When I crossed the Chetco River in Brookings today, the math said that there were only 4.6 miles to go. There was a momentary temptation to carry on, even though that would have meant 17.2 miles altogether today. But I was walking at what I call “Paula's Pace” (19 min./30 sec. per mile) and I could have been done in time for dinner! That’s when a whole day of emotions reached a peak and I thought I’d better gather myself and wait until Tuesday to head for the border. The Curry County Sheriff might have seen me weeping at the side of the road and who knows what would have happened after that?
The Pilgrimage Prayer has reminded me each day to take in the beauty of God’s creation and remain open to the truth God sets before me. Well, the truth is that this whole journey has changed me in so many ways that I’m kind of overwhelmed by it all. If I may, let me share some of the photos from Day 27 and, later tonight (to be posted Tuesday morning), I’ll offer some more thoughts . . . .
For now, please note that I deliberately said above that “the walking part” of this journey is about to end, but the journey itself is far from over . . . and may never be over. God is that good.
St. Francis Moments filled the day:
The Curry County stretch of the coastline has been a joy to experience. Here is more of its beauty:
Near Boardman State Park
View from the Thomas Creek Bridge
(Oregon's Highest Coastal Bridge: 345 ft.)
Whaleshead Rock
(Looks like the Whole Whale to me!)
Twin Rocks
Near Harris Beach
Rainbow Rock
Near Ferrelo State Park
The day was already filled with emotions, then this sign appeared and made me think of all the times I'd explained (over four weeks) that I was walking from Astoria to Brookings . . . but the Brookings part of that phrase wasn't ever very clear in my mind . . . especially with 300 miles to go . . .
and with 200 miles to go . . .
even with 100 miles to go.
So, here we are.
More tomorrow before we jump in the car and go home . . . faster than 19 minutes and 30 seconds per mile!
***
One last homage to Rembrandt, not the artist, for all the hard work he put in when we were training for the Pilgrimage:
Good Boy!
Father Mark: A few thoughts: When C. S. Lewis writes, “I am the product of long corridors, empty sunlit rooms, upstairs indoor silences, attics explored in solitude, distant noises of gurgling cisterns and pipes, and the noise of wind under the tiles,” he is speaking of the experiences that have gained access to his heart. He blurs in one sentence the lines between architecture, biography, and literary creativity. Great rooms (and great journeys) do that. They can evoke the “rapture of being alive” just by allowing a succession of days to pass through them. When you visit the room where Dostoevsky wrote Crime and Punishment, or the woods at Walden’s Pond from which Thoreau wrote his reflections on life, you feel, even all these years later, how the convergence of a setting, a room, and a life, empowered and amplified the life captured in their writing. These places show us that the room actually matters, that a setting has its influence. They show us that we are, in part, the place we are in.
ReplyDeleteUltimately, we know ourselves best when we find the place Thoreau found, where we may “…live deliberately…to put to rout all that was not life, …to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness out of it, … or if it were sublime, to know it by experience.” But to find that place without having to go deep into the woods, to find it in the room you are in, to know as an architect that this is what most all great rooms, at their core, strive to evoke, that is in part what our creative paths are about.
Over a hundred and fifty years after Thoreau, in a world increasingly less able to offer two years and two months of solitude and removal, the need for such quality of experience persists. In an interview with Bill Moyers, Joseph Campbell observed that “our life has become so economic and practical in its orientation that, as you get older, the claims of the moment upon you are so great, you hardly know where the hell you are, or what it is you intended. You are always doing something that is required of you.” He concluded that “you must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don’t know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody, you don’t know what anybody owes to you…a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be.” .
Both men describe a place that becomes transparent in the face of what it unveils. A kind of experience that is free of intent, free of purpose, holding the Eternal Now in the kind of silence that repeats: it is possible, it is still possible.
Father Mark: you've taken Thoreau's two years and two months in 27 days--and have shown all of us what, perhaps, we should do likewise. Ilona and I send out our heartfelt prayers to you.
Father Mark,
ReplyDeleteOur family has enjoyed following you on this pilgrimage (sometimes just by hearing an update of your mileage at Sunday mass, sometimes reading your blog in the morning, often praying for you at bedtime...) And we are so pleased that you have been graced with the time and freedom to enjoy the outer and inner work that such a journey offers.
As I read your blog postings from the last three days, and particularly the June 27th posting, you hint at the life-changing impact of simply taking time to do less. Which leads me to want to share and recommend a book to you that I have been immersed in for the past month or so (and became interested in over a year ago.) The name is Simplicity Parenting: Using the Extraordinary Power of Less to Raise Calmer, Happier and More Secure Kids; the author is Kim John Payne.
I am headed to Portland the last week of July to begin the certification process for becoming a Simplicity Parenting and Family Coach, am in the early stages of important conversations with the author, and I cannot begin to express how powerful I think this movement could be--for our children and for us. The idea that "less is more" is nothing new, but we seem to need the reminder now more than ever. Hope you can have a look sometime.
And I hope that this beautiful journey lives in you for all your days...
Wendy