On Huckleberries and Haiku

"Centuries of travel lore suggest that when we no longer know where to turn, our real journey has begun. At the crossroads moment, a voice calls to our pilgrim soul. The time has come to set out for the sacred ground - the mountain, the temple, the ancestral home - that will stir our hearts and restore our sense of wonder. It is down the path to the deeply real where time stops and we are seized by the mysteries. This is the journey we cannot not take."

The Art of Pilgrimage, Phil Cousineau (emphasis mine)

This passage speaks to me. It sums up, better than I could, my feelings about this time of Pilgrimage I have entered. I don’t think that I need to actually go someplace far away. In some faith traditions pilgrimages occur internally - vision quests, meditation, walking a labyrinth.

These are all processes where the journey in an internal one.

For me, the idea behind this pilgrimage is not so much about actual travel or necessarily deep meditative states, but rather maintaining an awareness of the world around me and making sure I take the time to really SEE when I look around.

I went hiking with my son this afternoon, we went up into the trails near our home on the side of Mount Seymour in North Vancouver. We were hiking for fun, for exercise and to see the forest around us. Sometimes when I hike for a workout I move too fast through the woods to see the trees, hear the birds, see the plants growing.

It takes slowing down and really looking, really listening, really feeling for a simple hike to become a soul-filled journey.

Today, when we slowed, we discovered huckleberries and though there was a part of me that wanted to keep moving, keep my cardio up - I remembered ‘pilgrimage’ and I stopped.

I watched the light through the trees,
Savored the flavor of the berries,
Relished the delight my son expressed about
how much he loves huckleberries.

For those few minutes we were truly living, not just moving from minute to minute. But feeling each and every sensation in excruciating detail.

We were on sacred ground.

Matsuo Basho was a 17th century Japanese poet. He left his home to walk across Japan, living off the alms of strangers and writing Haiku. His Haiku are still read today because he captured in them the essence of the simple pleasures in life that we all still feel and long for today.

His words about a flower or the moon are deceptively simple and yet are deeply profound.

My affirmation for today is my current favorite from him.

Everyday An Affirmation:

Along the mountain road
Somehow it tugs at my heart--
a wild violet
(Basho)


My rewrite for today’s Backyard Pilgrimage:

Along the forest path
I taste it in my heart -
a huckleberry
(Anne)

A really nice selection of Basho's Haiku can be read here: http://thegreenleaf.co.uk/hp/basho/00bashohaiku.htm

Enjoy

My lovely feet

There are two main reasons I am creating Backyard Pilgrimage. The first is that I believe I am called to follow this pilgrimage path right now, this year, this very day. Yet, my family life doesn’t allow for me to just drop everything and take off to Santiago, Stonehenge, Canterbury or Jerusalem – places of Pilgrimage in times past (for Western Civilization that is). 

Tho I’d love to do it. I’d love to leave everything behind and take my kid and my husband and head off in to the world and go... well anywhere. But that’s not a practical option at this time in any of our lives.

The second is that I have super bad feet and ankles. I have to wear orthotics and I can get moderate to severe tendinitis in my ankles if I don’t. Back in June I developed ‘plantar fasciitis like symptoms’’ in my feet which left me barely able to walk for just under a month. It’s better now, but I have to be careful with it.

So walking the 800km trek that is the Camino de Santiago is not going to happen without some serious work and training to keep my feet healthy.

There’s an irony here, being called to journey and not being able to walk.

I was in a course in June, the LDM with the Center for Christian Studies and they use the Journey & Path metaphors a lot. It was during this course that the pain in my feet was at its worse.

I was doing this course as ‘part of my journey’ and I was hobbled.

Tho, as my minister suggested in her ever sage way of looking at things, I couldn’t run away either.

I had to stand and just be.

No more hiding. No more pretending.

I have to stand and just be.

Everyday an affirmation:

In Louis L. Hay’s book, You Can Heal Your Life, the daily affirmation for feet is the following:

My understanding is clear,

& I am willing to change with the times.

I am safe.

Karma's a bitch

My uncle's AMAZING sense of humour.

Buddhists believe that all living things carry souls (though they has a different word for it, that I can’t currently remember) and that killing even a mosquito means that they could be killing the reincarnation of a departed family member.

Thus, having accidently cooked an inch worm in last night broccoli I may have inadvertently cooked my own grandmothers soul.

This haunts me.

Plus having seen a cooked inch worm in a pot of broccoli I harvested from my own garden, is an image an cannot get out of my head and I continue to gag at the thought of eating anything that might resemble an inch worm in colour, texture or (spew) taste.

What once is seen cannot be unseen.

So in a bizarre syncretistic mess that is my personal theology to do penance for creating such atrocious Karma by inadvertently cooking an inch worm (aka granny’s souls) I present this proclamation:

I will not eat meat for the rest of the year. (Possibly longer)

I was already moving towards vegetarianism, again, before the Inch Worm Incident.

But now I do it with a Cause! A Conviction! I’m doing it for the worm (and granny’s soul).

Thank you and good night. 

The Pilgrimage

Give me my scallop shell of quiet,
My staffe of Faith to walk upon,
My Scrip of Joy, Immortall diet,
Mt bottle of Salvation:
My Gowne of Glory, hopes true gage,
and thus Ile take my Pilgrimage

 ~~Sir Walter Raleigh

  1604

We forget sometimes to travel mindfully. We race, we push, we bully our way to the front of the line to snap the photo that proves we were there. We rush to Tweet, to post of Facebook, to show the world we were there, forgetting (sometimes) to savor the moment. To Experience it, not Record it.

The concept of Backyard Pilgrimage grew from a call to Go On a Pilgrimage, but not one that will leave me in debt, take me away from my family or take me any further than my own backyard, if need be.

Backyard Pilgrimage is soulful journeying, be that to the old growth forest on the North Shore mountains 10 minutes from home, the Labyrinth at the Anglican Church a 5 minute drive away or meditating in my own backyard.

As I work out just want this means, I will post more.