THE LAST FIVE years have been comfortable. THE LAST FIVE Admitting this comes hard for someone with my intensity. An amiable life conjures images of being lazy, being part of a bovine collective, lulled asleep by consumerism and the mind-numbing drone of what my grandfather called “the idiot box” — the family TV set. I laugh as I write this staring at recent additions to that idiot box: a DVD player, a VCR, and Digital Surround Sound. That little distraction that once graced the center of the living room has taken over. My so-called room of living has evolved into a rubber room, where life is virtually mimicked on a densely pixilated screen.
Maybe I'm exaggerating? I hope so! After all, I still voraciously read fiction and non-fiction of high or at least medium calibre. I rarely plummet beneath channel 15 on the cable "dial" into those bland mainstream stations, preferring instead the higher echelons of the Discovery Channel, National Geographic, Animal Planet and A & E. Okay, I have too much time on my hands. I have been comfortable. I admit it and I have liked it that way!
After the grinding years of being a minister in the boardroom and congregational trenches, my vocation as a teacher-mentor of a small community has produced a very self-regulated and happily introverted existence. Truth be told, until this spring/summer, I haven't been out and about, even in my town Winnipeg, for ten years. Again, I admit I have liked it like that! But I've also learned that my reasons for adapting the introverted preference have not been wholesome or productive. My reclusive vocation was a withdrawal from a compulsive and graceless spiritual stardom to a reclusive, safe but cynical turtledom. I went deep inside to lick my wounds, to hide. Beneath my surface security was the nagging feeling I wasn't fully alive and contributing, like in those risky, nastier days.
Cultural historian Phil Cousineau advises that when lethargy of this sort sets in it is time to go on a Pilgrimage, on a journey of renewal to a sacred place. Phil adapted his concept of spiritual tourism from Joseph Campbell's archetypal Hero's Journey in order to provide guideposts as we traverse life's labyrinth from boredom to creative contribution.
A spiritual trek is as far from a tourist's vacation as imaginable. While Pilgrimage may be a retreat from everyday life it is not a retreat from our deepest selves. Prerequisite longings, callings, and departures are essential as we move through convoluted roads and spiraling byways ward.
I had buried my longings so deep in contented safety that I barely knew I was discontent. I was irritable even though productive and helpful in my community. Some Muse, below the threshold of consciousness, nagged me, suggesting that there must be more to my life than safety and repose. The reprieve that my private circumstances had purchased was now cutting into my larger sense of how I was to be in the world. So started my yearning for more.
More than the yearning, I needed a boot in the ass wake-up call. The call came in a roundabout, rather genteel way. An age-old friend of mine, who hadn't had contact with me for many years, phoned me and asked for advice on dream interpretation. That seemed easy enough; it was a great chance to go out, have a Vietnamese dinner, laugh, and theorize about the meaning of our dreams while reconnecting with a friend.
Drowning ourselves in coffee and conversation, savouring the smell of curried beef, vegetables and tangy spice-filled spring rolls, we delved into the dream world. Our conversation was characterized by the same heart-talk that once animated our friendship many years before. So much had changed and nothing had changed. Dreams dissolve time and time had little effect on our affection because it was rooted in exactly this kind of deep encounter.
With my heart just a little more open than usual, I found myself jolted by an invitation. "Ester and I want to sponsor you at a Jungian workshop at Kanuga, North Carolina, either as a small group facilitator or participant. We could catch up, deepen our understanding of dreams and get you out of your environment for a bit. We'll have to talk about your newly discovered love of introversion when you come down for the visit."
What a beautiful expression of friendship! Yet, it cut into my comfort level enough to have me respond in a rather non- committed way. “That is great, I will have to check my schedule and see if it works.” What a ridiculous response! Inwardly I felt surety and the tug to go. I also felt deeply affirmed and respected by my friend who offered such a gift. On the other hand, at least in my mind, it meant a risk. Standing on the edge of this invitation, I had the choice to step into or away from the adventure.
It is strange how my mind conspired to set me off in the wrong direction through distractions like fear of flight, feeling vulnerable about meeting people, and being unsure of the absolute safety of those we leave. Such doubts can leave us like stranded Parsifal whose journey gets postponed another twenty years because we didn't grasp hold of the invite decisively.
So I grabbed the opportunity, asked Bev if she was game to come along, booked a train and did what I could to secure our little community. Our journey commenced early in war torn May with a leisurely yet cramped train ride through the centre of America: Chicago, Washington, D.C., all the way to Greensborough, NC.
Pilgrimage differs from a vacation: you ready yourself for the unexpected rather than the predetermined event. A tourist plans to do this and that, a pilgrim meanders and listens. Sights and sounds are more than themselves to a pilgrim. They are dense with meaning even when apparently banal. You've seen street people a few cards short of a deck that make you feel slightly uncomfortable and wary, but in pilgrim mode these same social nuisances turn out to be guardian or threshold spirits. Their function is to warn, escort, or test our traveling mettle.
At Washington D.C.'s Union Station I met a threshold guardian in the men's washroom. He was a close talking, nursery rhyming, and prison-muscled homeless man with a gang-like bandana and a definite lack of personal boundaries. The ambiguity of a great grinning smile and an ominous physiognomy left me with a split second moral dilemma. Do I smile back, look down, speak to him or grasp any other distraction to avoid his unavoidable presence? A tourist can glance away and look at the statues in the vestibule whereas a pilgrim, engaged at another moral level, asks a different set of questions. I chose to be a pilgrim and smiled at him while pleading inwardly that that was all the gods required. Nonetheless, as the heartbeat slowed I realized I had passed a small test. I can only imagine how I would feel had I the courage to eek out the words, “How ya doing?”
The challenge was how to see Washington, D.C., the symbol of all that is powerful in the Western hemisphere. The tourist looks at the stark white solidity of the place, the huge granite tributes to a hard won political union. The pilgrim looks for nuances. One such nuance wiggled its nose in welcome at the toe of my running shoe. She was a plump, socially uninhibited rodent, happily aerating the grounds of the Japanese Veteran's War Garden, across from the statue of Christopher Columbus. Certainly, you don't have to go to Washington to see a squirrel but this particular squirrel's welcoming presence and lack of fear had an almost epiphany-like effect on me. I felt welcomed and encouraged by a fellow traveler sending me on my way with a smile and a less solemn approach to Washington.
Guardian welcomers greeted us for the whole 42 hours on the rails until we teamed up with our hosts. Stretching out after Ester's first gracefully prepared meal, I sighed saying I believed that “we had died and went to heaven.” The friendship tasted as good as the food. But this is beginning to sound a bit too much like a holiday and less like a pilgrimage.
The synergy between the inner and outer announced itself when I went for a stroll in Dave's garden. One very large frond of a tree, totally foreign to me, floated out of the sky and landed with what seemed like intentionality on a homemade chair made of rough wood and a jagged saw blade. Not enough sleep I thought, this is stretching synchronicity too far! Still it spooked me and got me thinking, there is both gentleness and a sharp edge to any journey. I intended to learn from both. Shape-edged pilgrimage stuck its steel in me in the Anglican bookstore at Kanuga.
Another close-talking threshold guardian stood a few inches away saying something very blunt about my stoutness. Well, fat I am but I don't welcome the reminder in unfamiliar public settings. Pilgrimage beckoned me to get over my insecurities and undue concern with the opinion of others and to listen in depth. Here was an invitation to maintain my dignity, respond assertively yet with respect and compassion on this person-come-guardian obviously suffering from social or emotional difficulties.
I passed the test with another B grade, since I was at a particular loss for words unable to say something assertive. I think I managed to smile without being insincere, I saw the deeper meaning and even the ludicrous humor of the encounter. I felt even more confident since one of my greatest public fears had already happened and I weathered it without too much damage. I allowed this conversation to remind me that on pilgrimage I am vulnerable, intentionally so, and must develop a sufficiently deep skin to critique without erecting barriers. A tourist blends in whereas a pilgrim may be conspicuous.
This minor nick prepared me for a deeper slash. I was forced to confront some of my less than laudable motives for my introverted lifestyle. Divorce and remarriage in the context of a public ministry is not easily weathered in hyper-conservative contexts. Normally I just steel myself to the feelings of public shame concerning those events but as a pilgrim I was outed through a conversation with a young fellow going through similar difficulties.
He was only in his early twenties and was confronting a very jarring divorce while continuing in his position as a pastor. I admired his faith and vulnerability. I also felt envious of the supportive context his denomination provided for him during this tough time. I was handed a pink slip and defrocked, whereas my young friend received a sabbatical bonus: a trip to Kanuga.
Then it hit me! I was in Kanuga though the gracious support of a friend. My younger friend taught me through example that I need not be humiliated about my circumstance. My resentment started to evaporate as we shared. I recounted how vocational healing had come though crisis, how I have come to love my job and my wife Bev. He told me how my story gave him hope for his future reconstruction – that there was life after failure, even after a career in the church. We laughed and got on to the lighter fare of the conference itself, the meaning of the universe story. When we departed he had a gift for me, a note that read, “I can tell that you and Bev are friends, and married too. Amazing!” Indeed it is.
The pilgrimage had another gentle yet sharp-edged cut to make. At an opening ritual we were asked to place a symbol of a deep question we needed to address while at Kanuga. I tore a purple construction paper into a likeness of a fire or spirit-person and wrote on its body, “Now that I have experienced a substantial healing what is my vocation? How can I give back?” The symbols with their questions were placed in the centre of a circle of rocks, twigs and decorations that provided a spiritual context or boundary for them. I was on dangerous ground here since it would be simple to give myself a perfunctory ego-driven answer instead of maintaining the pilgrim stance. I had to see beneath the veil of my innocuous question into the deeper spirit stratagem, which would turn it into a confrontation.
The way I envisioned my healing, so far, was that although I felt socially ashamed of the way the “public” viewed my so-called fall from ministry, I still had a purpose and a grace-filled life. The injunction was plain, get over it, get over the shame; this felt about right. But to get over it, I had to get into something else. I had to first of all forgive those who had hurt me and acknowledge my own part in my situation. This had been done long before I went to the conference. Secondly, I had to get into the world in a way that corrected my crazy pattern of being too vulnerable or isolated. Kanuga gave me an opportunity to practice this skill.
Another symbol turned threshold guardian materialized when I picked up my orientation packet. An animal totem, the opossum, sponsored the group that I was arbitrarily assigned to. Its motto was: play dead when threatened. I don't tend to do that. When threatened I fight like crazy, try to get even and draw attention to myself by providing my enemy with a very big, blazing target. The opossum had ways to enter the world differently, toned down, more effectively.
The opossums met in a small underground room where we greeted each other warily. When the discussion questions drew us out of our social plate-armour, we revealed our true feelings about a variety of topics praying not to be misunderstood. As usual, I stepped right into a malodorous, steaming pile of political correctness by questioning some gender issues about what a female warrior might be like. Spurred on by an enthusiastic conversation I said, “Whatever a female warrior is, she sure as hell isn't a pale imitation of a male.” As soon as I blurted out the remark I noticed the strained faces of three ideologically driven women in the group. I also heard a barely audible whisper, “He doesn't know what the hell he's talking about.”
“ Oh, god what have I done!” I thought. I had just transgressed the opossum's motto. I said it too strongly revealing that my comment came from my soft underbelly of being hurt by several harsh women in my life. What I meant was that a woman warrior might have some uniquely feminine qualities of strength to offer, not that women were enemies. My misspoken comments however hit their mark and I had a decision to make. Keep fighting openly or play dead. I pretended not to hear the comment and faded into the shadow or should I say scurried up a tree and hung there looking like an inert branch. I didn't try to work out the issue or argue my point and I found that I was not ashamed. I didn't have to prove anything and make a fool of myself in the process of doing just that.
Playing opossum versus acting like a bull in the china shop paid off. During an afternoon siesta, I ruminated on the innumerable times I've overreacted, lacking discernment in gauging the social context and the impact of my words. The little opossum provided me with a wonderful example of wisdom in action. Was this just another withdrawal tactic, a way to avoid what was important? I had been playing opossum in my room at for several years now. I have been virtually dead to the world and needed to wake up and enter it on a footing. How could the opossum teach me how to do this?
Dreams fascinate me: they speak an entirely different language than ordinary communication. I went to Barry's workshop to learn more about the dialect of dreams. The burning question about how I ought to enter the world anew simmered beneath my consciousness. Suffused in the welcoming atmosphere of the dream, we were invited to share our night visions. Barry said he would select one that would be used as an example of how to listen deeply.
Here was another invitation to risk making a fool of myself or enter the world in vulnerability with a gift to offer. My dream was my gift to the group. Like an offering it was a way of giving back what had been given in the hopes of helping others. As I offered my dream, I had a sneaky suspicion that it would be chosen and that I must enter the world to tell the tale.
Dreams have ways of telling you more about yourself than you are really prepared to hear or to tell others. It is so vulnerable to tell a dream in public. My dream struck at the core of my self, my spirituality and revealed how inadequate my worldview was to the person I had become. I had to kill a part of me represented by a beautiful numinous fish in order to allow a world to emerge. Every nuance of the dream was unearthed and it became apparent that my dream was intended not only for my personal growth but also as an inspiration to others to listen intently to their unconscious for guidance. The group deepened my insights into the dream. One woman with a resonating literary voice recited a long poem, The Owl and the Pussycat, that alluded to the image of a pea-green boat in my dream.
Pilgrims cannot remain takers; they must be givers. The wisdom to differentiate between the opossum's lesson to remain silent and the dreamer's gift of public vulnerability was at the heart of my question, “How can I give back?” By sharing deeply, personally and vulnerably with fellow pilgrims. By remaining calm, silent and discerning when tempted to quarrel. The co-inherent exchange among pilgrims builds up but the caustic battle with antagonists leads to self-mutilation.
My satchel of memories, lessons and medicine was by this time overflowing. The trip was eventful and restorative yet I chose to relax the pilgrim's alertness and smoothly make the return. Campbell and Cousineau say that to return is to slip gently back into regular consciousness while retaining the treasures of the pilgrimage and offering them to others. It was an occasion to test and to quantify in community what I had learned. The tales of Kanuga and the personal lessons I learned were received gratuitously back . We spent months discussing what Bev and I had learned from the conference both personally and intellectually. The boon, as Cousineau called it, became integrated in the lives of others, stimulated their creativity, art and learning.
My question was answered. How could I give back? By joyfully sharing the pilgrim life in community.
This article was also published in the Journey Into Wholeness Into Wholeness website.