Category Archives: Camino de Santiago

This Lent, I will love the wildness in me.

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Little girl sitting in the forest with sun shining on her

Cleaning the irrigation ditches, “acequias,” is a tradition in Northern New Mexico. Farmers dig acequias to bring water to their fields. Every spring, at the beginning of the growing season, the community gathers to weed and dredge the ditches, so the water goes where farmers want it to go and waters what they want it to water. Acequias have deep roots and a holy place in Pueblo and Spanish New Mexican culture.

Cleaning the acequias has long been one of my favorite metaphors for Lent. This week, as I was listening for what wanted to be written to you, I realized that cleaning the acequias is a tame metaphor. It doesn’t work for me anymore.
 
What’s Lent?
Lent shares a root with the word “lengthen” and refers to the seven weeks before Easter, a time of lengthening daylight in the Northern Hemisphere. Lent is when many Christian religious folk prepare intentionally for Easter by taking on a Lenten discipline.
 
Lenten disciplines often involve giving something up—chocolate, alcohol, social media—or taking something on—Bible study, meditation, decluttering. The point of a Lenten discipline, traditionally, is to make room in one’s heart and life for the risen Jesus on Easter Sunday. A focus on sin—how we fall short—and penitence—how we can punish ourselves so we’ll do better—loom large in this traditional mindset. 
 
Many progressive clergy and church communities do their best to steer their Lenten focus toward spiritual growth and wholeness. Given the deep rootedness of sin and penitence in Lent, they’re fighting an uphill battle.
 
Back to acequias.
Irrigation, no matter how picturesque or historic, domesticates wild water. Copious, noisy, wild water, flowing downstream from snowy mountains, is diverted into smaller and smaller channels. Weeds are not allowed, only crops that meet the needs of farmers or landowners.
 
Four years ago, I wrote “A letter from God to her daughters who observe Lent.” It went a little viral in 2019 and has now been read over 60,000 times. I think that post resonates so deeply because those words refresh and renew like cold, clear water. They feel good in our bodies. They feel healing. They feel true. They feel like love.
 
Traditional religious ideas about sin and penitence can hurt. There is no healing in fear-based disciplines.
 
“The Cathedral and the Well” is the story of a pilgrim walking through the desert, searching for water. She’s checking old maps and sees that water is around somewhere, but she can’t find it. She’s desperately thirsty, and all she sees is a ruined building made of dry, dusty stones. Then, in the silence of the desert, she hears the faint sound of flowing water. She follows the sound and discovers that it’s coming from the building! She moves a loose stone aside and the sound gets louder. She continues to pull away stones until there’s a gap big enough to crawl through. Once within, she sees a spring of living water emerging from the dirt. She drinks deeply.
 
For centuries, pilgrims passing this way piled stones to mark the location of the spring. Over time, the stones had completely covered the life-giving water. (I’m renaming this story “The Cathedral and the Spring.”)
 
We can choose Love-based disciplines. We can choose wild disciplines. This Lent, I want to love the wildness in me. I want to love my internal wilderness—the inappropriate, unkempt, honey-sticky, dirty, weedy, weird parts—the parts I try to hide. The parts I haven’t quite gotten tamed so I keep them closeted and caged.
 
Peregrina Martha explores wildness through the lens of old-growth trees in this excerpt from Lost & Found, my Camino novel. (For more, you can download a free PDF here. The novel’s a bit of a mess in places, with occasional salty language.)
 
 

Going Wild
I watch my hand that holds the hammer that pounds me into a shape that fits the proper hole. I pound and pound myself, but I don’t quite fit. I squeeze a bulge in here, shave off a sharp edge there, and pound and pound and pound. I try to whittle myself down to nothing so I can disappear. Bang bang bang on my head hits the hammer. Square peg in round hole. Redwood into toothpick. I cut the inconvenient pieces off. I limb myself so I slide smoothly into the mill.

Limbs are where the wild things live – where birds make their nests.

Limbs are an impediment to masts and poles. I will wield the ax for you. Let me cut off my limbs to make myself suitable for industry. I will make myself straight and rigid and useful to you powers. Let me read your mind and do what you want before you ask it, so you are blameless.

Behold the limbless handmaid of the Lord.

I will stop pounding myself into a hole that will never ever fit. I will regrow my limbs and branches so wild things have a place to live. I will nourish my roots and reach for the roots of others.

I am no longer espaliered.

I am a Redwood. I am an old Ponderosa…

I am regrowing myself. I am undebecoming.
Deep kindness. Compassionate heart.
Put down the hammer and the axe.
Let go. Free fall. Trust.
Allow yourself to be who you are.
Completely here…

We are not a fiber farm. We are not a monocultured industrial forest. We are old growth. We are many- layered, and we harbor secrets. Sasquatch lives within us. We hold stories upon stories. Our usefulness is not immediately apparent. Tiny communities of uncommon organisms live only in us. We are interwoven and interdependent. We contain entire ecosystems in our crowns. Marbled Murrelets nest in our upper limbs, bathed in Pacific fog. A thousand feet above the ground, seedlings sprout from leaf duff six feet deep.

We are the old ones. The living ones…

You are deeply loved.
Growing is your job.
Be who you are.
Exform your Self into the world.

Prepare.

Good questions for Lent:
Old-growth Redwoods contain entire ecosystems on their branches and in their crowns. What chopped-off limbs will you regrow? How wild will you let your crown get? What axe will you put down?

Living Water flows in the Wild places. Who’s thirsty in your heart? What desiccated places within you yearn for wild water? What parts of you long to be rewilded? What stones will you dislodge so Living Water flows freely? What internal wilderness will you explore? 

These are, for me, good questions for a healing, holy Lent. I offer them to you with love.

P.S. If you’d like my latest writing, news, and coaching offerings delivered to your inbox, please subscribe to my weekly-ish newsletter here, and thank you! 


[Photo: Melissa Askew on Unsplash]

You get to do this work.

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Camino de Santiago, 22 May 2014

It’s another rainy day in Spain. May 22, 2014. Day 17 of what will ultimately be 37 days walking El Camino de Santiago, 500 miles across Northern Spain. I’m walking alone. Jed stayed behind in the last village to buy bocadillos for lunch. He’ll have no problem catching up with me. This rain is incessant. This rock and mud Camino feels endless, Santiago a fantasy. My feet hurt. I’m sick and tired of being wet and cold. I’m sick and tired of sharing sleeping quarters with twenty strangers. I’m sick and tired of anticipating another damn albergue bathroom, hoping there will be enough hot water to get clean and that the lights won’t go out mid-shower. I’m putting one sore foot in front of the other.

I am not having fun.

But then. Then comes a moment that changed my life, a moment I will never forget.

I’m suddenly aware of a presence deep in the ground below me. I feel connected to this presence. It feels like a heart. Or a uterus. The beating heart connection between my heart and Earth’s heart feels deeply good. I know that every single pilgrim around me, slogging up the muddy hill in the Spanish rain, is also connected to this deep wombish heart. I know this deep heart is supporting, nourishing, and loving each of us. I know that every single thing is attached through this deep uterine heart to everything else, and every single thing is loved. I know this is true.

Unfortunately, this God is not the God I meet in church. The patriarchal church God is male, unchanging, spiritual, “up there” somewhere, worried about sin, and far removed from that fiercely loving muscular presence down in the dirt that I felt on the Camino. Church God and Camino God are incompatible.

I have a choice. I can take my knowing seriously. Or, I can continue to try to make myself fit into the church box, and continue to give away my power and authority over my own theology.

I choose to take my knowing seriously. After decades of contorting myself and denying what I know to be true, I choose to leave church. This moment on the Camino isn’t the only moment of truth. It’s just the one that gets me to take action.

Leaving hasn’t been easy. My “coming out” story did not sit well with some parishioners. Since I want everyone to like me, their disapproval feels mighty uncomfortable. 🙂

(I want to say again that my loving husband has done everything in his power to make church not hurt for me and for women like me. Clergy can only go so far within the constraints of the church institution. And the institution appears unwilling to change.)

No one’s forcing you to accept the tradition as it’s been handed to you. You will not die if you choose to lay that burden down. Jesus will still be Jesus, if you want him to be. Sisters, religion has been invented by institutions which don’t prioritize our well-being. If they did, they’d listen to us when we tell them it hurts, and be willing to evolve. Religion is constructed. It can be critiqued, deconstructed, and reconstructed as necessary.

You are perfectly capable of doing your own theological work.

Here’s one way to begin. (If you’ve gone through my Coaching Intensive, this will be familiar.)

Step One:

Fill in the blanks of this sentence:

If “God” is ____________, then I am ____________, and my soul is ___________.

Some examples:

You’ll notice these examples are flesh and blood, dirt and rock. We are Earthlings, and our metaphors work best when they’re earthy.

  • If “God” is water, then I am a spring, and my soul is the connection the water flows through.
  • If “God” is a womb, then I am a child of God, and my soul is an umbilical cord.
  • If “God” is dirt, then I am a tree, and my soul is where my roots touch the dirt.
  • If “God” is an artist, then I am a work of art, and my soul is the part of me that grows and changes with each stroke of the divine paintbrush.

You likely have many metaphors for God/Divine Energy/Holiness. Use them all. Play around. Try them on. Feel into your body for the ones that feel true. You decide.  

Step Two:

Choose one of your sentences and find or make a tangible expression of it. Put that reminder on your altar. If you don’t have an altar, put the reminder somewhere you will see it regularly. You could find a photo online of your metaphor. You could draw your metaphor. You could find or make a sculpture of your metaphor. Go beyond the word. Create something you can hold in your hands.

Step Three:

Visit your metaphor regularly. Sit with it. Ask questions, and listen for answers.

This work starts when you accept the responsibility to do your own theology. You are smart enough. You are brave enough. You have everything you need.

You get to do this work.

PS. Fall Semester is coming! I’m opening enrollment for all programs starting mid-September. Now’s the time to get on my schedule for a Clarity Call if you’re interested in working together. More information will be coming soon, so make sure you’re subscribed for weekly updates.

Who do you think you are?

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Raptor flying in golden sky

This is a raw passage from my novel-in-progress, which begins where my first novel, Lost and Found: A mystical journey on the Camino de Santiago, ends. (You can download it for free here.)

Setting: Three days have passed since Martha walked over Monte Irago and past La Cruz de Ferro after saying goodbye to Hope and her dad, the final scene in Lost and Found. Martha and two other pilgrims—Sophie, an American, and Kevin from Ireland—sit at the long table in the dining room of El Serbal y La Luna (The Rowan and the Moon), an albergue in the tiny town of Pieros. They’ve agreed to walk together the next day, free of stories and identities. All they know of each other is names and nationalities.

Salty language warning: Martha has become quite fond of the “f word.” She and her companions use it in this passage.

The other pilgrims have drifted away in noisy clumps, leaving only us three at the long table. The hospitalero has disappeared, evidently having fulfilled his duties for the night. The hospitalero’s wife is clearing what looks like a hundred dishes from the table. Two older American peregrinas, around my age, are helping, feeling sorry for her. We listen to the helpful peregrinas’ halting Spanish as they ask her for directions, and her attempts to convey her wishes. But dish-doing is a universal language, it seems, and soon the only sound coming from the kitchen is running water, clattering of plates, and soft rudimentary Spanish.

I feel guilty for a heartbeat, wondering why they’re in there working and I’m out here taking my ease. I take solace in the smallness of the kitchen and its current bustling fullness. There’s no room for me in there. And it’s not my job, so I choose gratitude and turn my attention to the job in front of me. This is my job—to be here now with these two people, as fully as I can be, without pretense or façade.

“Okay,” I say. “Let’s try this and see how long we last.”

“What do you want, right now, this minute?” I continue. “Are you comfortable? Do you want to find somewhere else to sit? Are you ready for bed?”

After a moment I answer my own question: “I’d like to go outside and sit under that serbal tree in the courtyard and look at the stars. And maybe catch a glimpse of la luna, as well. Would either of you care to join me? I’d love your company.”

We sit in silence outside for an hour, simply being in the dark. I notice that sitting in the dark is a lot easier when you have company.

The next morning we find each other in the dining room for café and toast. After breakfast we walk and talk on the way to Villafranca del Bierzo.

“I don’t know what’s next in my life,” I say. “I feel simultaneously excited and scared shitless about that. I’m in the wilderness between settlements, I guess.”

“How do you know … no, let me start over,” Kevin says. “What’s scary about the wilderness?”

“The wilderness requires a completely different skillset,” I reply. “The wilderness takes self-reliance. Trust in my own skills to survive and find my way. Trust in my environment to provide, and trust in my ability to recognize sustenance and direction when they show up.”

After a pause, I continue. “Living in a settled place with other people goes best when I follow the rules and stay in the grid. That’s what I’ve been doing for so long.”

A longer pause. “I thought the Camino would be safe. Instead, it blew me apart. I don’t know who I am anymore. I’m in this in-between place, between my old settled life and something I don’t even know what it is yet. And walking through this unknown place,” I continue haltingly, as I find the words, “is something I don’t know how to do. Because I’ve never learned it. No one’s ever taught me how to do this. Actually, they’ve taught me the exact opposite of how to do this. And I, in turn, have taught it to others. … Oh God. I’ve perpetuated the grid. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.”

“Well, when we know better, we do better. Right?” says Sophie. “I’m with you, Martha.”

“What do we have to count on when we blow our lives apart?” I ask. “Where do we put our feet? Or do we just fall and fall and eventually learn how to live in this air, wind in our faces, that sinking feeling like an elevator drop in the pits of our stomachs, until that sensation becomes normal or at least typical and we’re no longer so freaked out by being blown up and away that we recover our centers and realize we’re okay? We’re just falling and it’s okay?”

“What if it’s flying instead of falling?” asks Kevin. “What if it’s not going to kill you eventually, and you can go back down to Earth anytime? What if up here you have perspective? What if up here you can see the lay of the land? What if … Oh! This just in: what if you’re not blown up at all? What if a mighty force has simply kicked you out of the nest? It’s been watching you—this big mama hawk watching you get too big for her nest, refusing to fly, expecting to be fed—and she’s finally seen her chance to get you into the air? The Camino was her opening and she took it! You’re not blown up, pieces falling to the ground. You’re flying, Martha. You’re fucking flying! And birds don’t carry any extra weight, do they? They can’t.”

He stops. “What do you think, Martha? Actually, no. How does that feel, Martha?”

“A lot better than thinking I’ve been blown up,” I say. “Flying is scary because it’s unfamiliar, but at heart I know how to do it. I was born to fly, not to stay in a nest. I have what I need, built in, to do this. I am what I need to do this.”

I stop in my tracks. “Oh my gosh. The only thing stopping me from flying is believing I can’t fly.”

Photo by Shreyas Malavalli on Unsplash

Happy dying and rising! Happy Easter!

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On the Camino de Santiago

Today is Maundy Thursday, the beginning of the Triduum, the three holiest days of the Christian church year. These three days—Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter—are the crux of the matter, literally. The story of Jesus’ crucifixion, death, and resurrection are the heart of the Christian story.

Even if you’re not Christian anymore or ever, these three days are the heart of your story as well.

Death and resurrection are the way of things. We were born to die and be reborn over and over until our physical selves can’t hold us anymore. We suffer when we resist this basic truth—to be an Earthling is to be constantly dying and rising again. Change isn’t linear or always pretty. To be alive is to die and rise again, over and over, messily, imperfectly, gloriously.

As we grow, change, and evolve, we will find that we need to shed our too-small skins. I feel like I’m shedding my skin like a snake these days. Dropping identities and stories left and right. Shreds of (metaphorical) tissue-thin skin fall off me constantly. I feel messy, imperfect, and maybe just a little glorious.

This is the Easter story. This is the human story. This is our Earthling story. Jesus’ story is our story. Jesus’ death is our death, and when he rises again on Easter, he rises for all of us. He shows us the way home.

This excerpt from the last pages of my novel Lost and Found (available for free download here) describes a dream of Martha, my peregrina hero. In her dream, Martha integrates cut-off parts of herself, sheds her now too-small skin, and becomes a new creation.

Martha wakes up before sunrise in the albergue in Foncebadón, a few kilometers down the mountain from La Cruz de Ferro. She lies in bed listening to the sounds of pilgrims waking up and getting on with their days – the rustling of convertible pants and water running in the communal bathroom. She’s tired of writing. She’s tired of thinking. Today she only wants to walk in beauty. She yearns to shed this old skin that keeps her small and tired. She feels the pinching of the chrysalis. It’s time to emerge. She feels the pinching of the too-small skin. It’s time to shed. The snakeskin is a more apt metaphor than the chrysalis. She feels more like a snake than a butterfly. She feels low to the ground and slithery and heavy, not light and airy and floaty. She feels powerful. And beautiful.

Last night’s dream floats into Martha’s awareness. In the dream, she enters a cave in search of something she’s lost. In the cave is a cage full of children, all about seven years old. They’re girls, and they’re mangy and crazed. She’s frightened and repulsed. They look up when they see her, all except one feral child who’s sitting in the corner, muttering and chewing her snarled hair. Like refugees, they crowd to the chain link fence that encloses them and reach out their hands to her.

Martha’s heart sinks. She doesn’t want to know this. She doesn’t want to know these children are here. She doesn’t want the responsibility of knowing they’re here. What is she supposed to do with them? Clearly, they can’t stay here, and now that she knows they’re here, it’s her responsibility to take care of them. Her cheese is falling off her cracker. She feels unhinged, because she knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that these girls are parts of herself.

That one’s Courage and the one over there is Creativity. Those two are Imagination and Intuition. There’s Playfulness. The feral one with the snarled hair, the one sitting on the dung heap in the corner, muttering and biting her fingernails, is Rage. She sees Desire and Tenderness, too.

Martha feels a hand in hers and looks down to see clean and tidy uncaged children surrounding her. These are the little girls who have been with her all these years – Worry, Anxiety, and Fear, and the sturdiest of them all is Sadness. They’ve been faithful companions, and they tell her they’ve missed their sisters.

They tug on her hands to show her where the gate is. They tell her that her job is to let their sisters out of the cage. She’s safe and it’s okay. It’s time to shed the skin that keeps them in. It’s time to tell the truth and to acknowledge the sadness, yes. But more than that, and even scarier, they want her to let them rest a little. Sadness, Worry, Fear, and Anxiety would like to share the burden with Play and Anger and Courage and Imagination.

They understand this means Martha won’t feel in control anymore. The parts of her who want to explore and create will take her to places she didn’t even know existed. They won’t let her stay small and quiet and hidden.

Fear says, “Martha, I’m tired of steering you and keeping you safe. How about you let me share the load with my sisters? I know you’re scared. You’re scared that you’re going crazy. You’re not crazy. You’re brave. You’ll be even braver when you let Courage out to play with us.”

“How do I love them?” Martha asks Sadness and Worry. “How do I take care of them?”

“You know how to take care of them,” says Hope. Where had she come from? “You’re compassionate and strong, Martha. You only have to let yourself be reborn.”

“Here,” Hope says, and unlocks the gate. “Come out,” she says to the caged girls, “and let’s take care of Martha.” The little girls come out – some with shouts of joy and some with trepidation – to join Hope around a pool. The pool is surrounded by ferns, mosses cling to the wet rocks, and steam rises from it.

The girls slowly and reverently help Martha disrobe and lead her to the pool. They gently urge her to lie down in the warm water. They stroke her and rub her and sing to her. Martha realizes they’re rubbing off her old skin. They raise her up and walk her to where the sun is entering the cave. They rub her dry with soft, thick, warm towels. Her new skin is thin and porous. Martha feels both raw and incredibly strong. The girls rub her new transparent skin with oil, still singing.

Martha sits down on a granite boulder and opens her arms. One by one the little girls crawl into her chest. Martha is big enough to hold all of them now. Last to crawl back in is Hope. She reaches out and hugs her mom as she returns where she belongs. Martha looks inside her heart. Hope and the little girls are playing in the grass by the side of the desert creek, watched over by their vigilant guardian.

Fully awake now, Martha emerges from her sleeping bag. Her dad’s bunk is empty. She wants to mark this metamorphosis. She digs out the scissors in her foot care kit and goes to the garden of the albergue. Her only companions are the chickens. With the scissors made for cutting bandages, she cuts off her hair so it’s sticking out about an inch all over her head, like a halo. A messy gray halo. Hair is all over the ground. Birds will use it for nests. In this windy place it will blow away before lunchtime.

Whatever your faith or spirituality, I wish you a blessed death and rebirth.

May we trust our hearts. May we trust God, whoever and whatever Holiness is for us.

Happy Easter!

Love, Barb

Image: Jed Holdorph, 16 May 2014, Camino de Santiago

The Dip is coming. Are you ready?

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Pilgrims leaving St. Jean Pied de Port on the Camino de Santiago

These pilgrims are on the first day of their Camino. They think this is the hardest day. They think that if they can do this ridiculously grueling day, they’ll be in good shape. They’re almost certainly wrong.

The first day of the Camino de Santiago Francés is about 15 miles long, an average day on the Camino. That’s hard enough for new pilgrims. What makes it especially hard is the vertical gain followed by an equally steep downhill, over the Pyrenees from France into Spain.

My husband and I walked the Camino’s 500 miles across northern Spain to Santiago de Compostela in 37 days, averaging 13 miles daily. As many pilgrims do, we started our Camino in St. Jean Pied de Port at the foot of the French Pyrenees. We walked up and up and up and up, all day, to Col de Lepoeder, the top of the pass through the Pyrenees, a vertical gain of more than a mile, then down the other side.

Jed and I, being Oregonians and used to mountains, didn’t find the uphill particularly difficult. It was the downhill that got me. By the time we arrived at the Roncesvalles albergue (albergues are special hostels for pilgrims in Spain), my feet and ankles were in agony. I took off my boots to find bumps, bruises, and blisters that persisted for the entire 37 days we walked, and for months after.

Some pilgrims choose to skip this traditional hazing ritual, and start instead in Roncesvalles on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees. (Or in Pamplona, as the heroine of my novel does.)

I knew the first day would be hard. I knew what to expect. I thought that making it across the Pyrenees in one (admittedly bruised and battered) piece meant I had this thing licked and it was all smooth sailing from here. I was definitely wrong.

Why?

It’s a thing Seth Godin calls “the Dip” in his book of the same name. Teachers call it the “messy middle.” Wayfinder Life Coaches know it as “Square Three.”

The basic principle is this: anything worth doing becomes muddled and hard at some point. This is “the Dip.” There comes a point where the first blush of enthusiasm has worn off, the goal is still a very long way ahead, and the journey becomes a slog. This is when people quit.

Let me say that again: any important goal, anything worth doing—education, relationships, parenthood, your dream job, learning to play the guitar, walking 500 miles across Spain—gets hard at some point.

The first day of the Camino was ridiculous. The first week continued to be physically gruelling, but walking The Way of St. James was still fresh, new, and interesting. I still felt enthusiastic about this bananas thing we were doing.

But Day 10? Well. By then I was tired of suffering for no apparent purpose. Tired of sleeping in communal dorms and washing in communal showers and walking on bruised and blistered feet for miles every day. I had lost my enthusiasm.

Most pilgrims who quit the Camino don’t do it in the first week. No. They quit in the middle. They hit the Dip and they don’t have the resources to keep going. (This is why the Camino is a pilgrimage, not just a nice walk in the Spanish countryside. You meet yourself—who you really are and what you really want—on the Camino.)

The Dip is when you decide if this thing you committed to doing is really something you want to do. The Dip is when you choose, or not, to keep putting one foot in front of the other because the destination waiting for you at the other end is so amazing that it’s worth this suffering.

The Camino de Santiago Francés is 500 miles long. Most pilgrims take 30 to 40 days. That leaves a long time in the middle where it really is just putting one foot in front of the other, because Santiago is still hundreds of miles down a very dusty road.

The goal seems unreachable. What you’re doing seems loco. I mean, come on. Really? Walking somewhere when you could drive it in one really long day? What’s up with that? It’s crazy. You’re tired. You’re dirty. You’re sore. It’s just not a rational thing to do.

Many of the things we deeply want to do aren’t rational.

The Dip is real. Know it’s coming. Expect it. Prepare for it. Make a plan to navigate it. If you know you don’t have the resources to get through the Dip, don’t start.

This is the choice I had to make. Walking the Camino for Jed wasn’t going to cut it. I had to do it for me, or not do it at all. I had to walk my own walk, or not walk at all. I was going to end up hating my husband if I continued suffering for him. I had to choose the Dip. I had to commit to MY Camino. I had to say, “I’m doing this, for me.”

What got me through the Dip? My husband’s dogged determination. Companions on the Way. The hard-core mystical energy of a path that’s been trodden by prayerful, strong people for a thousand years. My coaching skills and practice working with my thoughts. Walking one day at a time and celebrating my progress, slow as it felt. Marking intermediate milestones: Pamplona, Burgos, León, El Cruz de Ferro, every mountain pass. Two experiences of the Holy that told me I was where I needed to be.

Is there something you want to do? Be ready for the Dip. Plan for it. Assess your resources and marshal your reserves. Ask for help navigating the Dip. If that help might be me, check out my new “Get Your Thing Done” coaching package here. I’d love to connect.  

PS. If you’ve read this far, you’re a dedicated blog-follower. I’d love it if you’d subscribe to my newsletter, which will soon replace this blog completely.

Photo credit: Jed Holdorph, 6 May 2014

“I need to repair my leaks.”

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Woman holding a string of Christmas lights
You’re here to make a conscious, intentional, reverent offering of your energy to the world.

True confession: I sometimes hear voices. To be precisely accurate, I hear a voice. This voice seems to come from both within me and from outside of me. I know that makes no rational sense.

Martha, the heroine of my new novel Lost and Found: A Magical Journey on the Camino de Santiago (now available for free download here), also hears a voice. This voice comes to her, completely unexpectedly, as she’s walking the Camino. To her intense surprise, Martha’s healing is the voice’s aim and highest priority. Martha doesn’t know she needs to be healed, so she’s unprepared for what happens when she listens to the voice.

I got longer missives from the voice on the Camino in 2014, just as Martha does. At home, in real life, the voice isn’t as verbose.

I only hear the voice when I’m quiet, and usually just a phrase or a sentence. Short and to the point. The voice doesn’t mince words. I’m always surprised by what it says.

Here are a few examples. About twenty years ago, while doing yoga, the voice told me my job is “to understand and share.” Two summers ago, while sitting on a rock in the sun, feet in a high mountain lake, obsessing over something or over, the voice told me to relax and trust. “Stay connected and flow,” it said. I hear the voice in my coaching work with clients. It says things like, “Ask her about her connection to trees,” when I have no conscious reason to think a woman’s connection to trees is important.

Maybe it’s intuition. Maybe it’s God. Maybe I’m crazy. All I know is the voice has my healing as its aim and highest priority, and it’s always a good idea to listen.

This morning, feet in the Deschutes River, pondering my new inability to prioritize other people’s priorities over my own, I heard, loud and clear from out of nowhere, “I need to repair my leaks.”

What does this mean? Here’s what I think it means, for me and possibly for you:

I have a tendency to be diffuse, to let my energy leak. Like a porous canal or a pipe with a hole in it, my energy goes places I don’t necessarily want it to go. This is how women are trained in a patriarchal culture.

What’s actually true is that I am in charge of my energy, and I want to notice where my energy goes. I want to decide if it’s going where I want it to go, or if I’m prioritizing someone else’s priorities.

  • Are things plugged into me that I don’t necessarily want to power?
  • Am I trying to manage others’ reactions to me?
  • Am I maintaining a façade? A fake front?
  • Am I pretending to care about something I don’t actually care about?
  • Am I attempting to control the uncontrollable?
  • What incompletions and open loops are draining my energy?

You are in charge of your energy. Your energy is your life. Your energy is all you have.

You might be asking, “But won’t being selfish about where my energy goes make me a heartless monster??”

No. Here’s why: Being who we are, being connected to and flowing with the holy in our unique way in our unique life, is why we’re here. We’re not here to power other people. We’re not here to power institutions we don’t believe in. We’re not here to be colonized. We’re here to be free.

Ask yourself what you’re NOT here to do. What’s on your “To Don’t” list? Repairing those leaks directs your energy to your soul’s purpose. This is why you’re here – to make a conscious, intentional, reverent offering of your energy to the world.  

Photo by Natalya Letunova on Unsplash

“Uncertainty, Risk, and Emotional Exposure”

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That’s how Dr. Brené Brown defines vulnerability.

On June 1st, I put my novel, the story of Martha, a middle-aged woman who walks the Camino de Santiago, on my website as a free downloadable PDF. Yesterday I posted about and promoted its presence. Today, I feel vulnerable in about twenty different ways.  

I don’t know if anyone will read it. If you do, will you like it, hate it, or be bored?

If you don’t like it, if it offends you or annoys you, what will that mean about me?

I’ve shared a few raw pieces of my childhood in it, and I’ve included a scene I’m just not sure about. Martha’s conversations with the Divine will offend some readers. (If there are any readers.)

I’m swimming in uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.

Thankfully, other creators have lived through this and shared their wisdom. I’m finding strength and courage in these words from Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic: Creative Living beyond Fear:

“Recognizing this reality – that the reaction doesn’t belong to you – is the only sane way to create. If people enjoy what you’ve created, terrific. If people ignore what you’ve created, too bad. If pople misunderstand what you’ve created, don’t sweat it. And what if people absolutely hate what you’ve created? What if people attack you with savage vitriol, and insult your intelligence, and malign your motives, and drag your good name through the mud?

Just smile sweetly and suggest – as politely as you possibly can – that they go make their own fucking art.

Then stubbornly continue making yours.”

So why be vulnerable? Because here’s the thing. Everything I’ve said about my novel applies to my life, my whole life, when I’m being who I am in the world. There are aspects of me, when I’m living in integrity and letting all of me show, that you might not like. I may say something that offends you. I might just be ignored. Or misunderstood.

It’s simply not my job to manage your reactions to me. It’s not your job to manage my reaction to you, either.

Our purpose is to be who we are, as fully and completely as we can be at this moment, stubbornly and continually. Living as whole people requires accepting the discomfort of uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. As my ability to tolerate and even embrace the discomfort of vulnerability grows, the fuller my life becomes. My tolerance for uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure — vulnerability — is directly correlated to the amount of peace, freedom, creativity, and true connection in my life.

I’m proud of myself for sticking with Martha, myself, and this story. I’m proud that I’ve brought it into the world. I’m proud of myself for risking vulnerability. Whatever happens, I’ll have done this courageous thing. However this turns out, I’ll have grown my capacity to tolerate discomfort for the sake of growth.

You can download Lost and Found: A Magical Journey on the Camino de Santiago here.