Discerning The Call That Knocks on Your Door

Discerning The Call That Knocks on Your Door

Questions that I am often asked about the invitation to make a pilgrimage journey 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. Do these resonate with you? 

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Pilgrimage: A Profound Act of Listening

Pilgrimage: A Profound Act of Listening

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!

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Pilgrimage Awakens the Soul

There is an urgent restlessness and a deep seeded remembrance to come home to our true selves, a deep longing for an integration that braids the soul, the soil, and the sacred. This longing, this soul-solicitation-asking initiates the seeking process, as it is inherently true that you cannot cultivate an integrated home-space for your soul unless you first have intentionally gone out and away from all that you know and are comfortable within. Will you go? 

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Guidance & Wisdom from the Sacred Wild

Guidance & Wisdom from the Sacred Wild

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.

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Iona: Getting There Well

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.

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Emergence

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. Waymarkers is soaking this up and becoming a sacred guide, a presence that will take us deeper into the wilds where Creator can be heard speaking through all created things.

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Extended Grace

Waymarkers Friends, My writings and musings have been quieter this summer.  What with my children home from school and a deep-belly sense that our family is in a time of transition,  I intentionally drew a boundary line around ourselves that would require me to stay present to them.  It is far too easy for me to live in my head where words and phrases are lined up in a beautiful order, out of reach of honey-sticky hands and air-borne balls, and not fully see or hear what they are needing me to watch (for the hundredth time) or say (do I really need to repeat the answer to that "why?" AGAIN?!).  I needed to call myself out of my writing reveries to be available for spontaneous fun and play, of which we have had a summer full!

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Iona Pentecost Pilgrimage: An Island Between Heaven and Earth

Iona Pentecost Pilgrimage: 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.  

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Iona Pentecost Pilgrimage: Solviture ambulando

Iona Pentecost Pilgrimage: Solviture ambulando

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. The road becomes a liturgy and walking the prayers. 

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Iona Pentecost Pilgrimage: Arrival-Hospitality

Iona Pentecost Pilgrimage: Arrival-Hospitality

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.  There is a sense of general community and conviviality that spans generations and gender.

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Iona Pentecost Pilgrimage-Departure: Fire and Fear

Iona Pentecost Pilgrimage-Departure: Fire and Fear

The last load of laundry was finally folded and last minute pre-travel errands run.  Whispered prayers and silent repetitons of the “do not forget list” infused rain gear, woolen layers and inspirational books as they were packed tightly away in the suitcase.   Today I departed for my pilgrimage to Iona and I couldn’t be more eager to get past this stage!

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The Labyrinth: Stepping into the Sacred Path

The Labyrinth: Stepping into the Sacred Path

A powerful symbol, labyrinths are usually in the form of a circle with a meandering but purposeful path, from the edge to the center and back out again, large enough to be walked into. Each labyrinth is unicursal, that is to say it has only one path (whereas a maze is multicursal-they offer a choice of paths, some with many entrances and exits), and once we choose to enter it, the path becomes a metaphor for our journey through life, sending us to the center of the labyrinth and back out to the edges via the same path. In this way, it becomes a microcosm of a pilgrimage or a sacred journey.

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Cheasty Greenspace: A Place of Goodness and Grace

Cheasty Greenspace: A Place of Goodness and Grace

The detective called inquiring after whether or not we had found "anything" in the woods since the fatal shooting that occurred near Cheasty Greenspace/Mt.View on February 4, 2013.  While we have certainly unearthed some curious, and somewhat disturbing, artifacts during our forest restoration work parties (lined up pairs of shoes next to an axe, dismembered dolls, rosaries, and large singular bones to name a few), no, we had not found the weapon involved in this fatal incident. 

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Easter: The Place of Our Resurrection

Easter: The Place of Our Resurrection

This Easter evening we resurrection-believing types are likely sitting down, basking in the power of today's symbolism, while licking the stolen-from-our-kids'-Easter-basket chocolate off our fingers and pondering what to do with all those hard boiled eggs.  Our Lenten journeys over, we are quickly back to sipping on our coffees, wine or whathaveyou's, secretly grateful that that discipline practice is over and we can return back to ordinary life.

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Lenten Walk Series 8 (Sacred)

Lenten Walk Series 8 (Sacred)

I spent this past weekend convening a women's retreat around themes of pilgrimage and Celtic Christian Spirituality.  We spoke at length about the inherent blessing of all creation and practiced seeing the sacred in all we encountered.  As this tradition relates to pilgrimage, we also learned about the hope-filled practice of the Celtic peregrines who would make pilgrim-voyages in their tiny coracles, which were often sailless and rudderless, so that God might allow ebb and flow to take these early pilgrims to wherever God wished them to go.

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Pilgrim's Path: Bringing Home the Boon

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.

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Arrival: Holy Week

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.

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Pilgrim's Path: Roadside blessings

Pilgrim's Path: Roadside blessings

That ultimate sense of wonder within the experience is what drives so many people to engage in [these] rigorous trials.  Father Stephen Canny, an Irish priest who leads a parish in Santa Rosa, California, believes strongly in the effectiveness of pilgrimage.  He has climbed Croagh Patrick, a popular pilgrimage site and storied mountain in Ireland, three times himself and has seen it work wonders on the devoted. "You are more alive after you have overcome something difficult," he says.  "You're changed by the mountain and the fact that you have confirmed your faith.  It's a remarkably effective way to answer the question, What is my purpose?"

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Labyrinth: The Darkest Wood

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.

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