Between Two Worlds...Day 1
This is Day One of a deep and long conversation. Welcome!
If you are a religious type or a partying type you might just be recovering from Mardi Gras celebrations this Ash Wednesday morning. This is the first pilgrimage I am going to take sitting in my office chair in front of my computer. My last two pilgrimages were on a thin Italian leather bicycle seat that carried me through 4,000 miles in the Western United States in 2011 and the three countries of Italy, Greece and Turkey in 2014. This is a 40-day pilgrimage through Lent ending on Easter Sunday.Both previous pilgrimages wrestled with the theme of living between two worlds--the first where I was haunted by the anxiety of feeling like I didn't fully belong in either world; the second where I felt like I was successfully emerging from one world to the other.
This pilgrimage is an invitation to travel with me. I will blog every one of the forty days of Lent (every day minus the Sundays). Just like a pilgrimage I know that there is a destination (Easter in this case), but I have no idea what will emerge from my blogs, your comments, and our ongoing conversation. I am simply going to work with the theme "Between Two Worlds" and see where it takes us. I have an intuitive hunch that many of us are feeling this "in between-ness" and I wonder and I hope having a safe place to explore might give voice to feelings and yearnings hidden just under the surface.I am basing my hunch that stepping out like this might create its own momentum on my own experience and also the great writings of German statesman, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. I have had this quote of his taped next to my desk for over fifteen years:
"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back...The moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too... A whole stream of events issues from the decision... Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now."
This is an invitation to be open and honest with ourselves and with each other. It is an invitation to take the risk to expose what our hearts truly desire and what our souls most deeply cry out for. This is an invitation to enter into a safe space where you can be vulnerable and question, doubt, and dream. This is an invitation to take a journey into the unknown and into the depths of our humanness.So let's begin. I will write again tomorrow. But first tell me,"Is there something holding you back? What is it? What does it feel like?"