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

I want to end October 2024 on a hopeful note before the U.S. election next week. So "picture this"-- as one of the Golden Girls  used to say:   Ibrahim's Shawarma Place , October 30th 2024, it's a beautiful Fall day: I walk into my favourite shawarma place. There's a new woman behind the counter cooking. Arabic's her first language, English is mine. We're trying to have a conversation with each other. We're not having much luck with words, but we're smiling. I learn she is from Algiers and speaks French. To my surprise I start speaking to her in French-- I thought I'd forgotten all my French. Who thought an Arabic and English-speaking woman would be able to communicate because each of them shared a common foreign language? Now here I am at Ibrahim's speaking French not " parfaitmently"  but confidently and joyfully!! And momentarily feeling better understood by this woman than my own kin. She passes me my  piquant   poulet  shawar...

A few days ago I  did a double take to see the  Benedictine Sisters of Erie PA  and their monastery on CNN.  I've been to this monastery.  So it blew me away to see (now prioress) Stephanie Schmidt being interviewed by a CNN reporter on claims of voter fraud against her community. How can I ever regret all the places my religious life search has taken me? Including to places like Erie PA-- where sister Stephanie loaned me one of her own t-shirts so I could go swimming.  I don't remember St. Benedict's Rules for monastic life, I remember the t-shirt.     What will I remember from the 2024 U.S. election? What will others remember? And how will it all turn out? "But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting." --T.S. Eliot Cb Amen

Liz Cheney said something to republicans gathered in Michigan yesterday that I hope catches fire in the next couple of weeks.  I'm paraphrasing here:  "You can be a conscientious objector-- you don't have to let your friends, family, and colleagues know that you're voting for a Democrat."   Hint Hint republican party (I feel Cheney saying)-- you can shut down Donald Trump in secret! Which makes me think of the bible verse, "Whenever you pray (vote), go into your room and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you." (Matthew 6:5-13) My prayer in this political-vigil time before the U.S. election in November is that a whole bunch of republicans (and new wave of young men) will vote in secret for Kamala, propelling democrats to a victory that will bless us all. I make the same prayer for the upcoming Canadian national election.  Maybe we don't throw out a prime minister a whole bunch of Canadians might be se...

Today I want to share a poem I wrote after shopping for Thanksgiving supplies this weekend; a shopping trip which first involved making my way through a new maze of construction pylons, dust and trucks to catch the 54 bus to the grocery store.  While navigating through noise and traffic chaos, a line in an Emily Dickenson poem comes to me: " whistling past the graveyard "-- I add, and whistling by climate change. Next. I wonder how much Co2 is emitted at just this one intersection in Toronto?  A new poem of my own begins: Whistling past the graveyard of climate change-- What doesn't want to be heard in the silence ? Maybe that it's 75 warm degrees in October-- In the northern hemisphere. I think of the looming election south of the border. Long gone are the suffragettes who won the right vote. We'll see if they can ever win the U.S. presidency? (pause, deep breath) I chat with a young woman cashier  at the local grocery store-- She tells me she's training to b...

Reflecting on  Turning to the Mystics with Jim Finley, Season 10, T.S. Eliot: Dialogue 2: East Coker, October 7, 2024: T.S. Eliot's East Coker poem is about a town. Parry Sound-- where my parents live is a town. It strikes me T.S. Eliot's town  East Coker  could be the town of Parry Sound . A memory surfaces while I'm listening to Turning to the Mystics : I'm in my grandmother's dining room in Parry Sound in awe of seeing the huge velvet tapestry of the Last Supper  (or maybe it was of the Wise Men and Camels?) hanging on the wall. Anyway, reflecting on T.S. Eliot's East Coker poem, Finley explains that tapestries were hung to cover alcoves in houses in Eliot's time. What secret alcove does my grandmother's tapestry cover today? Maybe like the people in Eliot's poem who are dead now, the tapestry covers all my dead relatives who sat around my grandmother's table?  And like the disciples at the Last Supper, maybe it covers the table we ate at, fou...

This Sunday I'm thinking of the beautiful movie The Way with Martin Sheen. Specifically the scene near the end of the movie when the pilgrims (before entering the church) put their hand into what is said to be the imprint of St. James the apostle's hand. This said, I place a journal on a bookcase near the (entrance) front door of my apartment.  On the cover of the journal is written  The Best is Still to Come .  Now when I pass the bookcase I place my hand on top of the journal repeating the words on it's cover-- The Best is Still to Come . Around the same time as I make the connection between The Way and my journal on the book case near my front door, I have a session with my spiritual director:  We talk about being "ghosted"-- emails blocked, ignored, that kind of thing.  This leads to a rich conversation about how Jewish people of the old testament must have felt ghosted by God (exiled, years spent wandering in the desert with no answer from God). Continuin...

It strikes me I've been a sojourner with the Sisters of Life. What is a sojourner?  A pilgrim, a refugee, a child (born and unborn), a traumatized person, a grieving person? A sojourner is described as,  "a person residing in a land temporarily without the full rights and privileges of a citizen.  The idea of hospitality towards sojourner's is emphasized throughout the old testament, and it is a moral obligation for God's people to be kind and generous towards them.  Sojourners are often portrayed as people who are living in a land that is not their own and are, searching for a permanent home" (Bing) . I wonder if as much as we think we find "home" in a person, place, family or community-- we do not?  And if as much as we think we are a just a "sojourner" we are discovering a permanent home within?  I think this may be so? Next.  With abortion being a major political issue in the 2024 U.S. election, I'm thinking of my sojourner relationship...