It’s Sunday morning. I’ve signed into a weekly Zoom hour hosted by a local writer, hoping for some inspiration for Monday’s post. At this point, I’ve spent many minutes affixing photos to notecards, and writing messages of care and connection with friends. To one, suffering the depths of grief since her husband’s passing during Covid, I included John O’Donohue’s blessing for one grieving. To the other – in response to her thoughtfully written, beautiful New Year’s letter – an acknowledgement of her word choice to describe her current lived condition, “subdued.” Such resonance.
one love letter’s photo
Despite carefully curating my social media time, I cannot escape the onslaught of memes and messages, both harrowing and hopeful. In response to my husband asking how I slept last night, I shared my deep-in-my-belly fear about my country’s safety. The world has recent history of the devastating consequences of a leader’s stated intention to annex a country. So when I hear another threaten mine, my body responds.
“darling, you feel heavy because you are too full of the truth. open your mouth more. let the truth exist somewhere other than inside your body.”
Della Hicks-Wilson, Small Cures
After last week’s post, several of you commented and emailed with kind and affirming responses. I wrote a version of the following to several of you:
“So each word, each photograph, each post matters. Each kind word, each warm embrace matters. It’s what we have which I have to believe can turn the tide, perhaps first within the unseen, liminal spaces.”
So these minutes devoted to card-making and note-writing matter. Love letters amplifying beauty matter. A manifestation of the creative spirit matters. Letting the truth exist somewhere other than inside my body matters. This act of hope-filled dissent matters.
As do you, dear friends. Much love and kindest regards.
Isola di Farnese on la Via Francigena, October 2024
I don’t want to to sound out of touch, but I really am exhausted by the word “influencer”
that word suggests trying to have control over somebody else
and there is already too much of that going in the world already
I don’t like the term “clout” either
that word is too fickle for me
whenever I desire power it feels like I’m trying to hold a melting ice cube in my hand
I don’t want to sway anyone
I want to serve them
I don’t want to blaze a path for you
~ I want to get lost with you ~
to crave authority would require me to surrender my amateur status
and I quite love being a newbie here with you here
I don’t want to guide you down this River
I want to enjoy the ride with you until we reach the great waterfall
don’t follow me flow with me
and as we go
let’s not influence each other to be like us
instead
let’s listen to each other
until our ears become shaped like our hearts
~ John Roedel from his upcoming poetry collection “wonderache” ~
Called the Facebook poet, John Roedel has developed a reputation for heartfelt writing, often posting photos of his rough drafts hand-scrawled on lined notebook pages. From his website: “Offering a sincere and very relatable look at his faith crisis, mental health, personal struggles, perception of our world, and even his fashion sense, John’s writing has been shared millions of times across social media and lauded by fans and readers worldwide.”
There’s something touching about this poem for me because it illuminates a tender vulnerability within myself. The shift from having had a career with influence to when, after its abrupt end, I began in earnest to write. Engaging in this mostly solitary endeavour, my sense of community is fragile and self doubt can arise from “the sticky web of personal/with its hurt and its hauntings,” obscuring those occasions when I“become a pure vessel/for what wants to ascend from silence.” (John O’Donohue, “For the Artist at the Start of Day”).
To write as an act of service – not to sway, or blaze a path – is predicated on mutual reciprocity: releasing my poems into the world so that others may read them. Lately, I’ve been caught in the traditional-self publishing dilemma. After working this spring with my wise and thoughtful editor-essayist-poet Jenna Butler, my manuscript sits with three traditional presses whose protocols are precise on prior publications. Hence why I seldom post my own work here or on social media. Recently, I’ve initiated conversations with self-published writers, and with a press who assists, for a fee, writers to publish their own works.
I feel poised on the edge of a “great waterfall.” Vulnerable. Uncertain. But to imagine flowing with, and having my words be read, or heard by others, our eyes and ears becoming “shaped like our hearts,” brings me deep joy. Maybe the nudge to push me over.
This is where you life has arrived, After all the years of effort and toil; Look back with graciousness and thanks On all your great and quiet accomplishments.
You stand on the shore of a new invitation To open your life to what is left undone; Let your heart enjoy a different rhythm When drawn to the wonder of other horizons.
Have the courage for a new approach to time; Allow it to slow until you find freedom To draw alongside the mystery you hold And befriend your own beauty of soul.
Now is the time to enjoy your heart’s desire, To live the dreams you’ve been waiting for, To awaken the depths beyond your work And enter into your infinite source.
John O’Donohue, “For Retirement,” To Bless the Space Between Us, 2008
I have tried umpteen times to format a post using parts of this poem, one gifted to me by a dear friend and colleague twelve years ago on my “retirement.” It appeared as a Facebook memory last week, June 30, as had photo memories from my retirement party that last week in June. I concluded I was pushing the river and so have included the entire piece, in a manner more typical of my Friday blog, together with my posted response:
“Twelve years ago, I had a remarkable career with Edmonton Public Schools. I made wonderful friends. It was my “love made visible.” Hopefully, this current chapter writing poetry will bear similar fruits. Thank you for the memories.”
floral tributesmy “swan song““they knew I loved orange”
Within weeks of saying goodbye, I’d launched a new website, and – parlaying my talents, honed skills, and cherished relationships – a private consulting practice. For another seven years I made visible my love supporting leaders, hosting group conversations that mattered, and teaching The Circle Way. Then, government budget cuts and Covid-19 and “poof,” my career ended. Then, I truly stood “on the shore of a new invitation to open my life to what is left undone.”
These have been a few weeks’ worth of memories…professional…personal with the anniversary of Annie’s passing and the joyful arrival of Walker and last week’s simple celebration of our 44th wedding anniversary at a favourite cafe…last year’s preparation for my first long walk in Italy, now to be followed by another this September. Memories that invite reflection and confirmation that I make it a practice to be regularly “drawn to the wonder of other horizons.”
Writing poetry, my consciously chosen next chapter, invites me to “befriend my own beauty of soul.” And because how I’d been able to shape my career allowed for the same, I still miss it. I always said I had the remarkable good fortune to work with people who I loved and cherished and knew they’d felt the similarly about me.
I’ve certainly cultivated a new approach to time. Alongside a slower pace – one enhanced by walking – we live a quiet life and marvel at Walker’s ability to accommodate.
Lately I’ve noticed how my once attraction to life’s “hoopla” has given way to noticing, marking, and often passing over the myriad opportunities for engagement “out there.” Quoting Leonard Cohen, “I ache in the places I used to play.” And while this can be literally – like the ache after a night of dancing a few weeks ago – what I really mean is the tender bit of heart ache, grief even, in finding myself drawn to the still and quiet, letting go, or might it be entering into my infinite source?
In celebration of Earth Day, today its 54th anniversary, my community hosted a free showing of the 2021 documentary, River, produced in Australia, narrated by actor Willem Dafoe, and described as “a stunning exploration of the timeless relationship between human civilization and Earth’s rivers, in all their majesty and fragility.”
Writing in earlier posts that I call myself a “daughter of Niagara,” having been conceived, born, and raised in the land bordered by that mighty river, this film, with its breath-taking photography, orchestral score, and poetic narration, touched that place deep within me where river resides.
“…Our early destiny was shaped by the will of rivers. We both feared and revered them as forces of life, and of death. We worshiped them as Gods.
Rivers inspired us as a species, allowing us to thrive. Over time, they became the highways by which trade, and technology spread inland, and along them also flowed poetry, stories and religions, politics and conflict…”
– Willem Dafoe, River, 2021
For the last forty-five years, I’ve made home near another mighty river, the North Saskatchewan. While not in my sightline every day, and in only a few ways resembling my river from home, at least once a week, as I drive into Edmonton or walk along its valley with my Saturday morning Camino group, I feel deep pleasure and appreciation for its presence in my life, for how it invites, metaphorically and in an embodied reflection, wise action for living.
By flowing with the power of its current; recognizing the value of being contained by its banks; attending to its shallows, hidden depths, and eddies, its seasonal highs and lows influenced by rainfall, snowpack, heat and cold – in sum, recognizing its innate alive wildness as mirror of possibility for my own.
“…For eons, running water obeyed only its own laws. Patient and persistent, it wore mountains away. It looped and meandered laying down great plains of lush, rich silt. Where rivers wandered, life could flourish. For rivers are world-makers. They have shaped the Earth, and they have shaped us as a species. For thousands of years we worshiped rivers, as the arteries of the planet, the givers of gifts, the well-springs of wonder…”
– Willem Dafoe, River, 2021
Like a sonnet’s volta, or a river’s ninety-degree turn, the film shifted perspective to show the impact on rivers of our interventions and interference in their natural flow, albeit while acknowledging their unpredictable, destructive capacities:
“…we devised extraordinary means of controlling them, of harnessing their force and taming their wildness. We discovered how to regulate and manage them, how to run them like machines. We shifted from seeing rivers as living beings to seeing them as resources. Our gods had become our subjects…”
– Willem Dafoe, River, 2021
Lake Oroville, 2017 and May, 2021Lake Oroville, July 26, 2021
Repeatedly, I was held in awe by the film’s aerial photography showing the shape and flow of rivers and their profound resemblance to trees. Staggering to learn was that the amount of water in the hydrosphere, the Earth’s original water account, hasn’t changed since the beginning of time, while our numbers, in contrast, have grown beyond comprehension. Too, that worldwide, there is hardly a river unspanned, undammed or undiverted, and that the largest dams have held back so much water, they’ve slowed the Earth’s rotation.
“…The mystery and beauty of a wild river is beyond our ability to comprehend but within our capacity to destroy. Rivers that have flowed for eons have been cut off in decades.
Time and again, upstream need and upstream greed have led to downstream disaster.
We have become Titans, capable of shaping our world in ways that will endure for millions of years to come…”
– Willem Dafoe, River, 2021
Throughout, I kept thinking back to John O’Donohue, and his poem, Fluent:
I would love to live Like a river flows, Carried by the surprise Of its own unfolding.
Such simple eloquence that holds reverence for – not interference with – river’s sovereignty.
If you, too, are enamored of rivers, I encourage you to find the film and take the 90 minutes to watch it. For Earth Day…which, IMHO, should be every day.
It’s dawn. Still dark, as yesterday’s “spring ahead” time change makes more noticeable the gift of more daylight in the evening.
It’s Monday, when I typically drop a post, or try to. Last night making pizza and watching the Oscars interrupted my typical pattern of getting to my desk at 6 to write. Too, yesterday I sent off to my editor the big writing project I’d been waking early each weekday for the past few weeks to complete. After pressing the “send” button on the email, I took a breather and walked in sunshine warming and snow melting, passing folks enjoying the same. Smelling, hearing, and feeling spring. My breather continuing until bed time.
It’s soon time to join my 7:00 am Zoom weekday writing space, where after exchanging good mornings we all mute and “vanish” ourselves to our keyboards to write for an hour or longer. I’ll finish this post, despite it being late, and begin pieces for several March submission deadlines.
It’s a post without a theme. Simply keeping my promise made to Muse to write. Showing up at my desk, in the space I created to create. Candle lit. Classical music streaming from the station I re-discovered during those recent trips to Niagara (WNED on TuneIn). Radiant heat glowing on my back. Americano cooling in its handmade Italian cup. Borrowing from my Friday pattern, I’ll leave you with what feels like the perfect poem for today, an excerpt from John O’Donohue’s “A Morning Offering,” in To Bless the Space Between Us:
I place on the altar of dawn: The quiet loyalty of breath, The tent of thought where I shelter, Waves of desire I am shore to And all beauty drawn to the eye.
May my mind come alive today To the invisible geography That invites me to new frontiers, To break the dead shell of yesterdays, To risk being disturbed and changed.
May I have the courage today To live the life that I would love, To postpone my dream no longer But do at last what I came here for And waste my heart on fear no more.
Maybe a short post. More from a promise kept to me. To write. Though of late, I feel wrung out of words and too full of others’.
I need to empty. To make space. To listen to what might want to be, needs to be heard.
Maybe it’s the belated onset of “Blue Monday,” but I’ve had little energy for much beyond the thrice weekly pool visits for deep water aquafitness and an occasional walk. Despite a ridiculous run of beyond glorious weather, confusing birds and buds and deeply concerning to all of us regarding forest fires and cumulative droughts, I’ve been in a slump, the likes of which I haven’t felt for almost two decades. Then, upon the advice of my GP, I made a card to myself called “Trust,” addressed to me, “to be opened in the dark days to remember”…that the light will and does always return.
I notice that now, again, every day, especially at dinner time, how dark is giving way to sunset. I notice beautiful sunrises as I dress for the pool.
As I read the words I wrote in spring of 2005, there in black and white is the recurrent theme of generational loss and its genetic vestiges that have weighed me down. This time amplified by my mother’s recent health crisis, harrowing for all of us.
Maybe “slump” is too hard a word. “Fallow” comes to mind, as in how I felt and named myself during those first months of covid when I had suddenly lost my career, never to be found in the same way again. Underground and uncertain. Bereft and lost. Yes, there’s that. Again. Still. As it must be. Walking this week, I met a neighbor I hadn’t seen for months. When she asked about Annie, and I said she’d died in June, it became a very tearful walk. A stop on the quiet fairway, held by a tree until my sadness subsided.
I especially love the phrase gifted to me by a dear friend in the card she made and sent to me last week: “The rocking pendulum of January…” a bit lullaby, a bit raucous…
Given that here is where I’ve named my fresh territory of living – an eldering landscape – I’ll defer to the words of John O’Donohue who speaks with a wise and knowing eloquence about the interior state of threshold:
“At any time you can ask yourself: At which threshold am I now standing? At this time in my life, what am I leaving? Where am I about to enter? What is preventing me from crossing my next threshold? What gift would enable me to do it? A threshold is not a simple boundary; it is a frontier that divides two different territories, rhythms, and atmospheres. Indeed, it is a lovely testimony to the fullness and integrity of an experience or a stage of life that intensifies toward the end into a real frontier that cannot be crossed without the heart being passionately engaged and woken up. At this threshold, a great complexity of emotion comes alive: confusion, fear, excitement, sadness, hope. This is one of the reasons such vital crossings were always clothed in ritual. It is wise in your own life to be able to recognize and acknowledge the key thresholds: to take your time; to feel all the varieties of presence that accrue there; to listen inward with complete attention until you hear the inner voice calling you forward. The time has come to cross.”
To Bless the Space Between Us
So, with little energy to spare, I’m taking my time…feeling as I can, the bigness, muchness, fullness of it all, attempting to listen inward with as much attention as I can summon.
“One of the qualities that you can develop, particularly in your older years, is a sense of great compassion for yourself.”
John O’Donohue, Anam Cara, 2023
I’ve been feeling blah. It’s more a low grade anxious irritation. Reluctant to self diagnose seasonal affective disorder, I’ll call it the “Christmas cranks.” I’m quick to snark at my husband, impatient with the world around me, bewildered with the heartless rationales lobbed back and forth attempting to justify the ongoing carnage in the Middle East, and lest we forget, Ukraine. I’m worried about family and friends struggling with serious health conditions, and in awe of those soldiering on despite. My kitchen candle and morning prayers mere to the weight they shoulder. I’m sad about the turn in friendships, this year counting several who may be no longer, one I dreamt of last night. I miss Annie, not as acutely, but this morning, where was she to hand off a favourite, a crunchy piece of burnt toast? I dreamt of her this week, and when I do, which isn’t often, I’m always aware that she has died. My new-to-me-car’s battery died on Wednesday (thankfully a mild morning for the AMA to test and replace it in my driveway), and while an expense in a month of many, I know it’s but a fraction of the tight belts many are suffering. Some days I feel tired despite being able to sleep deeper and longer, maybe even replenishing stores from summer when ambient light and worry about my trek created many short nights. I’m thinking given the season and that we have friends we haven’t seen in ages, I should invite them for some Christmas cheer, or at least a dinner. But being in low supply, I don’t have the gumption.
Once a wise man suggested this low-grade irritation is a symptom of my care for the world. What a tender reframing for an emotion I’d been feeling ashamed for having, a reframing especially necessary to remember during a season when we may feel worse for not feeling merry.
“Anger is the part of yourself that loves you the most. It knows when you are being mistreated, neglected, disrespected. It signals that you have to take a step out of a place that doesn’t do you justice. It makes you aware that you need to leave a room, a job, a relationship, old patterns that don’t work for you anymore.“
Unknown source
Snow fell midweek, muffling city sounds and bringing a holy softness and silence, making it easier for our neighborhood now white hares to stay hidden, and for me to find moments of inner quiet. Baking muffins and cooking dinner yesterday afternoon, I listened to a beautifully curated winter solstice program hosted by Paolo Piertopauolo on CBC. The song, “The Difficult Season,” from the Music on Main 2017 Winter Solstice concert caught my ear for its truth-telling lyrics and the reminder of a more prevalent intentional making space for the counter-cultural story that invites and acknowledges a myriad of emotions, feelings and responses to this season. One that welcomes and honours grief’s persistent, though at times subdued, presence in our lives. Like this balm from the late John O’Donohue, in yesterday’s Marginalian from Maria Popova:
“There is a quiet light that shines in every heart. It draws no attention to itself, though it is always secretly there. It is what illuminates our minds to see beauty, our desire to seek possibility, and our hearts to love life. Without this subtle quickening our days would be empty and wearisome, and no horizon would ever awaken our longing. Our passion for life is quietly sustained from somewhere in us that is wedded to the energy and excitement of life. This shy inner light is what enables us to recognize and receive our very presence here as blessing.”
John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us
And this:
“The light of love is always within us, no matter how cold the flame. It is always present, waiting for the spark to ignite, waiting for the heart to awaken.”
bell hooks
Wooooooosh….. blowing on the spark from my heart to yours, igniting much love and kindest regards, dear friends. Let us be tender with ourselves and each other.
I am home. Met by my husband in sunshine and mild temperatures last Saturday after nearly 24 hours awake, most of those masked in the minority, I arrived safe, sound, very tired and with my checked luggage. It’s taken about a week to recover from jet lag and feel my soul return to my body. I’ve been grateful for another prolonged autumn, warm enough to get back on the pickleball courts and try out my foot after trekking 220/237 km on the Via de Francesco, and close to another 100 km wandering through Florence, Assisi and Rome during the days bookending my walk. I played so-s0 after five months off court, and while my foot felt OK, I realized it’s too much, too soon to resume play daily. Saturday found me in our still colourful river valley walking with my Camino group. It felt wonderful to tie on the boots I’d worn up and down those paths in Italy, now with a much lighter pack, and gloves, toque and a down coat given the sudden shift in temperature…to be reunited with friends who, too, had trekked this past month in Portugal, Spain, Germany, Italy and Eastern Europe
Edmonton’s River Valley – Whitemud Creek towards Snow Valley
“Solitude is one of the most precious things in the human spirit. It is different from loneliness. When you are lonely, you become acutely conscious of your own separation. Solitude can be a homecoming to your own deepest belonging. One of the lovely things about us as individuals is the incommensurable in us. In each person, there is a point of absolute nonconnection with everything else and with everyone. This is fascinating and frightening. It means that we cannot continue to seek outside ourselves for things we need from within. The blessings for which we hunger are not to be found in other places or people. These gifts can only be given to you by yourself. They are at home at the hearth of your soul.”
John O’Donohue
“After this recent month-long journey, bookended by several days of solo wandering, I can assuredly say I am friends with both.”– posted on Facebook, October 20, 2023
Too, I can assuredly say that combining a small group experience with solo time prior, after, or both, is my favourite way to travel. I experienced it most recently in Morocco this past spring when I arrived solo in Casablanca and then extended my stay in Marrakech after the small group excursion. When I think back to having flown into Florence late that Sunday afternoon – finding the tram to take me from the airport to the SMN train station, to then making my way to the monastery I’d booked for the week (all first time experiences) – the combination of trepidation and accomplishment – in this case particularly so as I knew my way better than the local I’d asked – delightfully got me off on the right foot.
Having been to both Florence and Rome several times, I felt confident in my ability to get around. I’m “old school,” preferring paper maps – this trip using a terrific popup version that tucked away in my purse – and I’m quick to ask for help, understanding that in the encounter made, people enjoy knowing they’re needed. I loved wandering early in morning, and suddenly, for example, coming upon the Duomo to be enthralled by the sunlight breaking through the clouds. Countless moments of “moving at the pace of guidance” – going where I wanted, when I wanted – enjoying my own companionship, not missing a soul, the boon of solo travel.
early morning at the Duomo, Florence
That being said, I know, too, what a well-travelled friend had called “low pot” days: when fatigue, feeling overwhelmed, displaced and lonely create inertia, low confidence and anxiety. Its remedy: to acknowledge and either sit with and rest, let be or move through depending on the situation. This crept up on me during my time in Trastevere, when after two weeks of companionship, walking alone together, I was suddenly alone alone. And I was tired… from the exertion, not only of the actual trek in the glorious hot late summer, but too, from the hundreds of kilometers I’d walked in preparation. The inevitable “come down” from the accomplishment and all it took.
So yes, I am intimate friends both with solitude and its gifts of sustenance, renewal, rest and creativity, and too, with loneliness and its sharp edge of separation and self doubt.
A well-established practice of self-care, I’d spend at least an hour daily editing the day’s photos and writing a description to post on Facebook, this time to soothing instrumental Spotify playlists. While it became THE chronicle of my experience (as the very small journal I brought often remained empty for days at a time), in those moments of solitude and occasional loneliness, the comments from friends shored me up to remember the gifts that can only given to me, by me.
at the Trevi Fountain, Rome
Dear friends, if you were among those who followed my journey, and perhaps commented, thank you for the lifeline.
As friendships grow closer, conflict becomes more difficult to avoid. And this is often a good thing. Because the closer we get to each other’s hearts, the more triggers rise into view. Because you can’t fully know someone until you ignite each other’s fire. Because you won’t know if a connection has legs until it has been tested by conflict. And when it is, there is a choice to be made. Walk away in disgust or walk toward it in effort to deepen the connection. Conflict isn’t the adversary of connection. Fear of confrontation is.
Jeff Brown, Hearticulations
This is a deeply vulnerable topic…for me and I’ll presume many of you, particularly my women readers. It’s one of those areas that so deeply affects our lives and yet when friendships go sideways, fall apart, dissolve into thin air, we seldom if ever talk about it. I’m certain I’ve read somewhere from someone whose opinion matters to me, that breakups with friends can be as devastating as divorce, if not more so. And so it is, with the encouragement from a friend, I write this post to begin to illuminate the often shadowed dynamic so essential to our lives and well being.
I included the above quote in a letter I recently sent to a friend. Sensing our relationship was wobbling, for weeks – months even – I pondered reaching out to enquire of her. And then in a bout of insomnia several weeks ago, compelled I sat down in the dark of my writing studio to craft a letter. Several revisions later, coupled with my self doubt and courage that waxed and waned, this quote arrived last week. It both perfectly described my thoughts on friendship in general, and framed the intention and context specific to my letter to her.
It’s not the first time I’ve written such a letter to a friend, or initiated the conversation. And always the self doubt. Always the courage to reveal, to make myself vulnerable by asking, “Are we OK?” I think we’ve all seen how as we grow closer to another – a friend, a partner, a professional colleague – anyone with whom we’ve made an investment of time, care, attention and regard – that conflict is bound to arise. Paradoxically, our differences surface and grow in the very container of similarity and safety provided by the initial attraction and energy of the relationship. This is particularly so of marriage, and why it holds the potential for the healing of its partners, as old wounds come to light. But avoid naming it, fearful of our own vulnerability in the face of it, self doubt and shame grow, projection and denial thrive, and relationship languishes or collapses.
Friendships – like my self doubt, courage and insomnia – wax and wane. As the saying goes, they come for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. This and the analogy I’ve adopted – one of the astrological arrangements of stars and planets moving closer and then apart – help restore perspective. Given my nature, in those periods of waning and moving apart, I’ve found myself wondering “why?” In the absence of clarification, I’ve defaulted, sometimes distressingly, to a habit of mind cultivated in childhood that says, “I’m to blame.” That same childhood source of those triggers that get touched when I get close to another’s heart and they inadvertently say or do, or don’t say or do, and hit the target. When I do the same to another.
…Something in you knew Exactly how to shape it, To hit the target, Slipping into the heart Through some wound-window Left open since childhood.
John O’Donohue, “For Someone Who Did You Wrong,” in To Bless The Space Between Us (2008)
With a child’s naiveté and cultivated by societal norms, I’ve believed in the possibility of, even yearned for a “bff” – that one girlfriend who, through thick and thin, over the ups and downs of life, would always be there. (But truthfully, when I consider my own life and its continuous unfolding, I’m not sure about it – except for Oprah and Gayle, perhaps.) Implied is a depth of trust and consistent connection which can be a displacement onto or substitute for what was missing in our earliest relationship with mother. Jungian analyst Marion Woodman writing about the “Death Mother” together with Daniela Sieff and Toko-pa Turner, and contemporary writer Bethany Webster on “The Mother Wound,” are each identifying an archetype arising from patriarchy with its pervasive damaging impacts for girls and women, and their relationships with self and other. I’ve felt deficient and heart broken when friends for whom I cared a great deal, loved even, despite efforts to make amends, broke up with me because I had hit their heart target. Even today, the memory is a tender ache.
…Meanwhile, you forgot, Went on with things And never even knew How that perfect Shape of hurt Still continued to work.
John O’Donohue, “For Someone Who Did You Wrong,” in To Bless The Space Between Us (2008)
In relationships that matter to me, where the heart is touched, it’s the absence of clarification I’d find most troubling. It’s why I’d ponder for days and wake at 3:00 am to draft a letter. Muster the courage and allow myself to be vulnerable to enquire. I rest a bit easier now, in a solace knowing it might simply be a change in season, no longer the reason, that the planets have shifted. Why what was once close is not quite so, or any longer.
…Now a new kindness Seems to have entered time And I can see how that hurt Has schooled my heart In a compassion I would Otherwise have never learned.
John O’Donohue, “For Someone Who Did You Wrong,” in To Bless The Space Between Us (2008)
I’ve said to friends who have mattered along the way, when you feel something is amiss between us, please don’t waste precious time, energy and sleep trying to figure out if it’s you or me, foolish or worthy of your attention. It’s most likely all true. So please bring it to the friendship so we can work on it together. Walk toward me for clarification, and deepen the connection. Please.
Or don’t. I’m learning to be OK with that choice, too.
…Somehow now I have begun to glimpse The unexpected fruit Your dark gift had planted And I thank you For your unknown work.
John O’Donohue, “For Someone Who Did You Wrong,” in To Bless The Space Between Us (2008)
I am tired. I feel a heaviness in my chest, a bit of a sore throat, and some sinus congestion. I’m coughing. Today we’re having our hottest day of summer here in Edmonton. I feel much as I did that day in May walking to Padron, where the temperature there had reached 32 C, just as here today (Thursday, July 28). Here and there, now and then, the same cloudless blue sky and dry hot breeze blowing. Coincidently that was exactly two months ago to the day.
I am weary. Remembering, reliving, reflecting on nearly twenty consecutive days and over 240 kilometers walked, with its insights and lessons, joys and griefs, blessings and ordeals… through the elements, immersed in beauty. I am in as much need of completing this written journey, as I was then of finishing the physical one. Careful though, both then and now, to not “snatch defeat from the jaws of victory” – a wise instruction received many years ago from a wise woman – describing our human propensity for distraction and derailment from realizing our intentions. I did then and will here continue, complete, and arrive.
From my journal: “Our decision to leave at 7 am without breakfast was a wise one given how hot it became by noon. Many did the same as the Way was crowded. Again a lovely route thru hamlets, forests, with several cafes along the way. An early stop for coffee and juice as I didn’t have enough energy to eat breakfast before departing. Later at 11 am, another café stop where I finally satisfied my hankering for a fresh salad…few and far to come by.
reminding us of the Way leaving Caldas de Reisthose sun dappled forest pathsIngrexa de Santa Marina, Carracedoa stone wall glorious in clover cover
…Opted for going directly to the hotel – Pazo de Lestrove described as ‘an emblematic 16th c recreational mansion that belonged to the Compostela’s archbishops’ – now a luxury “parador” where weddings and large receptions are held. Waiting for luggage and our rooms, I sipped another icy vermut in the shaded corner of the stone terrace – again that Italian Martinibrand, but learned I’d be able to get the famous Petroni – made from Albarino grapes harvested here in the Padron valley – in Santiago…Laundry dried fast in the heat and huge open window overlooking the grounds and hillside. Slept for a few hours and given the heat and fatigue, opted for dinner in the attractive dining room…”
Pazo de Lestove, Padronroom with a morning view
Legend has it that Padron is the town where the boat carrying from Jerusalem the remains of Jesus’s disciple, St. James the Greater, anchored after his crucifixion. The stone to which the boat was moored, called a pedron, gave the town its name, and rests within the Santiago church in Padron. (Photo of lawn art depicting the legend of the boat and stone.)
From my journal: “I continue to be happy with my planning and knowing myself. While the heat made it difficult to take in Padron and its historic sites, staying here in this old Galatian manor house is another facet in the rich cultural experiences provided by PGW.”
Igrexa de Santiago (background) leaving Padron
Sunday, May 29, 2022 – STAGE 18: Padron to Teo-Al Farma
“Imagine the moment when you ‘hit the wall’ on your journey. You’re tired, you’ve lost track of your original purpose of taking the pilgrimage. Your feet hurt, your eyes smart, you are feeling angry with other travelers in your group or toward the local people you are encountering. What do you do?
Try taking a day to brood. Take your good old time, by yourself, and sit on it. Time and patience are the most natural therapists in the world…
Think of the darkness as potentially healing…the appearance of what Spanish poet Frederico Garcia Lorca called ‘duende’ – the dark sounds in music, dancing, poetry, the ritual of the bullfight, the roots of all arts…the dark and quivering companion to the muse and the angel…”
Phil Cousineau, The Art of Pilgrimage, 1998
St. James- Sant Iago en route to Teo
And there we have it. I hit my wall on that penultimate stage. Yes, I was tired. No hurting feet, but my eyes smarted with tears. I hadn’t lost my purpose but was questioning it and myself. And yes, I had been feeling angry, and a range of other emotions off and on. From my journal: “So if a chest cold is helping me feel the weight of what I have been carrying – the need to get it off my chest – today’s head cold feels like sadness and the tears I need to shed…Walking alone I wondered about my Camino, what it had all meant. Thinking about others I knew who had had epiphanies, profound insights, almost mystical realizations. Talking softly to myself, and God, through the silent Sunday village lanes, I said knew I hadn’t come in search of a miracle. I came to say ‘thank you’ … that every step had been a kiss on Earth, every step a prayer to Earth. I began to cry and could have sobbed were it not for my fear of waking the village from its Sunday slumber…For the weight on my chest, in my heart, on my back, since the beginning…the judgement, worry, disappointment…I cried. For the near relief we are almost at Santiago, not without its challenges…I cried. For the ‘letting down’ of all I had been holding in the months prior, in preparation and planning…I cried. For the fears I’ve carried…I cried.”
And then I remembered…
The night dream I had had many months earlier of me with my elder “heart sister,” she who had guided me on my vision quest a couple of years ago. We were standing apart but facing each other, folding a large cloth item, like a sail or a sheet, something that goes better with two people folding together. Each of us holding the edges, she said, giving me guidance as elder sisters do, “You know, Katharine, every step matters.”
Every step matters. Every step I had made walking this Camino – kiss or curse, prayer or pain, joy or judgement – it mattered. None were better nor worse. Let it go. Walk it out. Every step matters.
“It’s the fourth Sunday here. I am so tired and wonder, will I remember… the roses of every color imaginable, stumbling through fences, cascading over stone walls, standing erect against ancient chapels, guarding secrets, holding scents?…Will I remember the abundance of beauty, from simple to sublime? I feel so full, yet I’m unable to discern anything. I am tired. I weep and pray I will remember. My photos will help me, and too, these words on these pages.”
And then I remembered…
I had walked with wonder as my companion. That in heeding the advice of theologian-poet John O’Donohue -to make a journey a sacred thing by ensuring to bless my going forth – I had emailed my three elder “heart sisters” to ask for their blessing. One, practiced in shamanic arts, gave me the gift of journeying for an “elemental” who would accompany me throughout. Named “Wonder,” and embodying the form of a young speckled fawn, “she” attracted that essence in the poetry I had serendipitously found and scribed in my journal before leaving, and in the myriad experiences along the Way, where each day was an unfolding of magnificent beauty: alleyways abundant with roses; stone walls covered in fragrant clover and jasmine; eucalyptus forests dappled with sunlight, their scent wafting in the rising heat; sea and surf in every shade of blue pounding on golden beaches, and rocky shores; skies heavy with sodden grey clouds rolling down mountains bringing veils of rain; fresh briny sweet seafood, simply prepared, drenched in olive oil and smoky paprika; local wines that complemented the local cuisine; and innumerable cups of ubiquitous cafe con leche.
That, as I had written in my first post about this Camino, when I left Canada in May to realize my twenty-year dream, I, like Peter Coffman wrote in Camino (2017) , would be walking “because I knew others who had gone, and the experience filled them with wonder.”
My epiphanies.
wonder on the Way
Much love and kindest regards, dear friends. One more day.
A Wabi Sabi Life 