Wandering Forth (Manifesto)

My last/first entry was evidence of a messy parting from home. A word of advice: Never mess with scheduled international flights (unless you are a very frequent flyer with miles). I thought I could change it and that that would make my goodbyes go smoother; make me finally ready to leave. Wrong, wrong, and well, yes, due to the consequences of aforementioned incorrect assumptions.

The way it turned out, after running around a maze (unlike a labyrinth, it has dead ends and bad decisions and discursive circuits) of maddening airline phone recordings and strained conversations with airport employees, I ended up dragging my beloved parents and my sweetheart, Paolo, along for the ride back and forth to the airport twice, in order for me to catch my originally scheduled flight. (Still apologizing, guys). By the time we arrived, we were all in tears.

To thicken the plot and heighten the level of tension, frustration, and drama in the car, I threw up, and into a leaking bag at that (despite Paolo’s quick-witted efforts to capture and contain it effectively; still thankful, sweetie). If puking can be romanticized, I would call it “purgation” to use the term of St. Theresa’s Threefold Mystical Path, often the name given to the first stage of walking a labyrinth, the way we understand the entering, releasing, going in.

It was a horrible day for everyone involved, (and not involved! As a result, I didn’t get to say goodbye in person to my little sister Kiera--still sorry about that, too; LYLAS!), yet when the time of parting was upon us, we all hugged in a circle, and through our tears, we all started laughing. In spite of my nervous stomach, I felt a strange sense of calm come over me, once I knew it was impossible to leave at any other time. (Impossible=$2000. See aforementioned advice about not changing international flights. :) ) The world, and my loved ones, were saying, “No, go, you are meant to take this journey.” (And in the case of my loved ones, perhaps, “P.S. We can’t handle your crazy mazes anymore! Good riddance!” Just kidding.)

Tonight, writing from an internet café in London with a new friend from the program the night before we fly to India, I’m no longer scared, because the truth of the wisdom of Noa’s title here has been shown to me.

Everything is falling into place around me at an alarming rate. It’s all I can do to stand back at bit, amazed and grateful to the world and all of you supportive angels here in it. Like the day I walked labyrinths with Noa and Alex (and Olivia, in spirit :)) in Sibley, we are singing a birthing song and it goes like this: “We are opening up in sweet surrender to the luminous love light of the one.” As Rainer Maria Rilke puts it, “There is only one journey: going inside yourself.” We are all walking this labyrinth to the center of ourselves. We are all meant to take this journey.

In preparing for this pilgrimage (preparation being, as I learned from the program’s wonderful director today, one of the first steps in Joseph Campbell’s described archetypal journey of the ‘Hero of 1,000 Faces’, perhaps like purgation), the writing and teaching of the woman who gave the labyrinth back to our time, Rev. Dr. Lauren Artress became incredibly important to me. (Still thankful, also to have learned from her in person this past summer. It’s such a challenge to be fully appreciative in the present moment. Now I can’t believe I had that privilege and didn’t appreciate every second of it, you know what I mean?)

Anyway, in her a-maze-ing book (shoutout to Dad, Paolo, and Mr. Cannamela, the Kings of Corny Puns), she writes about the difference between pilgrimage and tourism. As she depicts it in the book, and as I wrote about in my Buddhist Philosophy paper, (I don’t have the book with me on this trip, regrettably, but as I recall), Rev. Dr. Artress attends a conference and hears a biologist, Rupert Sheldrake, say that the number one thing he would do to begin to effect change in the world would be to ‘change tourists into pilgrims.’ She writes about what it takes to make this change, saying that pilgrims come humbly, with vulnerability, knowing they “may not be welcome,” and she designates that, “Tourists observe. Pilgrims participate,” (63). (Walking a Sacred Path: Rediscovering the Labyrinth as a Spiritual Tool. New York: Riverhead Books, 1995.)

We are prepared to take this journey, to participate in Buddhism, to participate in Indian culture, to take a road to a new place, to find ourselves at home again, to carry home in the center of ourselves. There is only one journey. We are wandering forth.