ARE YOU A DRIFTER OR A PILGRIM?
Most of my life I have been a drifter but not in the sense of a pilgrim who walks the Camino. My drifting has been both an inner wandering which has led me through a number of religious, cultural and creative landscapes, and an external drifting from one job/house/location to another.
Some have been difficult, while others have left me in awe with their beauty.
As I ponder the difference between floating with the breeze and going on a pilgrimage there appears to be a balance between responding to external circumstances as needed and an internal intention to keep walking towards an unknown.
When I was young I had a dream to acquire an education, get married and raise a family in a house with a picket fence and a dog. My purpose was to do what I thought was expected of me and to be ‘successful’…whatever that meant.
To say I was ‘unaware’ was an understatement. I believed I was following my purpose until I woke up one day and knew I was looking at my white picket fence for the last time. My perfect life had fallen apart and I had my first big lesson in ‘beginning again.’
I was too young to understand that life would be a constant journey of beginning, falling, and beginning again. Eternal toddling!!
As I look around I have yet to meet someone who doesn’t fit this model.
I ‘drifted’ to a little country town with an intention to raise my two sons and live close to the earth. We drank milk from Molly, our goat, ate the eggs from our chickens and harvested a lot of tomatoes and corn from the garden.
I started back to school (for the third time) and this time instead of studying science or music, I chose business. I can’t tell you why. I only took 2 courses and never felt called to business. But strange paths can appear on a pilgrimage.
Or was I drifiting again? Closer to the latter, I believe, for I hadn’t yet learned to listen to my inner guide.
I went left. I went right, backed up and tried again. And again. I was stumbling along with no long term plan. Living day to day. Survival mode. More like an acorn buried in winter snows and tossed around by blowing winds.
Then my health tanked and I found myself in a two room apartment that could accommodate a wheelchair. I thought I was pretty close to the end of my journey.
Except doors kept opening. Curiosity beckoned. I went through them.
When a much older man said he wanted to marry me, I knew my journey wasn’t over. I had no idea where it would lead. I went through that door and for the next fifteen years I focused on a theological education and was eventually appointed to minister to a small congregation in a coastal tourist town.
The buried acorn seemed to have taken root.
And then my husband died.
I got sick. Again. And relocated. Again.
The uprooted acorn had begun to roll. Again.
Pushed along by external forces and with no map, I was truly on a pilgrimage, but I knew nothing of what that meant. I knew I was on a road many had traveled before me, but I had no idea how long it would be and if I would survive.
Whenever I learned to be content where I was I soon found myself moving again. This time I relocated to my home town…although I no longer had a house, a white picket fence, or a job.
My dog, Charlie, a long legged chocolate lab, had gone to live with his new family, and I returned to an old inherited mobile home at the end of the road in a humble trailer park.
Alone.
To begin again with no idea where my next step would lead.
When the bathroom floor gave in to years of moisture and I could see the ground beneath, I called a carpenter who tore out everything in the trailer leaving only the kitchen in the front end. It was remodeled to be safe, comfortable and accessible.
I realized I had been doing this my entire life.
I would move ahead, watch the floor beneath my feet disintegrate, remodel, and begin again. I became skilled in responding to external changes in my life but had yet to discover my inner journey.
A journey of the heart.
I thought I was being blown by winds of change over which I had little control, and my response was to make the best of it.
I settled in and began once again on a journey to learn and to grow. There was a distinct difference this time. Instead of packing for a long trip as one does when traveling, I unloaded a lot of heavy burdens.
I became almost monkish in lifestyle and thrived spiritually in solitude and silence. I was more intent on my inner growth than I had been all my life.
Previously my concern was food and shelter for myself and those I loved. Now I was alone and facing another unknown door.
I began with an online spiritual director and focused on matters much deeper than I had before. In time I found myself in conversation with someone who was to become my third partner in life. A woman from the other side of the country.
Eventually she moved to the East coast and we set up housekeeping together. No white picket fence, no children underfoot, no floors rotting away beneath us.
And definitely not trying to meet anyone else’s agenda.
I was in my late sixties by then. Having surrendered my expectations and ambitions I decided to listen. Really listen. I could see that my life has always been one long pilgrimage.
With time, space, and resources I never had before, I began to write my way along this new path. My journey continues.
It has been nearly ten years in a landscape that is totally foreign to anything in my past…and yet at the same time I know I am “home”.
I also know that this pilgrimage isn’t over. Looking out the window of my life I see that ultimately I will head ‘home’ to a little cemetery called “Oak Grove” which holds the remains of loved ones from my past.
But for today, this little acorn has paused on fertile ground. My primary goals are no longer quantifiable. They are to listen. To smell the flowers. To see and respond to others with compassion. To taste the sweetness of life each day. To release my burdens each night and to forgive. My pilgrimage is not over, but until that day comes may I walk it with the confidence I have gained by beginning again.
And again.
And again.
So glad you ‘drifted’ to TheReflectivePen.
Won’t you join the pilgrimage each Sunday morning?
