Sacred Journeys

© Rev. Susan Karlson

April 1, 2012

Unitarian Church of Staten Island

         

Susan:      Phil Cousineau writes “If we truly want to know the secret of soulful travel, we need to believe that there is something sacred waiting to be discovered in virtually every journey.” (xxii). That is the pilgrim’s journey—it moves the traveler from “mindless to mindful, from soulless to soulful travel.” (xxiii)  It has elements of intention, meaning, healing, renewal, transformation, risk and challenge (xxiii). 

Alan, my husband, and I have been on a few pilgrimages lately and we want to share our reflections with you through talking about The Five Excellent Practices of Pilgrimages contained in the Analects of Confucius  (found on p. 126 of Cousineau’s book on The Art of Pilgrimage).  The first practice is to bring your “full attention and listening” to the journey.

          The past two days, you and I took a sacred and soulful journey where we brought our “full attention and listening” to a dream workshop with the Rev. Jeremy Taylor at the Unitarian Universalist Ocean County Congregation  in Toms River, New Jersey.   Both of us have been working with our dreams for a long time and I feel our relationship deepens whenever we talk about our dreams—it’s sort of like our story this morning about Rabbi Eisik’s sacred journey and how he has to go to another land to learn more about the treasure that is in his own house. 

Alan:  For me our marriage is a pilgrimage to a place of emotional honesty.  Talking about our dreams allows us to develop a relationship empowered by the full range of emotion.  You and I were raised in families where, for instance, anger was not allowed.  We’ve learned to value a good spat now and then because the alternative is a marriage choked by resentment.

Susan: The second practice for travelers is to “renew yourself every day.”  Last weekend, in an uncharacteristic journey for us, you and I stole away to the Hudson River Valley inspired by the service we did several weeks ago on Eleanor Roosevelt for Women’s History Month and the book, My Year With Eleanor that Carolyn told me about.

From the time we stood beside the lake at Val-Kill cottage where Eleanor Roosevelt lived a good part of her life, I felt transported in time.  When we watched the film on her life in Stone Cottage, tears streamed down my cheeks.  It was like my spirit opened up, walking those beautiful trails with you, so near her house and up to the top of the mountain at Top Cottage where world leaders shaped history during World War II and the Great Depression.  It felt like a pilgrimage because we intended it to be one and because we shared it together.

Alan:  I once answered the question, “Who would you most want to be stranded on a desert island with?” with Eleanor Roosevelt.  Being open to the risk and work of transformation is tiring.  For me, it is as important to get out of my accustomed thinking and find the perspective of others as it is to seek relief from the city in the countryside.  We did both when we went to Hyde Park and it allowed us to come back to Staten Island with a fresh and more energetic attitude.

Susan:  The third practice is to “meander to the center of every place” or to saunter as the Transcendentalists called it in contemplation or walking outdoors.

We began going geo-caching last weekend too.  Geocaching is a sort of adventure in which you search for hidden caches using global navigating systems.  The treasure is not the point; but getting outside, hiking through the woods, solving a mystery, is why we started this hobby.  On many of the cache descriptions, we learned about the history of a place and its significance.  We found parks and wild flowers we never knew existed, some quite close by.  We reclaimed our adventurous, playful spirits and just enjoyed one another’s company for two whole days.  Coupled with the pilgrimage to Val-Kill, geocaching was another playful and fun sacred journey that fed our relationship and renewed me completely.

Alan:  Geocaching requires me to pay close attention to my surroundings, to discover things that may have been hiding in plain sight, to slow down.  It can be spontaneous, too.  On our second attempt to find a cache last weekend we parked by the side of the road outside a small town in upstate and walked off into the woods just following the compass on the app on our phone.  We climbed over downed trees and hummocks of rock, followed a mountain bike trail and finally narrowed our search to a particular mound of boulders.  While you poked around on one side I stuck my face into a likely-looking hole under a piece of granite.  There was a big snake under there looking back at me. 

I learned something very immediate and unique about (coordinates) that I otherwise would not know.  That place belongs to that snake.

Susan:   The fourth is “reading sacred texts” or as Phil Cousineau suggests, make your own bible or collection of meaningful readings or poems that you can use to center and ground yourself as you prepare for your pilgrimage, travel or go through the eye of your pilgrimage and once you’ve returned or completed your journey.

It was great that we each had read the book “My Year With Eleanor”.  I really enjoyed listening to an audio guide on our mobile phone and I imagined sitting where the Roosevelts once hosted dignitaries and people who dealt with poverty, Civil Rights and other humanitarian issues.  I think this practice of reading sacred texts can also include sharing what an experience means to each of us-what we share in perspectives and how we differ.

Alan:  For me, there is a difference between taking photographs or making a painting or a poem to document a place where I’ve been and making art that is a dialogue between myself and that place.   It is not a memento of the place but a memento of the connection between me and the place, a distillation of the experience.  Like a dream, because the unconscious is speaking through both media, an artistic expression about the pilgrimage is a measure (and a mirror) of how the journey has opened me, the pilgrim.

Susan:  The fifth is “gratitude and praise-singing.”  As our sacred journeys came to an end, we spent some time reflecting on the way home what these pilgrimages meant to us, what we left behind as a sign of gratitude and how to give thanks for the blessings of the journey.  We captured some elements of the journey in photos, some keepsakes about Eleanor and because I so appreciate Carolyn’s idea of doing a service on Eleanor Roosevelt, I brought this book to share with her. 

Alan (quoting Joseph Campbell):  “... we have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us.  The labyrinth is thoroughly known.  We have only to follow the thread of the hero path, and where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god.  And where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves.  Where we thought to travel outward, we will come to the center of our own existence.  And where we had thought to be alone, we will be with all the world.”

Susan:  conclusion   Sacred journeys take preparation and planning so we are more comfortable perceiving the gifts the pilgrimage offers.  We have a number of sacred journeys that we plan on taking, using these “Five Excellent Practices” in our preparations.  Then we hope to let go and let serendipity take over.

          Each moment of our lives offers us a gift if we can remain open but some parts of our life journeys make us come alive more—they refresh our spirits, challenge us, hurt because we are stretching so much, catapult us to a place we’ve never been before.  I imagine how we might be different if we took the time to share our sacred journeys and awakenings with one another in this church as Alan and I have done with you this morning.   May we discover the “art of pilgrimage” as solitary travelers and as travelers in this church.