’t, the travels and travails of the road quickly get reduced to petty ramblings and narcissistic knock abouts.

Ultimately, the greatest influence we can have on ourselves, our families, and the world around us is to live out the wizened effects of our sacred journey on behalf of the Other and the Future. 

This notion’s simplicity allows for a focus of energy around a transformed state. When Joseph Campbell talks about a “wisdom and power to serve others” on account of our wayfaring, he is getting at a fundamental aspect of the gift of pilgrimage. We go out on these personal, intimate soul-adventures to connect to the sacred in fresh, inspired ways. However, if these encounters aren’t having a greater result on the world around us, they are worthless. I believe that by applying our gained wisdom on behalf of the Other and the Future, we are re-gifting our communities and the earth with our God-given wisdom developed on the journey.

Living on behalf of the Other and the Future is a scalable metaphor; that is, it may refer to simply anyone or anything other than yourself and decisions that impact the future. In broader, and more challenging terms, “the Other and the Future” is a way of embracing all of life, especially those that are without voice and marginalized in society, and intentionally orienting lifestyle decisions that will have flourishing outcomes on our earth, the more-than-human world, and future generations. As a result, our personal sacred journey is global in both scope and impact, and we are invited to transformative micro-practices that overhaul how we view our homes and home environments.

Our return home requires us to leave the door open to the wild world beyond its threshold, maintaining the now-understood posture and practice of interrelatedness and solidarity.

Pilgrimage: It Grounds You

The theme of wandering in the Christian spiritual life is one that is underscored by the centrality of pilgrimage within Hebrew and New Testament scripture narratives.  God’s people wandered and in many respects, they seem to have been after a wandering Pilgrim-God. 

These Divine-seeking journeys led people away from home-scapes and demanded a wilderness asceticism that placed trust solely in divine provisions while wandering and faith that the promised land (a deep belonging to a place) would ultimately be found. 

God appears to prefer to be worshipped on the move rather than tied down to one place, judging by his words to Nathan the prophet when King David expressed his desire to build a permanent temple as his dwelling place, “Are you the one to build me a house to live in? I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle” (2 Samuel 7:5-6 New International Version). Jesus himself had led a wandering and unsettled existence to which his remark speaks: “the foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath nowhere to lay his head” Matthew 8:20

21st Century King James Version). Ironically, this place of promise, which was seen in the Celtic tradition as the goal of peregrinatio, ‘seeking the place of one’s resurrection,’ was only accessible through exodus and exile and in many ways, understood as martyrdom, a death to one’s self and one’s life on this earth. These early concepts of human relationship with God elevated a nomadic and dislocated sense of being.  However, despite the rhetoric of exile and exclusion from this world, ironically,

There is evidence that the practice of pilgrimage, especially through a Celtic lens, grounded one deeply in a place. 

While Irish monks’ approach to pilgrimage was based on a exilic biblical teaching, and specifically to God’s call to Abraham to leave his home and journey to a strange land, their Celtic constitution demanded that the natural world, and their place within it, mattered.  Outdoor spirituality aligned with a wandering way and didn’t relegate things of the spirit to beyond the body. The elements, the land, the water, and the accompanying wildlife all became messengers of God and therefore were critical aspects of worship and understanding of the Divine.  Even Colum Cille, or Saint Columba, while self-exiled to the Sacred Isle of Iona, practiced an engagement with the natural world that wasn’t dismissive of place as being simply a plain upon which one travels to find God.  Quite the contrary, Columba became located to the particular place of Iona in such a powerful way that the landscape became imbued with legendary stories of sacred encounters and theophanies that spanned decades. 

Through the archetypal movements of pilgrimage, one finds deep meaning and spiritual connection through both the exilic wandering and the renunciations associated with the journey; moreover, as a result, one finds themselves deeply connected within the community of creation, and profoundly rooted and at home in their pilgrimage place.   

Pilgrimage: A Profound Act of Listening

“If the journey you have chosen is indeed a pilgrimage, a soulful journey, it will be rigorous.  Ancient wisdom suggests if you aren’t trembling as you approach the sacred, it isn’t the real thing.  The sacred, in its various guises as holy ground, art, or knowledge, evokes emotion and commotion.”

— Phil Couineau

After a season of absolute deconstruction in our lives (read more about that here) my husband started a new consultation business (Limen) that used the regenerative image of a pine cone as the logo. We were away to Whistler, B.C. with our family to discern next steps in this journey when we happened upon this new art installation along our favorite path. This is an example of how when we open ourselves up to the ARCHETYPAL circuit of the pilgrimage process, signs and symbols will begin to appear all around!

I remember sitting on the tarmac in Philadelphia awaiting our Atlantic departure to Glasgow in 2009 with a group of women from Seattle. We were on pilgrimage to Iona, so why should I have not been surprised that we were grounded for FOUR hours while the winds and rains of a Hurricane Bill whipped and roared around us, lightning lighting up the jet-black night outside our plane? What really brought the rigor close to heart was upon collecting our backpacks in Glasgow; is was evidently clear that our luggage was unable to be loaded on our flight during the storm, and also due to the extreme conditions, abandoned, not even covered against the torrential rains. My pack containing all my teaching materials for Iona was completely SOAKED, much of it rendered useless. All I could do was laugh knowing that I would cry my eyes out if I didn't. For indeed, what I was bearing witness to was the evidence of the pilgrimage stages being set in motion, this commotion being a clear marker that we were approaching the sacred!

The inevitable chaos that surrounds one’s journey to the place of their heart’s longing is set in place to distract and possibly even derail the most hope-filled plans. When one leaves on a pilgrimage, they are making an absolute commitment to a sojourn towards self-knowledge, which in Christian mystical tradition, is the understanding that knowledge of self and knowledge of God are one. And there are energies at play within and around us that are desperate to ensure that divine connection doesn't occur. This happens in the guise of uncertainties and doubts, details unwinding, or appearances that even the weather is commiserating against you!

The purpose of the pilgrimage is to ultimately make life more meaningful. It is regarded as the universal quest for the self.

Though the form of the path changes, one element remains the same: renewal of the soul. The essence of the sacred way is "tracing a sacred route of tests and trials, ordeals and obstacles, to arrive at a holy place and attempt to fathom the secrets of its power" (P.Cousineau). I absolutely believe that one might need to journey to a holy place on the other side of the planet to recover this renewal. And, sacred sites are also all around us, quietly remaining in the more wild edges of our frenetic lives, awaiting being noticed, remembered, attended. The pilgrimage process is one that can be engaged just as much at home as abroad and with just as much potential for transformation. It is the profound act of listening, which transforms the average elements of a place or even just your normal mid-week day, into a pilgrim's portal: a way of sensing and seeing that transmits the sacred to and through the greater community of things that surround us!

The way of the pilgrim is one of an inner-quiet, an inner ear attuned to the subtle sounds of the Spirit while on the sacred road.

Solvitur ambulando. It is solved by walking.

It comes down to this: Solvitur ambulando. It is solved by walking. It is the emerging tension that results from the growing cracks of the shell of the status quo, which causes us to awaken to ourselves in the first place, that subsequently requires an exit, a departure from what we were taught within culture, society, and institutions. A threshold crossing emerges and forms with distinct clarity; here is a line we now know must be crossed, a line that reveals that there is more on the other side that will initiate a process of transformational becoming.

When we choose to respond to the Longing and the Call to leave the familiar behind in search of answers found in far-away places or even the more wilder edges of our lives, we are deploying our soul to interact and intervene with the surrounding environment-plants and people alike, the result of which is an energizing and heightened awareness of ourselves, of Others and the Spirit amidst it all. We are crossing into liminal lands, the territory of the inner-soul journey that demands an exterior embodiment of shifting sands of the inner soul-scape.

It comes down to this: Solvitur ambulando. It is solved by walking.

This kind of invited alertness requires us to depart, to leave and to walk (and walk away before we can walk back), to become intimate with the path upon which we tread, and others with whom we share it. The path that leads to the pilgrimage destination is critical for this process; for along this road, with no vehicular/insular walls to tune us out, we must tune in to the measured mode that invites contact, conversation and company. The structures we use to define who we are in ordinary life become irrelevant. Pilgrim space has no regard for class, race, or social/economic standing. There are no more random run-ins with strangers; there are no more lucky or misfortunate moments. 

In sacred travel when the pilgrim mood is awakened and engaged, every experience is potent and portends a deeper meaning; every contact attests to some greater plan. No encounter is without sacred significance. 

There are signs everywhere, if only we learn how to read them. Peculiar people turn into much-needed messengers.  The natural world speaks with candid revelation and simply profundity. This is a path transformed into grace; it is now a place where souls are nourished and renewed. With every step upon the pilgrim's path, that which has become cracked and undone begins to solvitur. Illumination and integration begin their great soul work. 

Pilgrimage Demands Your Presence

I facilitate pilgrimage journeys to Iona, Scotland and in the Pacific Northwest for individuals who respond to The Call to engage transformational travel as a means to recovering a sense of the sacred within themselves and the natural world.  Every retreat participant with whom I have worked has felt the deep uprooting that occurs when the call to go is upon them and are relieved and refreshed by this ancient practice and a profound place that demands action, questions and a quest for answers.

Iona provides all the trappings of a good pilgrimage: historical significance, a saintly presence, a continuous line of faithful heritage, and a requirement to travel there with intention.  Moreover, Iona is the historical birthplace of the Celtic Christian tradition and so by going here, I invite conversation and attentiveness to the numinous natural world that surrounds us, and of which we are fundamentally apart.  One of the key themes of this unique stream within the Christian faith is that nature is revelatory. 

The early Celtic church had a fundamental belief in the revelatory nature of the created world.  Every tree, blade of grass, and wild goose’s cry was imbued with the Spirit and spoke to the character of the Creator.  These “theophanies” –God showings—were expected and sought after as a way to understand the sacred mysteries.  The ninth century Irish teacher, John Scotus Eriugena believed that God was the ‘Life Force” within all things. 

“Therefore every visible and invisible creature can be called a theophany” ”

— John Scotus Eriugena, Periphyseon-The Division of Nature, 749D

The entire created world upholds something of the essence of the Creator.  Eriugena also taught that there are two primary ways in which the sacred is revealed–the Bible and creation: “Through the letters of Scripture and the species of creature…” mysteries of God are revealed.

The particularities of a place subsequently became both a sacred messenger and a storied record of divine encounters.  Many important religious sites in Celtic lands are notable because of the presence of standing crosses.  These great, free-standing, three-dimensional or ‘high’ crosses often stood in replacement of even more ancient pillar stones that stood to testify and link heaven to earth.  This was a primal way of place-making.  By naming a place through the placement of stone, or more notably, through tale-saturated titles, the Celtic people affirmed how important the natural world was to their experience with the numinous.  Sacred legends associated with landscapes abound in Celtic country, and are often the narratives that bring people back to and into nature.  

The island of Iona is storied land, tilled with tales immortalizing meetings with angels, prayer practices, and marking the journeys of those who have come before.  Annie Dilland points out in “Teaching a Stone to Talk” that holy places have been disappearing rapidly since the Enlightenment, and our contemporary dislocatedness affirms this. “God used to rage at the Israelites for frequently sacred groves.  I wish I could find one…. Now we are no longer primitive; now the whole world seems not-holy.”  However, Iona is sacred land and people make pilgrimage here to soak of these stories, hoping that something of this sacred soil will stick and have a profound impact on their personal lives.  And my hunch is that there are many more sacred sites all around us, even in our own urban neighborhoods, if only we would pay attention.  

The Celtic way of pilgrimage paid attention to place, understanding that God was revealed through the natural world and even through the hospitality of the stranger.  When we travel with a pilgrim’s pace, we embrace the perspective and values of the Divine.  Charles Foster holds that a journey will challenge you to engage critical aspects of the divine through:

“…life on the edges; indiscriminate and costly hospitality; solidarity with the marginalized (most of the nomad’s time is spent outside main centers and in the company of peripheral people); intimate relationships with humans and the environment; a new view at every step; and the loosest possible hold on possessions.”

This was a way of living, of moving, and of arriving to a place that required radical engagement.  It entreats the individual to live into communion with the seasons, the elements, the natural world and other humans.  The journey becomes the medium by which meaning is made and relationships are maintained. 

Pilgrimage demands we pay attention, sensing messages for our inner journey through the faces with whom we share the sidewalk, as well as the environment that surrounds us.  We awakening to the culture of a place when we pay attention to the potential of interactions with both the seen and unseen world.  And this is where I sense the profound gift Celtic spirituality and its propensity to journey have for our modern cities today.  This stream of spirituality both honors wandering and seeking out a new special place with the challenge to find renewal through an attachment to place.  This attachment to a place comes through knowing its stories and noticing its strangers as portals of profound meaning and connection.  However, this kind of noticing requires unplugging from our devices and engaging in our new places with our senses.  It means tapping into the collective memory of a place through our bodies.  The smells, sights and sounds of a place will reveal much about its stories—stories that induce knowledge and love of the land, the culture that co-habitates here, and the Creator who exists in and in between these places and its people.   

When one sees more of a place, (these are the bits and pieces: birds and benches, angles and alleys, weeds and woods) because of one’s experiential sense of it, it allows us to plunge into a posture of permanence because we are enabled to gauge the true significance of what we gaze upon. This kind of seeing is akin to what the early Christians meant when they spoke of theoria, that was a way of seeing into the heart of reality that sometimes revealed the very face of the divine. Or like what the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins meant when he spoke of “inscape,” the luminous, utterly singular texture of a thing that emerges with blazing clarity when a person actually looks upon that thing with care and sensitivity. Pilgrimage requires all senses as it depends on our sensory selves to receive and transmit divine messages in the here and now. It is nigh impossible to have an I/Thou encounter based on particularity and receive its sacred import if podcasts and screens overwhelm our sensing selves. This capacity is often grown by practicing the pace and posture of pilgrimage so that when we return home we are able to “see into” all that is there and all that is yet missing.

Go. Deliberately.

“Since we are travelers and pilgrims in the world, let us ever ponder on the end of the road, that is our life, for the end of our roadway is our home.”

— St. Columba

There is a general unsettling that is upon people these days, an agitation that is exacerbated by the daily news of political and environmental climate change.  The traditional means and methods of creating and cultivating a spiritual practice that assuage this sense have gone stale. The weekly trek to church can be driven thoughtlessly as can the participation in the service’s rituals. It even seems, as the community that assembles for corporate worship are so compatible that carbon copies might seem a more appropriate categorization. 

Despite these long standing traditions, there is a need to go and seek wisdom beyond the pulpit and outside of the walls! Don’t vacillate as that will only result in inactivity and indecisiveness. Resolution and an intentional move to initiate the journey activates the sacred archetypes and commences the re-membering this pilgrimage is bound to produce. You do not need God’s presence when sitting on the couch undecided. 

Desperation for the divine ignites when you decide to go and commit to The Call.  This is when the enlivening veriditas energy begins to flow in and through you, and synchronicities start and happen all around you.

Each of us has a unique and particular soul, yet the Western world teaches us to feed and nurture this inner-life by the most conventional and traditional of means.  Pilgrimage, while as ancient as our bipedal designed bodies, is now seen as an unconventional expression in our culture. However, if we are going to give the soul the feeding it needs, we are going to need to go against the grain and go to where are souls are freed to search for, and re-discover the divine. This path of development and discovery ultimately is soul attunement, which integrates authentic expressions of our unique gifts and talents on behalf of a greater and common good as the result. 

The response to The Call, which requires a threshold crossing, a leaving of sorts, is an action that leads to transformation, most often fulfillment and freedom, an alignment of our individual soul with the Divine Soul and communion with all of creation. What might have started as a soft whispered call has now become a heart-throbbing desire to go and find the animus mundi--the Soul of the world! Pursue the wild place that makes your heart skip both with doubt and desire for here is where you will find your Answer covered in salty barnacles and cracked-leathered edges and God within the windswept moors and tangled trees.

Pilgrimage Awakens the Soul

“Isn’t it time that your drifting was consecrated into pilgrimage?  You have a mission.  You are needed.  The road that leads to nowhere has to be abandoned…. It is a road for joyful pilgrims intent on the recovery of passion. ”

— Alan Jones

Pilgrimage. What is it about this word that causes one’s emotions to stand on guard-both compelled and curiously cautious at the same time? Indeed, it is a loaded word, packed with ages of political and parochial themes. Even with the historical entrapping of this concept, there is a much more ancient restlessness that is deep within our collective consciousness to be on the move and to engage questions and the Answer in the rites of passage process. Movement and travel is fundamental to the human experience. A general arc from hunter/gatherer societies to today’s human populations underscores that there is an inherent desire to move. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the Hebrew God is often portrayed as a traveler showing up to deliver divine guidance. The journey upon which the traveler embarks subsequently becomes sacred as well.  This holy hegira underlays the constant travels and wanderings of many ancient Celtic Christians.  Restlessness was in their blood as was the notion that it was better to travel hopefully than to arrive.  This lens of hope presented a perspective that the road was a rite; that the path provided prescient knowledge and insight to their journey towards divine revelation. 

This is the stuff of rites and rituals. This is about growing to the edge of life as we know it and discovering that there is a world beyond that wild hedgerow that is drawing us into its feathers, fronds, and fur. Getting up and moving to the parameters of our life, to the absolute edges, is where we re-engage our senses and re-awaken our souls to our sacred meant-for-ness. 

I believe that what agitates people when they first engage the concept of pilgrimage is that it literally unsettles them. The domesticity that ties us down to the perceptions of our lives begins to untie and unravel as this seeker-path begins its work of instigating a longing and a calling to go beyond, to move through, to expand and re-discover the divine in this asperous, ancient process that involves an epic, wild exchange with the natural world. When you first hear of pilgrimage, whether it is the perspective or a place, it is as if something gets lodged within the soul like an irksome stone or that sense of evasive knowing of a lost thing that you just can’t quite remember…that sense stays with a now restless-you, and will call to you your entire life until The Longing and The Call has been courageously met and engaged with a knapsack in hand and boots on the feet, knowing that the road is a rite, the thing that will bring us to an authentic center and sense of the sacred.

Rewilding & Journeying with Nature: A Conversation with Pilgrim Podcast

I had the opportunity to sit down and talk with friend and fellow-guide, Lacy Clark Ellman, host of Pilgrim Podcast about our shared appreciation for seeing life through a pilgrim's lens and how the natural world avails itself to us as a sacred guide as we make our journey. In our conversation I share my thoughts around rewilding as a spiritual practice and a process of remembering our meant for interconnectedness with all of creation. If you are curious about the Rewilding Retreats I facilitate, I invite you to take a seat! Pour yourself a cup of tea and listen in for an hour. There is a sacred voice on the ancient side of remembrance that awaits you and is calling you forward toward the wild edges of your life!

>>LISTEN HERE!<<

The Treasure: How Pilgrimage Cultivates a Connection to Place through Permanence

The Treasure: How Pilgrimage Cultivates a Connection to Place Through permanence 

I am thrilled to be preparing to deliver a paper at William & Mary College next week at their annual symposia on Pilgrimage Studies. In many aspects, this opportunity feels very much like a pilgrimage journey in and of itself. A couple years ago I received an invitation to submit a proposal for this particular academic gathering, which very much felt like the call, the requisite summons of any meaningful pilgrimage. However, life circumstances prevented the manifestation of that opportunity until now. And so I have the opportunity to seek the wisdom gained these past couple years as I have journeyed through the descent, the time of darkness and disintegration that occurs when a journey is truly leaving its indelible mark on you, and prepare for my arrival. 

In this setting my claim will be my belief that the act of pilgrimage is a practice of profound place-making. Using Uri Shulevitz's children's book, The Treasure as my primary text, I argue that pilgrimage doesn't set our longing heart in the direction of far-off sacred spaces to find resurrection within a celestial kingdom; rather, it roots us even deeper into our homescapes as the return requires creating meaningful places for the community to connect. While the journey is indeed important to return to a posture of collective provision within one's community, it is critical to note that that within this story (and very much like in our own lives), the protagonist Isaac could not have even made the journey without a deep knowledge of, and connection to, his place. Because he knows where he is, he is able to get to where he needs to go, and ultimately, to return.

We too must know our local landscapes well enough so that when it is time fulfill the call of a dream, we know how to navigate the land and engage with strangers in such a way as to not get lost. Engaging in regular practices of listening in place, where you unplug from your device and hear (really hear), and see (really see) the people and places that surround you and create the fabric of your home-land provides the most elemental conditions for co-creating places that provide for deep and meaningful community connection. For these are the very places and people who will receive the boon of your journey, the great gift that is given in exchange for the courage to respond to the call. Your community will receive the gift of your permanence.

If you do not have this book in your library, I encourage you to get yourself a copy. It is simple, delightful, and profound. And I hope your own copy of The Treasure, along with the following abstract for my paper, will inspire how your journeys will ultimately root you deeper into your neighborhoods.

------------------------------

Abstract: The Treasure: How Pilgrimage Cultivates a Connection to Place through Permanence

While the practice of pilgrimage is undergoing a resurgence, church authorities haven’t always been enthusiastic.Critics, like Jerome, thought it ludicrous that prayers offered in one place could be more effective than prayers offered elsewhere: “Nothing is lacking to your faith though you have not seen Jerusalem.”However, what if in the very leaving of our houses to engage the Divine, we actually return back to it not only more connected to our Sacred Source, but also more invested in our place on this planet through a commitment to faithful permanence?

Uri Shulevitz’s Caldecott Honor awarded book, The Treasure (1978) provides the archetypal stages of pilgrimage in a condensed child-friendly, but enormously profound, way.However, what makes this story unique, and its great gift to us as readers and practicers of pilgrimage, is the invitation to see that the true treasure for which we are seeking on pilgrimage is always back at home, in both a literal and metaphorical sense.Isaac, Shulevitz’s primary character discovers that the treasure about which he has dreamt, and for which he has searched, resides in the essence of his home: underneath his hearth-place.This finding compels him to invest further in his community through sharing his treasure with others near and far. 

By looking at the ancient practice of pilgrimage through the lens of The Treasure, we can gain new insight on how this practice actually encourages one to become more rooted and connected to personal home-scapes: the neighborhood, local communities, and regional ecosystems.Patterns of narcissistic consumption of places and relationships have resulted in transitory lifestyles.Impermanence—a result of the provisional value of things accorded by the evanescence of social media—is valued over the tenacity required to remain. Isaac embodies the sort of rootedness, which is an outcome of the journey, that can effectively transform an ambiguous and meaningless space into one of deep meaning and wisdom.

The difference between a space and a place is the difference between a house and a home.Isaac leaves his house seeking; he returns to find his treasure has always been there and testifies to that wisdom by building a place of public worship; a place of deep and significant meaning that invites others in his community to be welcomed, to return, and to tell others about the wisdom encountered there.This is a true place, a home created and maintained by the initial dream to journey away-from.

In Isaac’s initial poverty, one can find themes of how impoverished the Western world is in our normative independence and isolation.Soul-less technology, especially screens and social media, further this distance from ourselves and one another.Through the journeying out to the places that call to us from our deepest dreams and psyches, connection with others is found.This connection and sharing of dreams is what can spur the return back to whence we came, rediscover meaning, and re-engage in practices that powerfully connect people to one another and their place.

---

The Treasure: How Pilgrimage Cultivates a Connection to Place through Permanence

Uri Shulevitz’s Caldecott Honor awarded book, The Treasure (1978) provides the archetypal stages of pilgrimage in a condensed child-friendly, but enormously profound, way.  However, what makes this story unique, and its great gift to us as readers and practitioners of pilgrimage, is the invitation to see that the true treasure for which we are seeking on pilgrimage is always back at home, in both a literal and metaphorical sense.  Isaac, Shulevitz’s primary character discovers that the treasure about which he has dreamt, and for which he has searched, resides in the essence of his home: underneath his hearth-place.  This finding compels him to invest further in his community through sharing his treasure with others near and far through the practice of profound place-making, which requires a commitment to permanence.  I invite you into this story, which will also be looked at through the lens of Celtic Christian pilgrimage and place-making, of which I am familiar and practiced.

I believe that the pilgrimage journey, especially when engaged as a daily practice, can foster a connection to our physical places in an age when place is secondary to the modern nomadic pace.

This is the story of Isaac, a poor man who goes to bed every night lonesome and with hunger pains. However, while his belly is empty, his dream life is full. He repeatedly has a dream where a voice tells him to travel to the capital city to discover a treasure under the bridge near the Royal Palace.  The journey that commences requires a deep knowledge of his local landscape, an abiding trust in fellow humanity, and ultimately a sense of communal imagination that relies on both the dream and what is needed to deepen one’s experience of home.

place-making can be understood as a form of contemplative practice in that it can be the result of the integrative themes fastened to a pilgrimage journey: geography, stranger, and imagination. 

In an age of chronic and widespread displacement, the work of place-making—the discovery and cultivation of a sense of place—has gained new significance and meaning.  I propose that ultimately place-making can be understood as a form of contemplative practice in that it can be the result of the integrative themes fastened to a pilgrimage journey: geography, stranger, and imagination.  The deep knowledge and engagement of these three categories invites one to live more fully into their homescapes, more integrated within local communities, and ultimately, participate in providing transformative and flourishing aspects to local life.

Isaac’s journey to the city can tell us about the significance of place within the contemplative practice of pilgrimage. A journey through various topographies and encounters with others are requisite to understanding the call upon his life. It is here within the capital city gates, encountering a stranger at the site where his dreams told him to go, that everything is made clear for Isaac. This illumination and clarity was without question a profound experience of place. I would also call it an experience of homecoming, a sense of having arrived home within one’s self after a significant effort and journey searching for it. 

What is place-making and how does it shape a framework for pilgrimage and result in a sense of permanence? Anthropologist Keith Basso, who has worked on mapping the place-names of the Western Apache people near Cibeque, Arizona, for over thirty years, describes place-making as a “retrospective world-building,” a form of cultural activity that is a “ universal tool of the historical imagination.” In the Western Apache world, places and place-names are dense with meaning, holding and embodying the entire history of the people. To say the name of a place, to tell a story about a place is to waken a memory, conjure up everything that ever happened there, and make it present again to the community. This is more than mere reminiscence; remembering what happened in a given place becomes woven into the personal and collective identity of the people. “What people make of their places,” Basso suggests, “is closely connected to what they make of themselves as members of society and inhabitants of the earth…. We are, in a sense, the place-worlds we imagine.”[1]

Isaac’s experience can help us grapple with the growing concerns about the significance of place, considering in particular the widespread sense of displacement or disconnection that has come to characterize the contemporary urban experience within the Western world.

Movement and travel is fundamental to the human experience.  A general arc from hunter/gatherer societies to today’s human populations underscores that there is an inherent desire to move.  In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the Hebrew God is often portrayed as a traveler showing up to deliver divine guidance.[2]  The journey upon which the traveler embarks subsequently becomes sacred as well.  This holy hegira underlays the constant travels and wanderings of many ancient Celtic Christians as well.  Restlessness was in their blood as was the notion that it was better to travel hopefully than to arrive.[3]  This lens of hope presented a perspective that the road was a rite; that the path provided prescient knowledge and insight to their journey towards divine revelation.  Isaac’s departure relied on the land as a liturgy, a sacred script that would prove his dream’s call. He is able to move through this wild landscape because it is known, much like the details of a familiar story.

The particularities of a place become both a sacred messenger and a storied record of divine encounters.  Like the sacred lands of the Western Apache, religious sites in Celtic lands are known by meaningful name and also by the presence of standing crosses, communal land-markers of ancient stories of significance.  This was a primal way of place-making.  By naming a place through the placement of stone, or more notably, through tale-saturated titles, the Celtic people affirmed how important the natural world was to their experience with the numinous.  Sacred legends associated with landscapes abound in Celtic country, and are often the narratives that bring people back to and into nature. 

The geographies of Isaac’s surrounding home-scape shaped him. From the dust of the village paths to the surrounding forests and mountains, he lived in such a way that the interweaving of these ground-scapes became spiritual directors, forming in him a sacred imagination for what was needed in his community.

Writing about the power of the imagination in an essay on the civil war, Wendell Berry emphasizes that “the particularizing force of imagination is a force of justice…Imagination, amply living in a place, brings what we want and what we have ever closer to being the same…If imagination is to have a real worth, to us, it needs to have a practical, economic effect. It needs to establish us in our places with a practical respect for what is there besides ourselves. I think the highest earthly result of imagination is local adaptation.”

Isaac has the imagination to create something that would practically deepen the experience of other’s living within his community because he has lived there a long time. He has listened, and responded to the silence of what wasn’t there. His deep knowledge and relationship with the surrounding forests and mountains is beyond basic map-knowledge, these are places with which he is so familiar that he can navigate known routes from his village, to the city, and back again with a felt sense, and a confidence in his greater community that the accepted rides from a stranger are welcomed gifts from the guidance that is manifesting his dream. He isn’t lost in his landscape; he is home within it and this connection is one hard to come by when one’s primary senses are attuned to technological devices that prevent one from really seeing and really hearing from the geography that surrounds one’s lodging. For it can only truly be just that, an anywhere-space where one simply resides, a shallow rootedness that can easily be transplanted since the surrounding storied geography was never tapped, never learned, never adapted and assimilated, never penetrating the person behind the screen who somehow still manages to walk upon a sidewalk.

Isaac shows us what is an “experiential place sense,” the imaginative, affective response to a place that allows it to become significant for a person or community. When one sees more of a place, (these are the bits and pieces: birds and benches, angles and alleys, weeds and woods) because of one’s experiential sense of it, it allows us to plunge into a posture of permanence because we are enabled to gauge the true significance of what we gaze upon. This kind of seeing is akin to what the early Christians meant when they spoke of theoria, that was a way of seeing into the heart of reality that sometimes revealed the very face of the divine. Or like what the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins meant when he spoke of “inscape,” the luminous, utterly singular texture of a thing that emerges with blazing clarity when a person actually looks upon that thing with care and sensitivity.

Pilgrimage requires all senses as it depends on our sensory selves to receive and transmit divine messages in the here and now. It is nigh impossible to have an I/Thou encounter based on particularity and receive its sacred import if podcasts and screens overwhelm our sensing selves.

This capacity is often grown by practicing the pace and posture of pilgrimage so that when we return home we are able to “see into” all that is there and all that is yet missing.

The Celtic way of pilgrimage paid attention to place, understanding that the sacred was revealed through the natural world and even through the hospitality of the stranger.  When we travel with a pilgrim’s pace, we embrace the perspective and values of the divine.  Charles Foster holds that a journey will challenge you to engage critical aspects of the divine through:

“…life on the edges; indiscriminate and costly hospitality; solidarity with the marginalized (most of the nomad’s time is spent outside main centers and in the company of peripheral people); intimate relationships with humans and the environment; a new view at every step; and the loosest possible hold on possessions.”[4]

This was a way of living, of moving, and of arriving to a place that required radical engagement.  It entreats the individual to live into communion with the seasons, the elements, the natural world and other humans.  The journey becomes the medium by which meaning is made and relationships are maintained.  While participants of a pilgrimage often intend to go at it alone, studies have repeatedly noted the importance of social interactions along the journey. Isaac’s acceptance of offered rides by strangers while en route to the city speaks to how we co-create meaning and movement together with others. Pilgrimage demands we pay attention, sensing messages for our inner journey through the faces with whom we share the sidewalk, as well as the environment that surrounds us. 

We awaken to the culture of a place when we pay attention to the potential of interactions with both the seen and unseen world. 

This kind of noticing requires unplugging from our devices and engaging in our places with our senses.  It means tapping into the collective memory of a place through our bodies.  The smells, sights and sounds of a place will reveal much about its stories—stories that induce knowledge and love of the land, the culture that co-habitates there, and the Creator who exists in and in between these places and its people.  

Dreams are holy and contain sacred power as they project the location or echoing dimensions of a pilgrimage site—they can be portals of deeper connection to ourselves, our community, and the divine. Isaac’s dream repeatedly visited him, placing upon him a call to make a connection between his deepest desire, his geography, and the resulting imagination to create something on behalf of the common good.  What makes Isaac’s particular experience unique and profound, is that while his dream, his call, demanded an answer of going, he did not travel to a distant center of worship.

The trajectory of his transformational travel didn’t lead him to a shrine, temple, or sacred grove; rather, it led him out to the city, to a particular bridge, to be laughed at by the captain of the guards: “You poor fellow,” he said, “what a pity you wore your shoes out for a dream! Listen, if I believed a dream I once had, I would go right now to the city you came from, and I’d look for a treasure under the stone in the house of a fellow named Isaac.” Isaac turns and retraces his steps back home, accepting kind offers from strangers, walking through forests and back over mountains. Ultimately, the treasure is found within Isaac’s home, a metaphor for the divine that is deepest within each of us.

To uncover this sacred treasure has the potential to transform our neighborhoods and communities as the boon isn’t meant to fund or create more self-serving interests or even create more global thinking.

The recovered treasure co-creates places that deepen community connection to place, one another, and the opportunity to experience awe and wonder locally.

Isaac’s pilgrimage journey awakens in him an imagination for something more, a storied aspect of his community that would be on behalf of the common good, something that would create connection, and provide a place to experience awe and wonder, critical aspects of a happy and whole human life. This imagination is tinged with gratitude, an essential quality that will ensure that one’s imagination doesn’t serve the ego, but rather, the eco—the whole house, the whole ecology of a place, the inscape—the inside knowledge of the interrelated dynamics for living together.  If we are all to live together well in our places, we must create and know the stories of our interrelatedness.

With the treasure that is the result of his journey, he taps into the wisdom that has sat underneath his hearth, the heart of his home, waiting to be found, recognized, and its power used to imagine and create a place that would help to shape the identity of those who inhabited Isaac’s neighborhood.

A true pilgrimage practice becomes a way of being in the world, ultimately one that is insatiably curious for connection to the divine through others and the natural world.  This sort of pace is also slow growing, like the rootedness of a tree.  Our journey towards revelation and meaning should lead us to plant roots, roots that connect to our local ecologies and transform our neighborhood economies.  In this way, pilgrimage becomes a practice of creating a deep and abiding sense of home. 

Bringing back the boon of a pilgrimage is a requisite final stage of the journey. The Return demands a communal impact for the whole experience to be fully realized as a transformative event. Isaac’s treasure doesn’t spur him towards a rootless and fancy-free lifestyle. He invests what he has found as a result of his searching into his community, imagining and creating a culture of place and collective belonging, which produces deep roots and a sense of permanence.

With the security gained through Isaac’s found treasure, he sends a portion off to his sacred guide (the Captain of the Guards—-see the recurring theme? gratitude) and then he creates.  This act of imagination is a doubling down—a commitment to his homescape through the creation of something that didn’t before exist. He has listened deeply to his landscape and strangers and heard the silence of what is not there—an act that is not possible through impermanence and light, non-localized living.

Isaac builds a house of prayer, and presumably based on its size and amount of seating, this is not a private altar. This is a place for his neighbors to gather, to come together, to experience in community wonder, wisdomawe, gratitude, thanksgiving. This is a place that will profoundly impact the collective memory of what it means to live in this village. The wisdom gained through Isaac’s journey now marks the character of this place, and is memorialized with an inscription: “Sometimes one must travel far to discover what is near.” 

Like the Celtic standing stones, this house of prayer becomes a marker, a sacred story of the wisdom found there. Like the Apache, the people’s prayers that are offered here will soak into the soil, creating memories in this place, providing a depth that demands staying, knowing, and being together.

In Isaac’s initial poverty, one can find themes of how impoverished the Western world is in our normative independence and isolation.  Through the journeying out to the places that call to us from our deepest dreams and psyches, connection with others is found.  This connection and sharing of dreams is what can spur the return back to whence we came, rediscover meaning, and re-engage in imaginative practices that powerfully connect people to one another and their place.

---

Reflection

How are you practicing presence and permanence in your neighborhood?

Do you know the names of landmarks and landscapes in your community?

Test this knowledge without the use of map-skills (no Google maps either!). What names do you know? Do you know their sacred stories?

Learn the ancient, indigenous names of places in your region, and the stories that accompany these names. 

Practice your own place-naming based on the memories you have co-created in your community. 

---

            [1]  Keith Basso, Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache (Albuerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1996), 5, 7.  

            [2]  Genesis 12:1, 4; Exodus 34:23 for examples of Hebrew bible text where God proclaims the Hebrew people a pilgrimage people.

            [3]  Ian Bradley, The Celtic Way (London: Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd., 2003), 80.

            [4]  Charles Foster, The Sacred Journey (Nashville, NT: Thomas Nelson, 2010), xiv. 

Trials and Trails that Wound: How We Learn from the Dragon

We are coming into the season of Michaelmas, the ancient festival time of St. Michael who is connected to myths and lore around harvest abundance and more prominently, dragons. St. Michael is an archetypal representation of our inner light and courage that is called forth when scarcity is nigh. This scarcity and its corresponding fear is our dragon, one that we all must meet.

Since the birth of my fourth child, Cannon, and the years in his wake I have found I'm asking how I befriend the dragon--the one that lives in the dark woods of our innermost journey, the one that can claw and snatch. It feels that within the realm of the feminine, there is an invitation that goes beyond conquering to that of kinship. I spoke about this idea at my graduation ceremony, very much having this archetypal myth in mind.

Yes, dragons and the dark woods within which they live, can scar us. But instead of killing the beast in return, can we learn to ride the dragon, and see our scars as sacred?

Learning from the Dragon’s Fiery Fury

We each accepted the call to come here, and with this acceptance in many ways we disappeared from the world, descending into the mysterious, archetypal dark wood. This is the stage of the journey where the epic work of self-reflection takes place with the purpose of renewal and discovery.

This is the time of tests and trials, which serve as fortifiers as we learn to rely upon companions as well as our own developing abilities to move to and through suffering. This requisite stage brings one into the darkest chamber of the heart, a place filled with trauma and treasure, a place through which one must trod to manifest the deeply held desire for transformation.

This is the stumbling along the hard, dark path-time. The descent is disorienting, destabilizing, and in a word: deconstructing. This isn’t just the stuff of legends. This is life well-lived, and it is a quest of meaning-making and discovery. And like any good transformative adventure, there are dragons.

Joseph Campbell would say that this is the part of the journey when dragons emerge from the shadowy wood and must be slain…but this isn’t the way at The Seattle School. Here we have gained knowledge and tools to encounter the dragon. How will we engage its various forms, listen to its terrifying tales, and learn from its fiery fury? For only when we begin to reconstruct together new ways of being through the recovery and discovery of lost pieces of ourselves will we find that the dragon actually becomes a vehicle towards our well-being: here we learn how to train, and ride, dragons.

But first we must find the unknown path, an endeavor that requires much.   This is the way of walking through the woods—an arduous journey winding through unfamiliar territory, trying to find the way through, all of which requires endurance, stamina…and inevitably, brokenness. Our brokenness becomes the path back into being.

Here in the dark woods, we trip and fall—scraping, breaking, bruising our way through the requisite phase of finding.

This is the sacred Holy Saturday time where the woods keep silence and watch.

I thought that I met my dragon when I began the work of confronting my story four years ago in the first year foundational course Faith, Hope and Love…the thing that I would primarily fight and wrest…and while that did indeed occur, it proved itself to be more of an entrance to an even darker wood, a longer labyrinth, and one that demanded that I find out who I truly am when the demands of the journey turn treacherous. This is what I now know: the forest forms you.

In the dark of my winter term of my first year at The Seattle School, I became pregnant with our fourth child. This pregnancy proved near fatal for both me and my then-baby who, born too early, was dangerously close to death. As I lay in my own liminal life-shadow, he needed resuscitation, and was placed in NICU for weeks.

We lose much of ourselves during our passage through the dark—in many ways this must occur for the gifts of the transformation to have space to become. 80% of my blood was lost during the emergency birth and replaced with other people’s blood during my reconstructive surgery, creating a much longer and more wearisome journey back to health.

Shortly after I was learning to live with my new wounds, my husband got mono and could barely get out of bed for a month. Then he lost his job and the security of our family’s primary income. By now I remember wondering when this wandering would end—every hard and painful path seemed to be dropping out from underneath us to reveal yet another rocky road.

One dark summer night, with only the street lamp assisting with light, I was harvesting my lavender, hustling it to help put food on the table. While wielding a brand new scythe—and not fully present to its power—I cut a significant portion of my finger off and ended up back in the ER only to begin another long, slow and painful journey to healing. This pain, this part of the dark woods, taught me deep truths about regenerativity—especially as I witnessed my finger literally grow back. Hope indeed is forged in the forest.

I have had to ask the question and face the answer of who would I become after facing such fierce dragons who seemed to cut and jeer in the face of my becoming. How could I befriend the foe and their fire?

It has been said that the wise one limps. You will know wisdom not by one who walks upright, whole, and strong, but one who walks humped and slumped, scarred by the trials and trails that wound.

We gather today, robed with honor, distinction, and wisdom. These robes would say to the world that we are now wisdom-bearers. Ones who have risked much for priceless gain. These robes become your story to steward, not to hoard. May these hoods continue to call forth courage, for this dress required a fight with dragons that will forever remind us of what we have been through, the deep woods through which we have come.

Keep alive the memory of the woods for they have proven to be the greatest of teachers. For deep roots are reached through the forest. And don’t forget the dragon’s fire, fashioned now into foresight. Don’t let it slip from your heart, for that which wounded us has also healed us.

Lest this become a tale forgotten, finger your scars as a reminder of your journey in the case the limp you now bear does not.

May you learn to love your limp and see your scars as sacred as you leave this place, wise from your time in the woods.

Watch the video of Mary DeJong delivering this script at the 2017 Seattle School of Theology & Psychology Commencement ceremony here.

Guidance & Wisdom from the Sacred Wild

GuidanceSacredWild

I feel like I've been walking towards today for years. It was four years ago that my work with Waymarkers was put in the vault as I left to pursue my Masters in Theology & Culture with a focus in eco-theology from The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology.

This journey took me through some of the most wildest of woods where I was taught again and again of the revelatory quality of the natural world, and that the woods are indeed the wisest of teachers. I reflect on themes experienced in these last years during the commencement speech I was asked to give during my graduation ceremony.  You can listen to that here.

Today feels like an emergence from the woods. In many ways I feel like there are open vistas of hope and opportunity before me, inner-landscapes that demanded the requisite journey through the woods. Today I offer my work of Waymarkers anew, infused with the theory, theology, and practice gained in the last four year. Waymarkers is a sacred guidance venture that provides support and frameworks for cultivating connection and communion to and through the natural world.

Waymarkers' hope is to guide others toward a holistic and harmonious inter-connected life with the more-than-human world through restorative rewilding rituals and pilgrimage practices that recover a way of seeing the sacred in the soil, the stars, and, even in our neighborhood streets.

With Celtic spirituality and sacred ecology providing the framework, Waymarkers offers guidance and support for those who are ready to respond to the call to wander into the sacred wild, seeking wisdom from our interrelated web of life. Without this kind of spiritual formation, there can be no authentic ecological consciousness, because there can be no true sense of the interdependence of all things. We must see the natural world as a sacred Thou, no longer an objectified It. Cultural historian Thomas Berry eloquently insists that "the world is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects." To participate in this communion is sacramental, and the elements are all around us, awaiting our participation in our backyards, neighborhoods, our cities and parks, and the hinterlands beyond.

We are placed with a purpose. To not know this is to be without waymarkers, to be displaced.  Waymarkers will journey with you to a way of belonging, to a renewed sense of solid, sacred rooting in the land where you live.

Let's journey together and discover the wisdom that is rooted in the woods, and wind our way to a place of belonging!

Iona: Getting There Well

The journey itself to Iona makes this place unique; it is long, quite complicated and even relatively uncomfortable for the urbanite who is accustomed to quick and easy travel. This distance provides the perfect pilgrimage process, for it truly requires a removal of oneself from all that is familiar and supplies a lengthy trek-full of obstacles, no doubt! Once there, one finds a sparsely populated island, with almost no cars and a large abbey, whose structure appears to have dropped from the heavens onto this topographically small and relatively insignificant place.

Sheep outnumber the residents and the sunlight plays on the hillsides in the most magical ways. One senses almost immediately Iona is indeed a "thin space" – that brushing up against the Divine is inevitable.

It takes time to get to Iona. To start your pilgrimage preparations, think about the itinerary in two parts: TRAVEL TO OBAN and OBAN TO IONA

By Train

Trains travel regularly from Edinburgh (Waverley Station) and Glasgow (Queen Street Station) to Oban. This spectacular journey (one of the top rail rides in the world!) takes approximately four hours and the train terminal in Oban is next to the ferry terminal for the Isle of Mull.

Rail Enquiries: Tel: 08457 484950. Scotrail (Trains)www.scotrail.co.uk

By Bus

Buses depart from Edinburgh (St. Andrew Square) and Glasgow (Buchanan Street Station) and go directly to the Station Road stop in Oban. The route takes approximately four hours-make sure to pack a snack!

Bus Enquiries: Tel: 08705 505050 or visit www.travelinescotland.comScottish Citylink (Coaches)www.citylink.co.uk

By Car

From Edinburgh take the M9 to Stirling, then the A84/A85 to Oban. From Glasgow take the A82 up the side of Loch Lomond to Crianlarich, then the A85 to Oban. If you are travelling from the north of Scotland the A82 will take you from Inverness to Fort William, then take the A828 to Oban.

Disabled Passengers

For assistance on the railway ring Scotrail (Tel: 0845 605 7021).

Recommended accommodations for your overnight in this seaside town

Oban Youth Hostel

www.syha.org.uk/hostels/highlands/oban.aspx

Harbour View Guest House

A lovely and affordable B&B in Oban within walking distance from the train and ferry.

Dilys McDougall at dilysmcdougall@aol.com

Tel: 011-44-1631-563-462 Harbour View Shore Street Oban, Argyll PA34 4LQ

Ferry Service to Mull

The ferry from Oban to Craignure on Mull takes forty minutes. Walk on passengers should arrive within an hours time of departure, and make sure to give yourself time to pick up a fresh seafood sandwich at a local fish monger booth near the ferry-delicious! Cars need to check in at least thirty minutes before departure and advanced tickets is strongly recommended during the summer season and public holidays.

Ferry enquiries: contact the ferry operators Caledonian MacBrayne (Tel: 08705 650000) or visit their website www.calmac.co.uk

Across Mull

Tour buses will pick up passengers in a lot just off of the ferry departure area and bring them to the ferry terminal at Fionnphort; these bus times generally coincide with the Mull and Iona ferries. There is a sweet little gift shop and restroom facilities to visit-if there is time before the bus departs!

It takes approximately one hour to drive across the Ross of Mull from Craignure to Fionnphort, where the ferry leaves for Iona. Visitors cars are NOT allowed on Iona, but there is free car parking at the Columba Centre in Fionnphort, minutes from the ferry terminal.

For bus enquiries: Tel: 01631 566809 or visit www.bowmanstours.co.uk orwww.travelinescotland.com or Tel: 01546 604695 or Email: public.transport@argyll-bute.gov.uk

Ferry to Iona

The bus will drop you off at Fionnphort. There is a ten minute passenger (walk-on only) ferry that crosses the Sound of Mull landing at the pier in the village of Iona. In the Winter some ferries need to be reserved the day before travel.

Telephone the CalMac Craignure office on: 01680 612343 or visit www.calmac.co.uk/destinations/iona.htm

Disabled Passengers

For assistance on the ferry ring your departure terminal: CalMac Oban (Tel: 01631 566688) or Craignure (Tel: 01680 612343).

You have arrived to Iona, the place that has called to you! Savor your arrival.

Emergence

This is merely a note to awaken you to what is emerging here at Waymarkers. I graduated with my Masters in Theology & Culture from The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology and a specialization in Thomas Berry's Universe Story from Yale University this past June. In these past years, my studies, research, and writing have all reached towards Waymarkers in some way, shape, or fashion, wondering about how my learnings would integrate into my work that shows up in the world wide web through Waymarkers.  These summer months have seen this wonderings become more clarified, and these emergences will begin to show themselves through a new website and offerings, expanded writing themes beyond that of pilgrimage, and engagement with theories around ecotheology, sacred ecology, and a reverence for creation as the dwelling place for the divine. I hope this is enough to pique your interest and that you will feel invited to journey along with me upon paths that will take us deeper into the wilds where Creator can be heard speaking through all created things.

Set out. And seek Wisdom, not advice.

RumiQuote

Iona Pentecost Pilgrimage: An Island Between Heaven and Earth

A set on the stage of "An Island Between Heaven and Earth"

The Sacred Island of Iona is riddled with fables, legends and lore.  Around every bend you encounter places that are linked to a history deeper than our own and stories that reverberate with both the whisking wind and the beat of angels wings.  While we came here keenly aware of the mysteries that shroud this island, our time on Iona was strengthened by opportunities to pull apart the veiled sacred sagas and see behind the curtain the very real people and relationships that have curated all that Iona is known for today.  From our geology lecture and field study, to tours of the Abbey and Staffa Island, this intimate isle grew up and out of its misty myths into a very real place.  A place that is governed by the same laws of nature as my residential address: indeed, my feet, under the authority of gravity, stayed on the ground here on Iona in the exact same ways they do at home.  And the people here, they grocery shop and eat too; it isn't all miraculous maritime mana dotting the countryside perpetually available to the sacred souls musing about.

No, this is a real place.  A harsh, isolated place.  A place where in the winters one could go mad for a spot of sun.  But it has also always been a place for which people have longed.  A place where pious pilgrims prevailed, and where nobles and kings are entombed.  It is a place of heart-aching beauty that has inspired the very real people behind the legends to come here and be about something greater than, and beyond, themselves.

Cast of An Island Between Heaven and Earth, Alistair Rutherford, Iona Community

And so it was with George Fielden MacLeod, Baron MacLeod of Fuinary, a Scottish soldier and radical reverend who believed the ruined medieval Abbey stones cried out to him to rebuild their resplendence.  While this man's eulogy is the stuff from which tales are told, in 1938 he was a young captain emerging from World War I with a profound sense of God and a disillusioned notion of politics.  His awareness for social justice was as real as the grit and grime he saw daily on the faces of the unemployed in Govan.  But what is indeed legendary about this man was that he responded to the visions of a restored Iona Abbey, and a transformed church that would reconcile people and denominations from all over the world, a church that would become the Iona Community.

This clarified sense of Rev. MacLeod and the beginning's of the Iona Community was offered to us by means of theater and a fantastic troupe from Cutting Edge Theatre Productions.  Within the Iona Village Hall, we were given the gift of insight to the conditions that created the context of the rebuilding of the Abbey.  We laughed at the well written jokes and jests between volunteer men, present to this dream despite their social class dichotomies.  We were cut to the quick with the very real stories that occurred on this soil so that we could be afforded the luxury of comfortably lighting a candle in the sacred beauty of the Iona Abbey.

Written by Alistair Rutherford, "An Island Between Heaven and Earth" presents the story of George MacLeod's dream to transform stones into splendor and to reform the Church of Scotland in the doing so.  And, it worked!  His maverick methods caused many to question the social norms of the time and to work towards ecumenism and social justice.  To this day, the Iona Community continues to provide resources and relevant assistance to global issues of inequality and justice, while also providing a place to where people can gather in community, learn together and participate in worship.

This play provided the perfect reminder that when we come upon sacred sites and pilgrimage places, it is because something not only fabled and fanciful occurred, but something very real happened there.  And most likely something very hard-the kind of hard that pushes back on the status quo and demands something different.  The kind of real and the kind of hard that are flanked with reconciliation and transformation.  George MacLeod called Iona a “thin place”, with only “a tissue paper separating heaven and earth.”  I can't help but believe that this kind of place occurs when the visions for what it means to live on earth come into alignment with what living is like on the other side.  Now, this is the stuff of legends that I want to surround myself!

Bravo, Cutting Edge Theatre Productions, bravo!

imgres-2

An Island Between Heaven and Earth, Alistair Rutherford, Iona Community

Iona Pentecost Pilgrimage: Island Journey

“Bless to us, O God, The earth beneath our feet, Bless to us, O God, The path whereon we go, Bless to us, O God, The people whom we meet. ”

— Based on an old prayer from the Outer Hebrides

Bay at the Back of the Ocean

The pilgrimage around Iona visits places of sacred significance and historical importance on the island.  There are 18 sites in all and can take nearly all day to get to each one.  Our group broke the pilgrimage up in a few days-hitting the Abbey's specific spots while we did our tour and hiking up Dun I on a quiet afternoon-so that we could enjoy the heft of the hiking down to the south end of the island to really spend some meaningful time at St. Columba's Bay and enjoy the reflections at holy sites along the way.

Columba's Bay

I watched our band of pilgrims prayerfully hike the path that Columba, his followers and 1450 years of seekers have sojourned.  While not adorned in the medieval garb of the traditional pilgrim (full length tunics, broad rimmed hats, staffs and satchels), their water proof pants and jackets, knit caps and thick ankled hiking boots carried the seeker-spirit of modern day pilgrims on this Sacred Isle.  While not barefoot, our blistered, bone-tired and boot-sore feet carried us over sacred pebbled beaches and peaty bogs.  We jumped and leapt from rock to rock, attempting to keep out of the muck, as we made our way to the 17th century remains of the Iona Marble Company’s marble quarry, a site that demands acknowledgment of humanity’s exploitive behaviors and pleads for a change in global values and lifestyles.

Scripture verses that speak of Christ as our rock became more than just metaphor as we discovered that we very much needed the consistent presence of the rocks to keep our feet out of the mire.  This island journey was clearly emphasizing and highlighting Celtic and pilgrim-ways of seeing.  Without the physicality of the outside world to underscore these Biblical truths, these Christian metaphors would be weak words and flimsy fables.

columba'spebbles

The early Celtic church had a fundamental belief in the revelatory nature of the created world.  Every tree, blade of grass, and wild gooses cry was imbued with the Spirit of God and spoke to the character of the Creator.  These “theophanies” –God showings—were expected and sought after as a way to understand the sacred mysteries.  The ninth century Irish teacher, John Scotus Eriugena believed that God was the ‘Life Force” within all things, “…therefore every visible and invisible creature can be called a theophany” (John Scotus Eriugena, Periphyseon-The Division of Nature, 749D).  All of the created world upholds something of the essence of the Creator.  Eriugena also taught that there are two primary ways in which the sacred is revealed--the Bible and creation: “Through the letters of Scripture and the species of creature…” mysteries of God are revealed.

The historical significance of Iona was underscored as we hiked this island pilgrimage; sacred sites emphasized how very near the works of God are all around us.  We were also reminded that we walk the pilgrim path together; we are not alone as we seek God’s guidance in our lives.  The road is filled with pilgrims who are seeking after inspiration and transformation, seekers who long for and are called by the saints who have gone before us.  And, as a mutual company, we are challenged to live forward in ways that bring about restoration to others and our earth.

heather

labyrinth

Iona Pentecost Pilgrimage: When in Rome...

fingal

A fundamental aspect of pilgrimage is to engage the local culture of a site.  It is paramount to experience with your senses the place where you are.  This means intentionally involving the sight, sound, smell, savor and sensations of a place.  It is advisable to not just find a McDonald's or Starbucks when you are hungry or thirsty, but seek after local cuisine and appreciate it for the expanding understanding it gives you for a locale.  It means taking out the earbuds and listening for the unique melodies that are native to a particular place; this could be the sounds of the sea, regional birdsong, or the lilt of a distinct accent.  And it is certainly seeing the sights that enhance the definition of a place. When one comes this far away to Iona, it is always recommended to try to get off and away for a boat tour to Staffa Island.  Staffa Island is renowned for many features, one being its unique basalt columns; similar rock formations can be found in Northern Ireland's Giant Causeway, which, between the two, legends of giants and hurling stones have emerged and been told for generations.  This is also the summer breeding ground for the Atlantic Puffin, a clown-like looking bird that comes ashore to lay eggs in the island's thrushy and rocky outcroppings.  And lastly, there is the celebrated Fingal's Cave, a notable cavern renowned for its unique structure, incredible acoustics and naturally formed rock walk way along the side of the of cave.  It is here that Mendelssohn received the inspiration for the "Hebrides Overture (Fingal's Cave}" that continues to provide the world a stirring reminder of this natural wonder of the world.

Our little group was very grateful to the elements for aligning, and to Gordon Grant Marine's crew who delightfully navigated our boat, so that we could pull up alongside the small docking area and disembark.  It was an absolute delight to walk up, down and around this small Hebridean island, watching the puffins swoop and swoon over their nests, and even be able to make our way far into the reaches of Fingal's Cave.

“…one of the most extraordinary places I ever beheld. It exceeded, in my mind, every description I had heard of it …composed entirely of basaltic pillars as high as the roof of a cathedral, and running deep into the rock, eternally swept by a deep and swelling sea, and paved, as it were, with ruddy marble, baffles all description.”

— Sir Walter Scott

puffin

columns

cave

Iona Pentecost Pilgrimage: Solviture ambulando

walking along the only road on IOna 

Here on Iona, where it is often stated in promotional material that sheep outnumber people and cars, everyone walks.  There is but a single road and upon that one walks to get to the ferry, get to the Abbey, get a cup a tea.  It is both a means to a destination and a value in and of itself.  

By walking, I get in tune with my body.  I am aware of what feels good, and what is creaking more than it used to.  I become attuned to my overall health and well being: am I out of breath?  Do I feel strong?  Do I need to stop, slow down or speed up?  Taking such stock of myself, I'm also more aware of others.  Incredibly different than when driving within cars, when I pass someone on this solitary street, I am significantly aware of their presence, even when they are yet yards and yards beyond me.  I sense them really; because I am removed from my insular vehicle, my soul feels the life of what is around me.

So not only am I aware of others walking the road, but I hear the kerrx-kerrx of the Corn Crake nesting in the farmers' fields.  I hear the bleating cries of young sheep trying to find the warmth and milk of their momma's.  I feel the wind whipping about me and the moist mist accumulating on my face. Because I can trust the undulation of my walking, I can also look about me without worrying about crashing (hopefully!).  I watch the ferry crossing the Sound of Iona.  I note the craggy height of Dun I.  I look for the turquoise hues in the sea.  And if I do happen to bump into another person during my perusals, it mandates human contact, and always elicits laughter and communication, despite language barriers.

“Walking removes barriers.”

sheep

That's really it, I think.  Walking removes barriers.  Issues of class and status don't exist on a road of pilgrim pedestrians.  There are no BMWs or Mercedes Benz.  There are no pimped out wheels or self-defining bumper stickers.  There is no road rage as we all are relying on the same bi-ambular locomotion.  We are just simply, ourselves, on our two feet, walking the way we were designed.  And we appreciate our fellow roaming creatures as well.  A leveling effect takes place even between us and the sheep, us and the cows.  I see these creatures a bit differently when we are on the same plain, looking at one another with only a fence between us.  As I look into these creatures eyes, as we both stand on our feet, and I witness the lamb bumping up into his momma's udder to drink her milk, and I think, "We are not all so very different, you and I.  What can I learn from you today?"  Walking teaches us about things that matter and things that don't.

As my feet walk this road, I find that my life is slowly set back in order.  Priorities fall back into place.  I cannot rush to get somewhere and pack more into my day.  For I simply can only do what my body is capable of and where my feet can physically take me.  I cannot squeeze in one last Target errand, while rushing to get children to baseball practice and swim lessons.  In walking's simplicity, a gift of simplicity is given back to me and how I choose to live my life.

Augustine was onto a great truth when suggesting that we have the answer to our problems in our own two feet as he said, "it is solved by walking."

Iona Pentecost Pilgrimage: Arrival-Hospitality

coffee

The warm invitation that this island, and its people, extend to new comers is quite profound.  There is a very real sense that there are no strangers in our midst.  In the context of the single road, the hostel or the beaches, there are ready smiles to lift yours, gregarious laughter rushing out to include you, and generous invitations to share tea, a meal or a bit of chocolate.  One Swedish pilgrim noted to me today how, even though he just arrived yesterday, he has felt like he is with family.  There is a sense of general community and conviviality that spans generations and gender.

In my short time on the island, I have been lovingly embraced by a group of British women staying at the hostel.  I had opened the door of the hostel's common area to review some receipts and in a manner of seconds was instead drawn in to their circle with stories of shared faith, red wine and chocolate.  There is a very special feeling when surrounded by a group of wizened women who claim themselves with a mesmerizing confidence.  Since the late hour last night when we first all met, we have continued to enjoy countless conversations about our different countries and mutual faith.

Once again, I've been reminded how these journeys challenge the best of us to put our agendas away and embrace the gift of humanity right in front of us.  This type of soul journey is inevitably tied to how we connect and commune with others.  Their very presence reminds us of the absolute value of the most precious gift: life!

The vibrancy of this island is seen all over, from the colors of the sea, to the crashing waves, to the delightful hand-made signage.  Walking the streets and trails on Iona, while the wind bustles you about, truly brings one back to a fullness of life!

columba's bay waves

Iona Hostel

labryinth

Martyr's Bay

Nunnery