As I make my slow pilgrimage through the world,
a certain sense of beautiful mystery seems to gather and grow.
A. C. Benson
The way I've always heard people talk about pilgrimage is to say, "a pilgrimage is a physical journey with a spiritual purpose." I recently journeyed on my own to Our Lady of Guadalupe Abbey in Pecos, New Mexico to meet up with small band of spiritual travelers. As I look back and consider how my recent pilgrimage to Pecos unfolded, I believe it started with a simple email newsletter that popped into my inbox. It came from The Center for Christian Spirituality, a ministry of Chapelwood United Methodist Church in Houston.
The flyer said, "Exploring Wisdom from the Wilderness" and it said we would dwell mostly in silence. Yes. I felt drawn to this and my calendar gave me permission. Yes. I will do this. Simple.
“The Wilderness holds answers to more questions than we have yet learned to ask.”
~ Nancy Wynne Newhall
Suddenly, several days after I said yes I got a phone call from my sister, "Clarissa (my niece) is being transferred to a Hospice facility. How soon can you be here?" This was a journey I didn't want to make ... this was a journey no one wants to take.
The evening that I arrived or maybe it was the second evening, the days all ran one into the other ...
writing in my journal ...
Sitting here on the open top floor of the parking garage, praying as the sun sets, remembering that God loves us all so much that the sun rises and the sun sets with such beauty it takes the breath away ... in much the same way Clarissa does when she enters a room.
The days spent with my niece and my sister and all of the family gathered at her bedside for more than a week had a surreal substance to them, and I found myself being hollowed out from within as her young heart kept her lingering several days past when I had to leave. I found that I was dwelling in that room with her even though I was no longer with her, liminal space ... God space ... all of life became a "thin space," where the veil between this world and the eternal world is so thin you can almost reach out and touch eternity ... not with your body nor even with your senses really but more with your spirit.
"Heaven and Earth are only three feet apart,
but in the thin places that distance is even smaller."
~ an old Celtic saying
On Transfiguration Sunday as I was leading worship, I came to a line in the Prayers of the People, "O God ... receive the dying." As many times as I had previewed that prayer, I had not "seen" those words. As I was standing before the people, I did see them ... before I read them. And I was overcome with tears welling up within me, tears that had refused to fall before that moment. I barely made it through that prayer even as I felt the strength pouring into me from God and the people, it sank to my feet and still the hollowness was left as I thought, "Transfiguration Sunday is a good day to die." Clarissa died that evening and my soul was suddenly released from waiting in Vigil so far away from her and my sister.
And the journey continues, so much work left undone over the days and yes, I did think, "I should cancel my trip to Pecos." But my soul hung on as I heard the call of the mountains in Pecos ...
Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.
And when you have reached the mountain top,
then you shall begin to climb.
And when the earth shall claim your limbs,
then shall you truly dance.~ Khalil Gibran
