My Holy Week Experience

"Once more the wind of embarkment blew across my mind. How long would it continue to do so? God grant until my death! What joy to cast off from dry land and depart! To snip the string which ties us to certitude and depart! To look behind us and see the men and mountains we love receding into the distance!"

Nikos Katzanzakis Report to Greco

Here it is now, the mid-point of Easter Week, and I am remembering so very fondly my Holy Week experience. I was blessed to be in Italy for the first part of the week: Rome and The Vatican City, Assisi on Palm Sunday where we went to Mass at St. Clare's, visited her shrine in the crypt, and received olive branches to take home with us as tokens of our devotion. Assisi was among the favorite stops for the young adults I took on tour with me. We arrived in Florence for the next few days, then traveled on to Venice where we were surrounded by a party atmosphere that took me right back to Mardi Gras. Finally, we wended our way toward Milan stopping in Verona to visit the "famed" balcony of Juliet Capulet, the market in the town square and Dante's statue.


Dante Alighieri, famed poet of The Divine Comedy, was an exile in Italy. His wanderings were not for the sake of pleasure or sightseeing or even to visit new and interesting places. He was forced to leave his beloved city of Florence to preserve his life. How unlike Katzanzakis this great poet was! Katzanzakis had the freedom of "exile" while Dante was constricted by a life of wandering. Since these two writers rank in the top five of my favorites, I find the contrast between their circumstances very intriguing.


In June, once again I will embark for Europe. This time I will travel to Ireland, the land of at least some of my ancestors. I will be taking my mother, who has never gone abroad, with me. Together we will explore the sights, smells, sounds, and textures of a country that is filled with legends and the people of the Fay. I long to "snip the string which ties us to certitude and depart!"


What would all of life be like if we were able to "snip the string of certitude"? If we didn't insist on having our future planned and laid out neatly in days and months and years? If we could let the calendars, Blackberries, and datebooks we carry simply disappear from our lives? I often feel that in our journeys, we are more in exile than in adventure. We have an innate drive to plan our lives, to schedule our own days and months, and in the process to schedule others so they fit into our lives. Simply "being," observing, wandering, and even resting have become obsolete—or when they do come our way, it is because we've made time in our schedule for them. Such a life seems unworthy of creatures who were made in the image of the Holy.


May God grant us a deeper sense of the freedom to embark, to cast off, and to leave the need for certitude (and control) to someone greater and more capable than our own frail selves.

The Birth of Anam Cara's Mantle

I've always heard that a closed door leads to new opportunities. There is a wistfulness about such a statement, evoking a "what if" or "what now" mood. This past week, at my initiative, the Saint James Center for Spiritual Development Board of Directors advised me to end that ministry in its present form. It became clear to me from the level of participation in the programs we offered recently that the Center needed to lay fallow for the present moment... to follow the ancient Israeli practice of the seven year Sabbath. The Center came into being in 2004, so it is appropriate to think of the Sabbath coming now. We will officially end our programs when we return from the trip to Ireland on June 16, 2011.

But what of new opportunities? Knowing it is best not to run from one frenzied set of activities to another, I am also aware that I want to keep my practice of being an anam cara, a spiritual friend, open to those who choose to join me on the journey to be Christ in this world. To that end, I have posted a webpage specifically for the work that most attracts me: being a teacher and soul friend. This work includes leading retreats and quiet days, and I am willing to talk with you if you find my work interesting. 

I do sense a peeling away of layers. Like Longfellow's Arab, I am folding my tent and quietly slipping away. Let there be more of you God and less of me as I continue the journey with you. Help me to accept with grace the changes that come as part of life and to turn and turn again to your face.