Wisdom Walking

Gil Stafford

Description

Over the course of countless miles and numerous days, we will mine the golden wisdom hidden within our pilgrimage experience.
"Everyone has taken a pilgrimage," says author Gil Stafford "Some pilgrimages are intentional: I walked across Ireland. Some are unintentional: I walked my mother through the final days of her life. Life is a pilgrimage. But, do we walk intentionally, embracing the transformational process?"

Stafford begins Wisdom Walking with the idea that life is a pilgrimage and uses this to guide readers on their own pilgrimage towards wisdom. He layers onto that idea the notion that on our pilgrimages of life we can be gaining wisdom about our lives. Stafford then adds the Jungian typology for gaining wisdom and tells all of this through stories of his own and others' pilgrimages in a very readable fashion. Life is a pilgrimage; make yours one that leads to greater wisdom!

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Spirituality
• Religion

Informations

• Publié par: Church Publishing Incorporated
• Date de parution: 01 avril 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780819233509
• Langue: English

Extrait

Wisdom Walking
PILGRIMAGE AS A WAY OF LIFE
GIL W. STAFFORD
Copyright © 2017 by Gil W. Stafford
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.
Unless otherwise noted, the Scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Church Publishing 19 East 34th Street New York, NY 10016
www.churchpublishing.org
Cover design by Jennifer Kopec, 2Pug Design Typeset by Denise Hoff
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Stafford, Gil W., 1953- author. Title: Wisdom walking : pilgrimage as a way of life / Gil W. Stafford. Description: New York : Church Publishing, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2016052947 (print) | LCCN 2017006582 (ebook) | ISBN 9780819233493 (pbk.) | ISBN 9780819233509 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Pilgrims and pilgrimages. Classification: LCC BL619.P5 S73 2017 (print) | LCC BL619.P5 (ebook) | DDC 203/.51--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016052947
The pilgrimage of this book is dedicated to those in my family who have walked Ireland with me: Catherine Ann Stafford, my anam cara Neil Stafford, Alicia Stafford Escobar, and Phil Escobar Without your love there would be no adventure .
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Prologue
CHAPTER 1 The Pilgrimage Begins before the Walking Starts
Interlude Boots, Backpacks, Poles, and the Body
CHAPTER 2 The Long Days of Walking
Interlude Ahmad’s Mecca Pilgrimage
CHAPTER 3 The Unexpected Experiences of Walking
Interlude Crystal’s Annapurna Circuit Pilgrimage in Nepal
CHAPTER 4 When You Think You Can’t Finish
Interlude Greg’s Transgendered Pilgrimage
CHAPTER 5 Beginning Again, Always
CHAPTER 6 There Will Be Days Like This
Epilogue
Appendix—The Pilgrim’s Companion
Endnotes
Acknowledgments
W hile walking Ireland solo, I was never alone . There was always someone paying attention to my progress, making sure I arrived safely every night. Writing is also a solitary process, but the author is never alone. And the production of this book would not have been possible without the many people who cared enough to make sure I completed it, always better with their help than alone.
This book would not exist without the stories of those who have been on walking pilgrimage with me, especially my family, the Saint Brigid’s group, and Vox Peregrini. Their stories have made this book come alive. And special thanks to Dr. John Wiles for inviting me to be a part of that crazy idea you had of putting together a singing pilgrimage. I am deeply indebted to those who have been so gracious and vulnerable to share their intimate pilgrimage stories of personal tragedy and illness. These stories have shaped my soul. And without my parents and my sister, Dinah, there would be no “first steps” of the pilgrimage of storytelling.
I am extraordinarily grateful to Beth Gaede, my writing coach and editor. She has been a guiding light and mentor through two books. And finally, I am thankful for the Church Publishing team. They have been very attentive and always encouraging, making sure I have indeed made it safely to the finish line.
Introduction
Your search is who you are. . . . Your search is your gift. And your search never ends .
Steven Charleston 1
H ave you had one of those moments when you were driving down the freeway and decided to change lanes, so you checked all your mirrors, turned on your blinker, started to move into the other lane—and suddenly, in a flash, out of nowhere, there was a car right next to you, the car that had been hiding in your blind spot? You jerked your car back into your lane, now disorientated from an abrupt realization, jarred out of your comfort zone, relieved that you didn’t collide into a disastrous future.
I have had several of those moments while writing this book. One of them was a month after I thought I had finished it. I had met the publisher’s deadline and thirty days later was headed to a writer’s workshop at the Collegeville Institute on the campus of Saint John’s University, northwest of Minneapolis.
I arrived at the Minneapolis-Saint Paul airport with the instructions needed to find the fun van that would take me to the Collegeville Institute for a week of writing. I’m not the best of travelers. I get lost easily and turned around quite often. When I reached the spot where I thought I was supposed to meet my ride, there were vans from hotels, car rental companies, shuttles to other terminals, but no fun van. I panicked. I read the instructions for the fourth time.
And then I saw her, a woman wearing a Chicago Theological Seminary t-shirt. I just knew in my heart that she had to be going to the same workshop. Before asking her, I had to overcome my profound introversion—admittedly, I have problems striking up conversations with people I know.
“Um, are you going to the Collegeville Institute?”
I gave her a bit of a start. Still, she offered this over-sixty white guy with long hair a kind but curious look.
“Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. I’m Gil.”
“Hi. I’m Renee.” She was holding her phone in one hand and a small bag in the other with her carry-on propped against her leg. She was calm. Her brilliant brown eyes crackled with energy. This African American woman exuded presence and that was reassuring to me in my moment of anxiety.
I kept talking. “I’m going to the Collegeville Institute. I saw your t-shirt and just thought maybe you were going there as well.”
Her smile was warm. “Oh, yes, my t-shirt, of course. Yes, I’m going to Collegeville.”
She told me she had already received a text from the van driver, who was waiting for all the passengers to arrive before heading to our pre-arranged pickup. I was relieved. I wasn’t lost and I had met someone who confidently knew where she was, and that’s what I needed.
The van arrived and we boarded. We sat down next to each other. Made introductions with our fellow passengers and started off on what turned out to be a long, sweltering ride. I came to learn that my new colleague was the Rev. Dr. Renee C. Jackson, a United Church of Christ pastor. Renee and I, weary travelers and possibly two introverts, dozed off while the other passengers chatted pleasantly.
I had been looking forward to this workshop for months and I was confident my hopes to learn something valuable would not be disappointed. Our workshop officially began the next morning. It was all I had hoped. Karen Hering, author of Writing to Wake the Soul , 2 was our facilitator. She made the space feel safe and at the same time creative. Karen quickly engaged us in her writing process of “contemplative correspondence.”
Then the afternoon session began. Karen had instructed us that before arriving we needed to choose a metaphor that we had been using in our writing, a word we would be willing to share with the group. When my turn came, I said I had chosen the metaphor “pilgrimage” and that I would use alchemical language to unpack its meaning. One of our classmates asked me if I would say a bit more about alchemy.
I gathered my thoughts. I had read nearly a hundred books and spent thousands of hours studying alchemy. Now I had to boil it down to an elevator ride explanation. “We begin in the chaos and confusion of blackness and through the many shades of darkness we eventually move into the burning of the white ash, which gives rise to the multicolored phase of the raven with the peacock tail, who eventually becomes the rising Phoenix who flies into the sun of the healing red tincture for the sake of other’s healing.”
Karen then said, “Your language is very poetic. However, we need to be mindful of the baggage our words carry. Words like ‘black’ and ‘white’ can be very heavy words packed with racial associations. How we use them in relationship to what is good and bad is important to our awareness of racism functioning in society and our language—especially in these charged days of heightened racial tension following the death of so many black men.”
Chaos and panic fell over my soul. The stormy clouds of shame rushed into my heart with lusty vengeance. I thought I had searched through all the secret corners of my life looking for latent racism. I had been open in the past that in 1850 my great-great-grandfather had enslaved a black man and woman, and their baby. My great-great-grandfather died in i860 in Alabama at the age of forty-one, a year before the Civil War broke out. He left behind a wife, four children, and the three people he had enslaved. One of his sons became my great-grandfather, but I have no idea what happened to those three souls who had been liberated from his subjection. I have tried mightily to extract the DNA of enslavement out of my life.
My parents moved our family from Oklahoma to Arizona when I was five years old. One of my good friends and teammates in high school lived two doors down the street. Clyde Cunningham was one of a dozen African American kids in our school of five thousand. My high school baseball coach was Gil Trejo, a Hispanic man and the best co