A Quote on Pilgrimage
“The Call comes when we break, or are ready to break. Sometimes it may come in the form of a change of circumstances: a relationship ends; we lose our job; we become ill. A child leaves home; a loved one dies. Sometimes the Call comes to us in a dream.
Some of us may hear the Call sooner, others later. But whenever it happens, whenever it transpires that we find ourselves on an edge, out of our element, out of our skin, there is something in us still which hears, no matter how deeply buried. Like the first August swallow fidgeting on the telephone wires, we know there is something we should be doing. We know there is a journey we should be undertaking. We cannot rest; we cannot sleep. Something in us knows that there is somewhere we should be going. And in the end, whether or not we think we can, we go because we must. We go, on a wing and a prayer, because to stay is to die…
We may need to travel a long distance before we find the new skin that fits us, and before we can learn to be comfortable in it – but first, we have to commit ourselves to the journey. We have to awaken from our torpor, commit to life instead of the desiccated half-life of the Wasteland. We must shake off the false skins we’ve cloaked ourselves in; we must let the old die to make room for the new. We must be willing to detach from who we have been, what we have become, before we can discover who we are really meant to be and what our work is in the world. And it is hard, to begin; to get out of bed, to close our eyes and cross this first threshold. To fall forward into the wind, to let ourselves topple off the edge, to get in the tiny, rocking boat. It’s a big step, this first movement towards wholeness. It means leaving behind the safety of familiar social structures and supports. It’s a leap into the dark, a massive letting go.
But let’s say we go. Let’s say we not only hear the Call, but respond. Let’s say we take that first step. We leave the job we hate, or the damaging relationship. We want to find our lost skins, the missing pieces of ourselves that we seem to have lost somewhere along the way. We want to find the old cottage in the hills, the fast-flowing river, the work that makes us feel useful, and fulfilled. The Selkie crosses the threshold; she sets out. After all that she has been through, she nevertheless has the ability to see beyond what is known, to believe in a new beginning – even if she isn’t entirely sure what that new beginning might consist of. For she is between stories: the story she’s been telling herself about who she is is at an end; she has no idea what the next story might be.
She travels empty-handed; she leaves the ‘things of the world’ behind her. It is reminiscent of a pilgrimage, and for sure the true Heroine’s Journey resembles a pilgrimage more than an adventure, and edges – like shorelines – are the places from which pilgrimages begin. Step across that edge and it is a severance, a kind of death: we can never go back to what we were before. A pilgrimage asks that we give up everything so we might learn what is truly ours. A pilgrimage is a search for knowledge, a search for becoming. And pilgrimage begins also with longing: longing for deep connection; longing for true nurturing community; longing for change and the rich, healing dark. Pilgrimage involves a new way of travelling and seeing, and it is in our ancestry.
There is no map for this pilgrimage we are on; there is no fixed path. And that is a good thing, because following the paths that others have set for us, the paths that the system confines us to – that is the cause of the problem. We have been too timid, too blind, too unthinking; now it is time to find our own way.
There are no maps…. She doesn’t really know where she is going… But she sets off anyway. She points herself roughly in the right direction, puts one foot in front of the other, grits her teeth, and she walks.”
This quote is from Sharon Blackie’s book: If Women Rose Rooted.
This is an amazing read- especially for women.
