Stranded on the Mainland: Inner Pilgrimage and Living Alone as a Spiritual Path:

I imagine going through Lent Customs. The border agent asks me two questions. Oddly not what country I was born in? Or how long I plan to stay? But what drags me down? What holds me up? Then they confiscate it! And wave me through... Amen littleshootsdeeproots.com  

When I think of Lent I think of deserts and dark nights of the soul. Of black and white photos and this quote by poet David White: Sometimes it takes darkness And the sweet confinement Of your aloneness to learn Anything or anyone that does Not bring you alive.   Amen.

I have been trying all day not to blog about Valentine's Day. Finally at 11:30 pm (Feb 13) I surrendered. I deleted the blog I was settling for. It wasn't what my heart wanted to write about. It wants to write about someone I spent time with in Mexico-- Someone I loved. I want to say his memory is a blessing to me. In Hebrew, "When we express this sentiment, may his memory be a blessing , the blessing implied is that it is up to those who bear the memory of the person who is gone, to keep their goodness alive."   (bethel mausoleum .org.). Alberto used to say to me, "It is the Life that is important, Carolina."   I'm a long way from Mexico on this snowy night in Toronto, and never closer.   As close as the memory in my heart.   Amen/Shalom   Valentines Day in Mexico! Alberto and me (circa mid-1980's)

Tomorrow we celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes and I have already received the gift of a healing grace. It came in the form of an expanded understanding of trauma connected to what researchers are calling, Post traumatic Relationship Syndrome (PTRS) . The healing came when I understood how natural and normal it is that my fight, flight, freeze responses would still happen in certain situations with people. If anyone becomes impatient, irritated, judgmental with you for going slow as you heal-- their impatience, irritation, and judgment are not your responsibility. This is what I tell myself now.  And that I am a beloved daughter of God who loves me just as I am.  I want to share a long quote below in case it is helpful: "When we suffer abuse or neglect in relationships, our brain registers that relationships can be dangerous. If we process and integrate what happened to us, then trauma in relationships can make us wiser. It can help us learn to be more discerning, ...

The last session of our three-month long Center for Action and Contemplation course 'Mystical Sobriety' with Jim Finley has opened. The teaching from this last session sends me digging through old boxes of journals searching for an entry from my first trip to Mexico. I am like the woman in the bible searching for her lost coin... until I find the journal entry I am looking for: I am looking out a small thick airplane window.  The terrain below is changing like my life.  The mountains are different than they were a few minutes ago.  This unfamiliar land below me looks like a papier-mâché globe that someone smashed with a giant hand in order to make it an interior map for me to follow.  I sit up straighter in my blue upholstered seat. The airplane bounces and something inside me shifts? I have crossed the border into Mexico long before the Customs Man will ever stamp my passport. (Circa 1986). Was my experience on that flight to Mexico maybe the unconscious s...