Dinner was served in the hostel thereafter and the vibe had somehow clearly shifted in a “love dampened” direction, with my fellow pilgrims being overtly disinterested in either the nature or the purpose of my Walk and with Pedro openly downplaying (even denigrating) the same … I shrugged it all off easily enough, of course, having already experienced so many instances of similar doubt & derision. Indeed, every time such a distancing occurs, I simply reminded myself that there are literally thousands of other people still left to reach in my lifetime, that a small-but-significant handful of those people most certainly will awaken to my message of Selfless Love & my call to Radical Kindness, and that even the flagrantly distrusting (&/or even downright rude) doubters like Pedro know on a far deeper (i.e. limbic) level that I am indeed speaking truth when I share about my Way & my Walk … After dinner, we all headed back over to the church for a pilgrims blessing ceremony offered by the resident nuns – lovely ladies who were equally yet far-more-subtly dismissive of my Walk (non-surprisingly; again –oh, the irony!), and as such lovely ladies who inspired me to humble myself and share less than usual about the same; keeping my own mouth almost exclusively shut and spending those moments intently & lovingly listening to my fellow pilgrims tell their tales instead …

“If I have any expertise at all as humans, it is in the realm of spiritual haziness: the fear of the unknown, the frequency of divine absence, the masses’ mistrust of conventional wisdom, the proper suspicion of religious comforters, the keen awareness of the limits of all language when it comes to God, the dis-ease I always feel over my inability to speak of Oneness or The Way without using a thousand inherently incapable qualifiers, the doubt about the health of the human Soul, and a barely suppressed contempt for all who have no such qualms or doubts … In truth, we cannot live in a world that is interpreted for us by others, for an other-interpreted life is not a life well-livable. Part of the terror we must each day face is to take back our own listening – then to use our own voice; to see our own light as we leap faithfully – despite our great & warranted reservations – into loving others anyway.” ~ inspired by Barbara Taylor & Hildegard of Bingen

Filed under: Peace Pilgrimage #02: Walking HOME (2019) by Scaughdt