Second Sunday of Lent: What Drumbeat? What Path?

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.
-Henry David Thoreau


Okay, I better address something this week. Why in the world am I using someone like Thoreau for leading me deeper into the world of Lent? Thoreau was not supportive of Christianity. In fact his “diary” entry for Sunday in A Week on the Concord and Merrimack is more about western religions' faults and hypocrisies. On top of that he is often seen as self-centered, narcissistic, pompous, and hypocritical. An article in New Yorker magazine in 2015 by award-winning author Kathryn Schulz severely criticizes Thoreau.

The real Thoreau was, in the fullest sense of the word, self-obsessed: narcissistic, fanatical about self-control, adamant that he required nothing beyond himself to understand and thrive in the world. From that inward fixation flowed a social and political vision that is deeply unsettling. -Link

She goes on to analyze and question how in the world such a person could be so honored and even deified by so many?

I am not here to defend Thoreau. To some extent I agree with Schulz’s general review of him. He was a very strange man in so many ways. In spite of the popularity- and importance- of his ideal of civil disobedience, or his ideal of Walden pond, his arguments as presented do not always hold water, especially in the 21st Century. He was an excellent naturalist and the founding father of so much of what has since been written, but again it may not be all it seems. In many ways he was writing a metaphor, not a strict natural history. But again, we are dealing with the pre-Civil War 19th Century! The world of New England in 1845, which Thoreau presented as the seeming pinnacle of civilization, looks nothing like our world. It is, for me, the principles and directions of his thought that impress me.

As we remember that we are not dealing with a contemporary of ours, so too we should understand that he was not a “wise elder.” Thoreau never made it to being an elder; he died at age 45 of tuberculosis. He was 28 when he moved to Walden, 30 when he left, and 31 when he delivered the lecture that would become Civil Disobedience. In other words he was still a young rebel. He never left that behind.

Which is why I am so impressed by him and why the quote at the top of this post is his legacy for me. He was always marching to a different drummer. I believe that we as Christians should never forget that thought. We should find ways to move our own lives with an attitude of following our own music- or more fittingly for this series- the music of the soul and spirit as we Jesus-followers experience and discover it through Jesus Christ; him crucified and resurrected. Jesus told us that we should learn the ways of the world because he was sending us out

like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. (NRSV)

Part of that, Thoreau would remind us, is to listen for the beat of that different drummer! That is what Lent reminds us. Here is the call of this season for us-

dig deeply, look inside to find the drumbeat of our lives. 

More to the point may be that we are hearing the heartbeat of God when we do so. That heartbeat can be restless. That can make it a heartbeat that animates us, gives us direction and meaning and life. It keeps us moving.

A friend on Facebook posted a challenge to his fellow Baby Boomers last week. He asked what happened to the idealism and hope, the fresh ideas and directions, the radical and revolutionary understandings that propelled so many of us in the 60s and early 70s? Instead we have become “elders” (read: old), often more interested in the status quo than the possibilities of growth and peace, grace and spirit. “Have we lost our soul?” was my personal response. Have we become afraid of our own shadows, or even ashamed of some of the naive and innocent ideals of our youth? As a result have we turned away from asking the hard questions for fear of offending ourselves or others? Have we turned off the drumbeat and simply given up on making the world a better place?

But the word naive comes from deeper roots than that.

1650s, "natural, simple, artless," from French naïve, fem. of naïf, from Old French naif "naive, natural, genuine; just born; foolish, innocent; unspoiled, unworked" (13c.), from Latin nativus "not artificial," also "native, rustic," literally "born, innate, natural" -Link

Maybe we weren’t as “foolish” as some think we were. Maybe we were listening to what is more innate, a more natural way of living. Thoreau’s time at Walden Pond was a similar move. No, he did not leave the world behind and live like a hermit. Far from it. Instead he used that time to dig into his own soul and the spirit of the world around him, to hear the different drummer’s beat for him.

That’s what I am doing this Lent. I am using my faith and my experiences to bring that beat into clearer focus. I am using the wrestling with Thoreau to help me fine-tune my ear for the music and the ways to bring what I still believe as important from my “naive” years into this time and place.

• Where am I turning to hear the beat of God’s drummer?
• How can I pay closer attention to what the Spirit is calling me to do?
• What is the path in front of me that I may need to follow?
• What of my past is valuable to translate into this new century and the next decade of my life?
• How can I leave a trail that others may follow and find their own place in the work of God?

Do not go where the path may lead,

go instead where there is no path

and leave a trail.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

First Sunday of Lent: Breaking Through the Ice

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

-Henry David Thoreau

Lent. How many of these have I been through now? I became a Christian at age fifteen so that means my first Lent was spring of 1964. Of course as a Baptist we didn’t talk much about the church year like that, but I must have known something. That was a much different religious environment than we have today.

As I grew into a broader and more “liturgical” model of the faith I learned that Lent was about sacrifice and even suffering. After all, that is what Jesus did. That comes from an attitude that we have to tame the things of the body so the things of the spirit can grow. This is an outgrowth of what amounts to a more Greek than Hebrew understanding that says:

Heaven=good
Earth=bad

Spiritual=good
Material=bad

Thoreau would probably not agree with that, at least in the ways we often mean it. I picked the quote at the top of the post for this First Sunday of Lent to bring into light the idea that heaven is more than a place we go after this life and the earth is as much a part of our heaven as heaven itself, whatever that may be. This quote comes from Chapter 16 of Walden, titled “The Pond in Winter.” The chapter begins:

I awoke to an answered question, to Nature and daylight. The snow lying deep on the earth dotted with young pines, and the very slope of the hill on which my house is placed, seemed to say, Forward! Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her resolution. "O Prince, our eyes contemplate with admiration and transmit to the soul the wonderful and varied spectacle of this universe. The night veils without doubt a part of this glorious creation; but day comes to reveal to us this great work, which extends from earth even into the plains of the ether. [Emphasis added.]

Nature itself is the answered question; the glorious creation, “this great work” extends to the limits of the universe. Even in the midst of the coldest time of the year, Thoreau decided that much was going on that is the Creation itself. He continues:

Then to my morning work. First I take an axe and pail and go in search of water, if that be not a dream. … Every winter the liquid and trembling surface of the pond, which was so sensitive to every breath, and reflected every light and shadow, becomes solid to the depth of a foot or a foot and a half… it closes its eyelids and becomes dormant for three months or more.

The pond is not just some geographic occurrence. Thoreau senses that there is life there. Even at great depths. Many thought it bottomless but he will show more than that. Later in this chapter he will tell of his method of measuring its depth through an understanding of other measurements.  He will look at the water of Walden Pond as being part of all the waters of all the earth. He will understand that in some way more mysterious than magical, all creation is connected. The pond is now like a field.

Standing on the snow-covered plain, as if in a pasture amid the hills, I cut my way first through a foot of snow, and then a foot of ice, and open a window under my feet, where, kneeling to drink, I look down into the quiet parlor of the fishes, pervaded by a softened light as through a window of ground glass, with its bright sanded floor the same as in summer; there a perennial waveless serenity reigns as in the amber twilight sky, corresponding to the cool and even temperament of the inhabitants. Heaven is under our feet is well as over our heads.

Thoreau, in chapter 16, has rediscovered the spiritual under the material. He may have been fooled for awhile by the coldness and seeming lifelessness of winter. In this morning’s awakening he has the answer. Has he cut through his winter state, as the Cliff Notes suggest? Is he now about to open up to find new insight and new spiritual direction? It would seem that way. He has, in the metaphor of looking into the window under his feet, discovered himself and his own soul, alive and well. Heaven is not just some far off place, it is accessible here.

It does take work to get there, though. He had to cut through the soft snow covering and then the thicker, solid layer. Then he can drink from the source. It does not come either naturally or even easily. Our lives, our souls, are like the water beneath Walden Pond. Covered with soft and hard layers. These are the layers we have allowed to accumulate over our spirits. These are what we have felt the need to build in order to protect something we are afraid is too fragile- or perhaps too dangerous- for us to easily touch it. Perhaps there is more to this than that as well. Or perhaps we make too much of it.

Why is is that it takes us so long to become spiritual. I don’t mean religious. We easily and willingly follow rituals, especially ones of our own making. Even those who abhor ritual will do the same things over and over in a kind of religious fervor. Those rituals can and do keep us grounded; but they can also keep us frozen in place. It is when we dig through and discover the window into who we are and what Creation is that we can move beyond ritual into the spiritual.

Don’t get me wrong. I love liturgy and ritual. That is why, even all these years after having left the ministry of preaching I am compelled every Advent and Lent to write about them, to seek new answers and new questions to explore. In that I am part of a long history, my own of 54 years as a Jesus follower and the journey of other followers of Jesus for nearly two millennia.

It has a different meaning today. It was at one point all about some sacrifice on my part. It  meant giving up something, some symbolic action that showed I was serious about being a Christian. We didn’t put it that way, of course, but that was part of what we were doing. Now I write. I pray and ponder some very simple and even simplistic prayers. In the complexity of all that is happening in the world, I need to come back down to earth. I need to look around and find God in the details of every day living and my soul under the mid-winter layer of snow and ice. That snow and ice is not always of my own making. The world pushes and prods, undermines and challenges what I understand as the things that we as Christians are to stand up for. It can get mighty cold and frightening.

These are difficult times we live in. But then again, what times aren’t difficult if one is serious about finding the ways of God as one understands God? What times are not difficult when we are constantly searching for ways to be faithful to the Creator and the Creation? What times are not difficult when we are being pulled away from the task of being more fully in touch with eternity? Which is why we need a Lenten Journey every year.

Adopt the pace of nature:

her secret is patience.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Thirteen Years of This Wandering

Thirteen years ago, this was the first "real" post on this blog. (There had been two kind-of test posts.) It gave a summation of what I thought being a Christian in a postModern World might look like.

Tuesday, March 11, 2003

The Post Modern World. The only place where we as Christians have to live. Sure, some of us would want to live in an earlier age when it was easy being a Christian. Just be born in the community and you are one. Some of us look for the good, old days (which in reality were neither) when the Church was the center of the Western Universe. Today it is becoming a choice to be a Christian. Of course it always has been. We are discovering that being a Christian is only the first step. It then takes growth and struggle and joy and community to move toward being a disciple. In the Post-Modern World, the decision becomes an important one since the world is now asking if we are real. And we are real when our actions and our words make sense.

A lot has happened in these 13 years. That is over 6,200 posts ago. Yet being a Christian is perhaps even more uncertain than it was then. We still have political candidates who want to return America to being a Christian nation, yet they suggest things that are far from the way I understand the way Christians are supposed to act. I guess we still have the mega-churches out there, but they don't seem to making the same kind of news like they did then. Being spiritual but not religious has become a way of life for many.

Being real as a follower of Jesus is what the question remains. I'm not always sure what that means since most of us are not as "real" in our actions as we like to think we are. Myself included. It is easy to get confused sometimes.

But we continue to work at it. Whether we are now aging, Sr. Citizen Baby Boomers or Millennials or whatever  the other groups might be, we are all still in this together.

I guess on that front not much as changed in 13 years. Let's hope we can continue this wandering as people of spirituality in the next thirteen.

I head now into the next year of this blog. This is still the only time and place where we can live it.

Charming, Challenging, Moving

Those three words in the title describe two books I recently read. Rachel Joyce started an amazing storyline in The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. In it she tells of Harold who received a letter from an old friend, Queenie Hennessy, that informs him she is dying and in hospice care. He decides to walk the length of England to see her and, in so doing, help her to live longer. As any regulars here know, I am a sucker for the idea of "pilgrimage," so I jumper right on it when a friend highly recommended I read it.

He was right. It is quite a commentary on all kinds of things of every day life- work, relationships, renewal, retirement, hope, dying, fame in 380+ pages. There were a number of places where Joyce could have taken an easier, more Hollywood-type approach, but she didn't. She kept the story moving at a pace that matched Harold's journey and his wife's musings. We hear much about Harold's past and see how his becoming mindful of his journey changes just about everything.

I loved the flow of the book and the way the characters kept interacting through Joyce's narrative. It's kind of like life- which I know is a pilgrimage of daily discovery. It was a bestseller and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

The second book is Joyce's parallel story of Queenie Hennessy as she relates her story while Harold is making his pilgrimage, The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy. It is a deeper telling of the events from Harold's life from a person involved in them in ways Harold never knew. Queenie starts writing this letter after she informs Harold of her terminal illness. She describes life in the hospice, how they respond to Harold's pilgrimage and their own mortality that you can never escape in a hospice. In the midst of that Queenie also tells her back story of her time working with Harold and the 20-years since she last saw him.

Harold's pilgrimage is a physical one, transforming his inner life and world-view. Queenie's is internal, remembering and reacting, finding new ways of bringing life to a closure. Her's is truly a love song about finding and losing love while internalizing it, building it in different ways, and finally giving it a voice.

Since we already know one side of most of the events Queenie relates, it is intriguing to put the two together for a larger and more profound picture. It reminded me that we don't often know either how much impact we have on others, or how they are interacting with our lives. While that sounds trite and cliched, Joyce is an accomplished storyteller who keeps us wondering, "What next?" even as we know the end.

That is what this pilgrimage of life is like, though. We all know the end. It is the ultimate equality And yet, it is how we walk that pilgrimage, how we respond to our events that makes each life unique. Hope, transformation, grace- they are all just around the corner at each moment.

# 6,000- In Memory of Another Pilgrim

Normally I would simply note the passing of post # 6,000 in the history of this blog which started over 12 years ago. But in the last couple weeks a fellow-pilgrim, friend, and very special person came to the end of his pilgrimage.

So I dedicate this post, number 6,000 of pilgrim wanderings for my friend, Ron, a true and dedicated pilgrim throughout his life.

We met about 45 years ago in the midst of our shared objections to the Vietnam War and our desire to help those who wanted peace. We spent the next years in our common interests. He and his wife gave me a place to learn a bit about what it means to mature and become yourself. He was almost exactly 10 years older than I was and became a role model and older brother.

We shared a common desire to grow and wrestle with our Christianity and what it means in these days to be a Christ-follower. We knew that this included standing up for what is right, caring for those who were the least and the lost, asking hard questions of ourselves, the government, and the churches. We learned and challenged each other to keep the faith and trust in the God who is the Creator.

His living room sanctuary was where I came to know another pilgrim who was soon to become my wife. We all worked together for peace as being something more than anti-war. It was a way of being and accepting, even in our human imperfections, the ways of God as the way of life.

He is also the impetus that got me into the Moravian Church and on the path that I have followed for these past 40+ years. God puts the right people in the right place at the right time. I was a young college graduate who had no idea what it meant to find his way in the world. He was present at the creation of what I have become and with his wife and mine helped me discover me.

It seems like a cliche to say that he was one of those people who is the "salt of the earth." Yet, in all the ways Jesus meant that phrase, that describes Ron. He was a "blue-collar" person who was able to relate to people on a deep and intuitive level, regardless of their place or standing. This included the gay co-worker (in 1971!), the kids at the local youth center that I directed for the city, returning Vietnam veterans- or this seminarian trying to be real.

It is appropriate that he died on July 4th. He was patriotic, again in the very best sense of the word. He wanted this country to live up to its ideals in the midst of a time when those principles were being torn to shreds, we felt, by the government itself. It will also be easy for me to remember his "Saint's Day", the day his pilgrimage found its answers and the reunion with his wife and others who have gone before us.

Rest in Peace, my dear friend. Thanks!!

An old American folk song made famous by Dave van Ronk, Bob Dylan and others speaks of my feelings these past months since I learned of his terminal situation. While it isn't about Ron, it is about all those friends who walk into our lives and will not leave us unchanged.

A 40-Year Memory

I sat in church yesterday before the service started meditating on 40 years. I wondered what I would hear or experience that would fit for this anniversary of my ordination.

Bishop Ed Kortz (r) and District President Thor Harberg (l)

That previous Sunday, September 15, 1974, was a beautiful sunny day in Center Valley, PA. I had been serving the church there, Grace Moravian Church, as a student pastor for a year and was now to be the first full-time pastor at the church in a number of years. Bishop Ed Kortz was the ordaining bishop and Eastern District president, Thor Harberg led the service.

The church was packed. It was a little chapel-sized church that had been a community Sunday School prior to becoming a Moravian Church. With the back door open we managed to have over the 125 that we could seat. Family, church members, college friends, seminary colleagues, clinical co-interns and neighbors made it a day of celebration.

As some of you may remember, I posted back in May on the 50th anniversary of my baptism at age 15. In those 10 years in-between I discovered a great deal about myself and my world. I moved from the small town at the edge of the northern Pennsylvania wilderness to the southeastern PA extended metro area north of Philadelphia in the Lehigh Valley of Bethlehem, Allentown and Easton. I had graduated from college, spent two years working as a conscientious objector, got married, spent a month in Israel and another on a cross-cultural trip to the Navajo reservation with the seminary. Now, 10 years later, I was making my ordination vows as an ordained parish pastor.

I became politically very liberal and was at the early stages of a theological journey that continues to this day. With the trip to Israel in 1973 I began this whole pilgrimage that I now call "postModern". Wikipedia defines pilgrimage as

a journey or search of moral or spiritual significance. Typically, it is a journey to a shrine or other location of importance to a person's beliefs and faith, although sometimes it can be a metaphorical journey into someone's own beliefs.

I am not one who is ever satisfied with where my faith is. Life and events and the world continue to move on around me.I am not the same person I was two weeks ago, let alone 40 years ago. Being a parish pastor helped me in that pilgrimage by continually confronting me with the changes in others, the world we all live in, and myself. I had to work regularly, if not daily, at deciphering the meaning of the faith in that given day and age.

It began earlier than forty years ago today, of course, but September 15, 1974 is one of those major milestones that cannot be overestimated in my life.

As I knelt before Bishop Kortz I knew I was placing myself in a unique relationship to the church. Not to God, mind you. I believed strongly in the ministry of all God's people, the Priesthood of All Believers, but I was being called to a particular type of ministry within the work of the church. My understanding of that has grown, changed, evolved, devolved, morphed and all kinds of things over these past forty years. I am not yet at a place where I am ready to sort all that out. I'm having enough trouble, and fun, doing that with the roots and flow of my life in my roots in the land and water of northern Pennsylvania. When I get done with that, this will probably be my next phase.

Then, 10 years ago I heard- and finally responded to- God's call into ministry beyond the church and its understandings of call and ministry. My second career has led me into even more opportunities that I would never have believed possible in 1974. Some of it strengthened what I thought I knew then; other times it forced me into challenging myself about faith and life and spirituality.

So, going back to yesterday morning in church, what did I discover, hear, or learn? Very simply there were two things. First was a reaffirming of my personal place within the Christian tradition. The Liturgy, the music, the movement of the Spirit within the service all continue to speak to me in ever deeper ways. Sometimes I have to really pull myself back to these basics. Sometimes it happens intuitively. But it does happen if I am willing to let go of my ego and let my God and Savior guide.

This came through most clearly when the pastor made a simple quote from Paul. Sunday was Holy Cross Sunday and at one point all he said was, with Paul,

We preach Christ and him crucified.

I knew I meant it differently that the fundamentalist or evangelical preachers meant it. None of us has the final meaning of such a statement. But I could bow in gratitude and praise to humbly affirm that to the best of my ability I have done that throughout these forty years. For many of those years I used words; now I use words only when absolutely necessary.

Which is the second thing I felt Sunday morning. I reflected on the Christian preaching and the work of the church which was my center of life for most of the past forty years. Even when I left the parish ministry I was still connected. I have preached, I have been a member of churches, my wife continued in her ministry until she retired a couple years ago. The church and its life continues to feed, frustrate and empower me.

But I sat there and knew that my move to a different ministry, and understanding of the place of "not-ordained" ministry was correct. Fifty years ago, following my baptism, I resisted going into "The Ministry." I said that those who are not "ordained" could have a greater impact on their world. Today I would rephrase it in less "either/or" terms, but I know that what I did was respond to God's call to ministry in non-traditional terms. To respond to God to do "ministry" is not a space, location, or theologically-limited vocation. It is the Christian vocation.

So, today I celebrate the ordination that was such a major movement in my journey. I still have a "higher church" understanding of ordination, but higher has nothing to do with importance. It is all for the glory of God. Which maybe the third thing I got from worship yesterday. the Epistle lesson was from Paul's letter to the Philippians. It is wondrous, and deeply moving, no matter how you interpret it within our faith:
Philippians 2...

...have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature God,
    did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;

rather, he made himself nothing
    by taking the very nature of a servant,
    being made in human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a man,
    he humbled himself
    by becoming obedient to death—
        even death on a cross!

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
    and gave him the name that is above every name,

that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
    in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
    to the glory of God the Father.

Echoing Tillich

I don't know when, where or how it happened. I don't know if there is a God-gene that opens people up to an experience of the Holy Other.

I do know that it has never been a doubt. I cannot make myself NOT believe. Somehow or other- and I also echo Jung- I don't believe in God, I know there is a God.

This is not based on knowledge or intellect. It is far richer and deeper than any words I can find. Even as I have left the Church's ministry, I still DO for God.

Ministry.

I still hear the call. I still read and write to explore, wrestle and live more fully in God's grace.

I can't NOT do this.

It is passion. At some level of my soul I am captive.

Gently held, so
No matter what I believe
Today or
What fears or joys I face

Lord I am still here.

A Right to be a Pilgrim

He Who Would Valiant Be (Cyberhymnal)


Whoso beset him round
With dismal stories
Do but themselves confound;
His strength the more is.
No lion can him fright,
He’ll with a giant fight,
He will have a right
To be a pilgrim.

Words - John Bunyan

It is interesting how meanings can change when one observes the punctuation. Look at those first four lines from this second verse of the hymn:

Whoso beset him round
With dismal stories
Do but themselves confound;
His strength the more is.

When read line by line it kind of passes by with little thought. But try it in prose style and note the punctuation, or lack thereof.

Whoso beset him round with dismal stories do but themselves confound; his strength the more is.

Dismal stories. Sadness. Depression. The thought seems to be that whoever tries to "beset" the Pilgrim with dismal stories in order to pull him or her from the pilgrimage will not be successful. All they will do is "confound" themselves. The Pilgrim only gets stronger. The hymn continues:

No foes shall stay his might;
though he with giants fight,
he will make good his right
to be a pilgrim.

His "right" to be a pilgrim is made good- proven- in the ability to fight with "giants."

Or perhaps if you must sit and listen to dismal stories all the time, it is like being beset with sadness and fear. Surround yourself with depressing thoughts and situations and you will end up in the same boat, unless...

The strength of the Pilgrim is found in other places and other sources. It is beyond the normal stuff of everyday life. Being a pilgrim can be its own source of strength because one is following in the ways of God.

I have to think about this one for awhile. Sounds good to me.

An Annual Anniversary

Nine years ago today I did the first introductory post of this blog.

Here we are nearly 4500 posts later.

I still haven't grown tired of it.

I even outlasted the Iraq War.

So let's head into the End-of-the-Decade Year for these postModern Pilgrim Wanderings.

But Is It A Pilgrimage?

Calling myself a postModern Pilgrim would assume that I also see what I do here on the blog as part of a pilgrimage. I guess I have had a personal understanding of what a "pilgrimage" is. But then recently when doing some reading on traveling I came across this quote from Rory MacLean on Rolf Pott's blog:

Pilgrimage seems to be a means of reinforcing certainties of faith. Independent travel can be about challenging one's ideas of living.

All of a sudden my purpose and understanding of being a pilgrim was brought up short. Perhaps I wanted to get defensive over the use of the word "reinforce." That makes a pilgrimage sound like a journey to support beliefs one already has. It doesn't sound like an attempt to find out new or different visions of one's faith. It doesn't sound like a way to awaken or deepen one's understanding of faith.

So I went to Wikipedia and found:

In religion and spirituality, a pilgrimage is a long journey or search of great moral significance.

Okay, that fits. I can accept that. A journey of great moral significance. First is the journey. It is a trip from somewhere to somewhere. It is a getting up and moving from what was to what will be in a metaphorical or physical way. It is movement. Something happens. Something occurs. Somethings change.

Second is the environment of the journey- moral significance. In a pilgrimage one is traveling to find out what is important in life- and in particular what is important in one's own life. As a result a pilgrimage will from time to time shatter preconceived notions. Or at other times will reinforce and reaffirm the underpinnings of ones faith.

In other words if one goes on a "pilgrimage" to reinforce their preconceived notions, they will find it. If they go with an openness of mind and soul one never knows what will happen. If it is a religious or spiritual pilgrimage as a Christian, one would expect to find a closer understanding of Jesus or God or the Holy Spirit. But how and where one does that may be a bigger surprise and challenge to one's preconceptions than would be expected.

It depends on one's openness.

Over these past seven years of this blog pilgrimage I have attempted to be that kind of open. To live, in my opinion, is to be on a pilgrimage. The world we live in, this postModern world of uncertainty and confusion and conflicting ideologies is where my pilgrimage is being done. I hope it hasn't been simply to reinforce my beliefs, but to verbalize the challenges of the world. It is different each day. I have been open to times and places and people.

I hope to continue traveling in this same manner. There is so much to see and discover in the world. So much of it is in the mundane, day-in-and-day-out events that can be easily missed because it is so common. To travel beyond one's comfort zones, mentally and physically, is to bring back into focus what is important in one's life.

So here we go, starting the 8th year of this journey.

And as a last aside in this, the Iraq War was about to start when I started this blog journey. After the elections this past Sunday, perhaps the blog can finally outlive the war. May it be so. May it be so very soon.