Warning-Detour Ahead!
I began planning to walk the Camino de Santiago sometime last fall. On January 6 of this year I severely tore a calf muscle and was told I would be facing approximately six weeks of recovery. It wasn’t fun news, but my Camino plans were still out eighteen weeks so I felt pretty comfortable with the timeline I was working with. I started to get concerned when six weeks turned into eight weeks and eight weeks turned into ten weeks. I am working with a great physical therapist now, but yesterday we had a heart to heart conversation.
I am improving. I graduated from the cane two weeks ago. I now am able to walk about four miles every other day. But four miles every other day is no where near the12-16 mile days I should expect to do on the Camino.
As I said it isn’t official yet. Thursday my physical therapist and I are going to assess my healing one more time, but it appears that short of a miracle I will be postponing my trip to Spain and Britain until September/October. Yesterday, I was very discouraged. Today, I feel more relief. No more pushing toward an unreasonable deadline.
As I wrote in a former post pilgrimages start the day you make the commitment (credit to author Brett Webb-Mitchell for that!). That day for me was when I bought my ticket to Paris. There is the pilgrimage route and there is the pilgrimage process. I may now be four full months away from taking my first step on the route. But the process is clearly working on me right now.
And what are the lessons of this pilgrimage process. Actually, I am pretty clear about what transformative work is taking place inside me.
Richard Rohr would frame this as “second half of life work.” I know what it is. I am being forced to shift from an achievement orientation to an acceptance orientation. Eek! Quite honestly, I don’t even like writing or saying those words out loud. Singer/songwriter, Bruce Cockburn, has a line in his song Lovers in a Dangerous Time where he writes, “Got to kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.”
That line captures my psychic DNA. Give me a challenge and I’ll pursue it with a dogged determination that borders on scary. Remember I rode 4,000 miles through the Western U.S. on my bike, then repeated it with a 3,000 kilometer pedaling pilgrimage from Italy to Turkey and then threw in a short jaunt up to Everest Base Camp. I don’t think I am bragging. I am just making the point that I am hard-wired for achievement. Show me a mountain and I’ll lead you to the top!
And now this damn leg injury is throwing a challenge at me that seems to be even higher and harder than my Everest adventure. “Brian, you can’t will your way to healing the way you have willed your way to the top of mountains,” seems to be the message. Sylvia Boorstein, a psychotherapist and Buddhist teacher, authored a book titled, “Don’t Just Do Something, Sit There.” The title was clearly targeted specifically toward me. I am a “don’t just sit there, do something” kind of person.
I know what the message is: more acceptance and less achievement as I shift into my 60’s and beyond.
The fact of the matter is that I am actually shifting toward this acceptance orientation. I am listening to my physical therapist and to my physical body. I am making wise decisions. But I am not liking it! I feel like a squirrel tied to a fence post. Action, ambition, achievement, and adrenaline have served me well up to this point. Acceptance is something new.
Why do you need to hear this? Because I am advocating for more people to open themselves up to the transformative, identity shifting process of pilgrimage. This is my fourth pilgrimage over the last twelve years and I can tell you that every one of them provided these same opportunities to shift my orientations and my worldview.
I think you also need to hear it because, even though achievement and acceptance may not be your growing edge, all of us on the journey of life have times when we are being called to cross the threshold from one life to another. And quite honestly, the economic structure of our American way of life doesn’t leave much room for transformative experiences. If we are to grow as people and discover our deepest purpose and identity we need places where transformation can take root.
Pilgrimages are one such place. All of us get transformed in life one way or another. We either make room for it in our lives or life will make room for it for us.
I titled this post, “Warning-Detour Ahead” as if it was something out of the ordinary and unexpected. The truth is, however, that detours are often the defining point of a pilgrimage.
We are tourists on vacations.
We are de-tourists on pilgrimages.
Brian Heron
Religious Innovator and Spiritual Pilgrim