Pilgrimage – the aloneness part – the confronting self and realizing there is nothing particularly amazing about self, it’s the mechanics of a moving body – the leg lifting up and putting down balanced on a foot – and the uprightness of our position – that is the miracle – that we can move at all with or without backpack, across terrains as variable as sounds; – it is a time to let your conscience explore the unlit candles in the heart and brokenness in the spirit and the clouds we use to cover things we don’t want to deal with any longer – the failures, the verbal diseases, the fake attitudes.

I have never had a vision of Christ as the foot of the bed, or the Virgin Mary giving me a message for the masses, although I’ve had extraordinary spiritual moments with my deceased Mother and can mentally reel a movie of my past to see how God worked the puzzle that has become me, how he turned me down the roads less traveled and pushed me into usefulness when trauma or earthquake happened. In the moment, we cannot question but just do. Later, maybe years later, the turning points and errors and victories are super-evident. As was the dark nights of the soul when I was tumbling from grace or running from it out of fear of the powers that had been given to me as ordained priest. When everything was possible, I turned cowardly – until through Henri Nouwen I discovered compassion.

Compassion is uncontrollable in the true sense – when one comes upon pain or suffering, it pours out of the pores of a good soul – and steps into action – without a ponder or a question – not worrying about what might happen or what one might think.   People are dying all around us every minute – animals, humans, hearts, souls, – and how can we continue to walk down the road untouched, how can we squeeze past pain, turn away from the grotesque – a small child graced an orphanage in Uruguay, playing on the swings and slides out of doors of confinement, and she had no face – a hole for her nose, nothing for a smile but a place to emit sound, and yet she knew something in her five years that the rest of us would never touched – a beauty of attitude and grotesqueness painted in a place in her that only God can see as we wonder what wagon would move her through the common life the rest of us enjoy. Stepping outside the boundaries of routine and comfort, with only a walking stick for balance and a willingness to encounter and experience one’s meaning, soul, weapons for survival, one’s thrust into the unknown means taking what comes with the wind and not worrying about the return – but hoping to find one’s gut, grit and grind, as my friend Tony Allen gives us on our basketball court.

Going into the wilderness as did Jesus, John, the desert fathers, – does one become saintly on exit – is there a transformation of the heart or has the heart been put aside to strengthen the spirit that partakes of all the other spirits who have been present in that wilderness over time – does it depend on the remoteness of the landscape : the trickery of moist thick jungle, or deception of the dusty desert – wilderness spirituality or spirituality in the wilderness – did those who picked up the challenge transform into desert Christians – commit to a practice of silence and simplicity – how do I cut off by inquiring mind that asks questions, is curious about every little leaf or a new attack on the senses ? – Do I follow footsteps of a reckless compassion to seek and find – can I ignore unimportant things – or are unimportant things the residue from sifting out what matters to me.

An issue as pastor, deacon priest, representative of the church, has always been community with people I don’t know – or even those I know. I tend to wrap myself in the blanket of the familiar, with the image of the Sinai Jesus, and busy angels, and this personal prayer and conversation with God, thinking He is around me, as I hope he is around each of us, and that He cares about my private pleas for others. I am a loner because I rarely found someone other than God I could trust – with humans, here is always the money thing – the uncoersed need to be responsible for other’s pathways. There is little joy in being with crowds and it’s probably my fault. I learned to walk alone, I run alone, I fight alone, it seems because there is more to my word than just the word. Life was different in Montevideo- friends joined together for dinners or garden club and talked and laughed and enjoyed. There was an unrushed, uncumbersome kindness, a curiosity, a courtesy that fit into the lifestyle of both the poor and the elite, and it started with a greeting kiss.

I remember the innocent days in the Green River mountains – as a teen, my parents took us to a dude ranch where I immediately leaped in to be a worker, a wrangler daring to gallop up hillsides like the cowboys, hoping to avoid any bears, trying not to lose a single ornery horse with a bell so they all show up at the corral for the dudes. Whatever it cost, my dad still had to get up at dawn and build a fire since we slept in cabins, roughing it, I guess, for it was a cold dash to the bathroom from the bed. Taking a walk down the path around Green River Lake – with preponderous moose apt to be chewing leaves on the edge – and would I run or watch? We actually took pack-trips in the hands of old Mart Wardell, a true rustic mountain man with bowed legs and a wicked humor intent on entertaining kids with song like The Cyree Peaks and Strawberry Roan and the fading western lore as he strapped on saddles and led us to the best views and trout fishing holes, and and up into the flat rocks of FlatTop mountain which anchors the spectacular view that draws so many people to the lake area for trout fishing. We even dove in to the freezing water because I was told it was good for your hair – we slept outside under white night skies – learned to cook on wood fire – found out how hard the ground and that behind-the-rock toilet habits had not been a part of our expectations. Here was the first challenge of a wilderness of sort, the first step out into the unknown, but with a simple, special soul to teach us about lightweight struggle and inspire my fascination for rocks, the oldest treasures on earth.

Now I listen to, trust the wind, “ruarch”, the Holy Spirit, and when the eye opens to begin another day, I wonder what wilderness I must hike through, what sky will edit the day, what human or wretched spirit I might encounter and will I be ready to forget me, and entertain them with hope, prayer, tears, laughter or whatever encouragement is needed to lift that person, that child of God like I am, from a dark corner of a tragic wilderness, into the lighted space where the sun marks the exit. I’ve come to believe the Holy Spirit speaks through the wind and maybe even our breath. Sometimes strong winds upset me but morning after morning when I lived on the beaches of Uruguay I walked at dawn on that beach no matter how silent the sea or how loud the wind but determined always to reach my turnaround spot where there was a slight relief of victory. And I am grateful that death has not taken me yet, there is much to do.

I can not allow the luxury of being tired. If I give in once, would it become a habit, if day by day I increased the allowance of laziness just a little bit more. I could die at any moment – especially with the work I do – but I don’t think about that. My body could crash, or my heart could stop – without any sign or warning. There is so much to do first, I’m eternally cleaning out and up – trying to leave things in order so there won’t be a ruckus in my tiny family. 0f course once we are embraced by death – it is no longer in our hands to make a difference. We have had all the time we have had to accomplish everything God wanted or needed us to do – and the stuff we failed to do, is just sand on the beach – unlimited and multiple. I am just grateful for time still waiting – and since I don’t feel like death is imminent, my charge is even stronger to do as much as I can with the failing energy I have. Meanwhile, my pilgrimage pushes forward, my memory looks backward, and I am squeezed into a bow that, once untied, is no more and God takes the soul and I will be grateful.