What a gift you have given yourself, Ose, to stay with this process even as you found it challenging and intense. I sense that in some ways the end of a Pilgrimage is just the beginning of a long and beautiful unfolding. In walking the pilgrimage to Santiago, there is bravery and loss, and so much self-reflection. It is after reaching the physical endpoint that the course of integration begins. Though I have never had the privilege of walking that path physically, I have often enough found that anything life-changing can be beautiful and painful together somehow. I wish you well on this journey. I, too, have come to rely on our fellow pilgrims along this path, and will miss their/your input and invitations. This sacred space has been and will continue to be life-altering, in ways I cannot know as I leave my shoes at the shore. I am grateful this material will stay available to us in some ways in the days ahead.

There is a mutuality between awe/wonder and gratefulness. So what I would like gratefulness to “do for me” is to rekindle some of that awe and wonder that I think I once had, long ago and far away. Such a rekindling may circle around to further gratefulness. I will make my 30 day list a series of invitations to that.

Goals, particularly long term or difficult goals seem to hinder gratefulness. I miss the pathway seeking the end game. I am too hard on myself in pursuit of such goals. Thus, present moment awareness can be rare, especially when it comes to joy. I feel I have some work to do on this (the term work loosely held). Where did my laughter go, I wonder. Why have the shoulds and coulds and musts been allowed to weigh in more stridently? A practice of awareness may be the way calling me back to my core identity. “If there’s a key there must be a door.” (The Secret Garden)

A co-worker once described me as the person who fills in all the gaps behind the scenes to make sure things happen as the ought to happen. Not the one out front who gets the notice or credit. So one of my gifts is gap-filler. As a birth sign Cancer this makes some sense. It is a water sign and water fills the empty spaces. Similarly, a gift for synthesis seems to be true, and high intuition enables that to happen seemingly out of nowhere. I have not always appreciated the lack of notice or credit for these odd gifts. Perhaps a practice of gratefulness may be to be content that these provide support to the Great and Beautiful Weaving that unfolds as life.

What seems important to me “really” is in the end to honor truth as I understand it at any given moment on this life pilgrimage. I would be especially grateful to learn to let go of notions of control and to re-discover laughter and lightness. Sometimes I weary of being the so-called responsible one. Give me the woods and the sea and the birds of more variety than imaginable! That is my longing. There I find my truth.

I do ache for these “new eyes.” Over these many years I have done my share of shedding. I have not so much managed the interior changes or the outlook in the world that would have me living on ground I acknowledge and honor as holy. Such a difference between knowing in my head and manifesting in my life. I have this odd image of myself as I am now. A full grown turtle having shed her damaged adult sized shell and having the thinnest and most fragile new shell just forming. I imagine that this time around it would be multi-colored and I would one day feel glorious walking through life at a pace of my choosing and taking the time to revel in this holy ground that I have missed thus far. Having my cataracts removed pretty soon. Maybe that is one of those great metaphoric events that seem to show up when the time is ripe.

I am starting to notice the grief, in leaving behind the work of most of my adulthood, and maybe the names by which I and others have known me. Hearing my employers move toward this shoreline in their own ways of preparedness brings it more deeply into my consciousness. I am six months out from this actualization – this frontier. I am wondering at how to honor these months of letting go in ways I can manage emotionally. To honor and let go of at the same time – not so easy. Maybe a ritual each month? An actual pilgrimage? (Are there any in North America that do not require 6 weeks?) I think of the words from the musical Into the Woods as Little Red heads into the great unknown of the forest … excited and scared …

Offhand, I am not finding the source of “the fire that doesn’t consume.” But in the tradition of my baptism, fire is a symbol of Spirit, which I understand as a life-giving Spirit that enables us to live out all that we are created for in the world. Living in the fullness of ourselves, I guess I’d say. Maybe even bursting forth with that life that is us, as the kingfisher cannot help but do. Living wholeheartedly. Not sure if that helps or makes any sense, but a thought, anyway.

Mary Pat, it sounds to me as if you have set your children free from perhaps some painful legacies or structures (strictures?). We can get caught in the web of “this is who we are ore how we have always done things” or “I am not good or worthy” or someone else or certain “those people” are not. These can beget slavery of all kinds, hidden or public, acknowledged or not. To set our children free is a tremendous gift! It does not say this or that hasn’t happened. It says “wow, you are this marvelous human person in your own right.” On a large scale it is what has helped races and genders and socio economic classes stand up and say “no more!” It so often must begin in a family of origin or a family of one’s choosing. Thank you for setting your children free! Free to choose, to become, to rise up in our world. Namaste!

I have walked the path of self-protection and fear, never wanting to be vulnerable or admit my vulnerability. Serious illness made me realize that I am in fact vulnerable. Always have been. I had little choice but to ask for help and entrust my care to people who knew more than I did. We really all are vulnerable. We are created for community. I know now that owning my vulnerability can be the first and hardest step forward, a most critical – but never comfortable for me – choice. And that I can’t choose the ways others react to the whole thing, especially when this self-advocacy is not what they expect from me. The way forward is and continues to be putting an end to the ways that do not honor all that I can be. Every day the question before me is whether I will be brave; whether I will be me in this world. A lot of the days it takes a lot of self-talk. It is a good day when I put on my pilgrim shoes and stride out into the world, as me.