Daily Dose (Nov 12 – 15)
TUESDAY NOV 12 —
There are two places we need to go often.
A place that heals you.
And a place that inspires you.
Both places embrace the permission (the invitation) to show up. To this life. To this day. To be here now. Because we know that we bring the gift of enough. To spill light where we can.
Today I’ve carried Maya Angelou’s words with me, “My wish for you is that you continue. Continue to be who and how you are, to astonish a mean world with your acts of kindness. Continue to allow humor to lighten the burden of your tender heart.”
Yes, and amen. Today I was writing about her words sitting along the Douro River in Porto. While I wrote, the busker is singing John Lennon’s words, “You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man”
When he finishes, I stand and say, “Amen.”
Yes. My wish is that we continue (thank you Maya).
Or, remembering Mr. Rogers’ affirmation, “There’s something deep inside, that helps us become what we can.”
Because here’s the deal: We are fueled by our inherent value. Those places of beauty, creativity, resilience, imagination, courage and humor. And kindness. Those places of unrecognized beauty. Places of healing. And places of inspiration.
Creating Spirit,
Far too often I make demands of my own life
and try to tell it how to live and be.
A deeper, more authentic way to live
is allowing my life to speak to me, through me.
Show me how to deeply listen to my life
so that I may discover how to live
this wild and precious life well.
Amen.
My Portuguese Camino walk begins the end of this week, but our Camino walk to help us become what we can, is every day.
Onward together my friends.
WEDNESDAY NOV 13 —
A place that heals you and a place that inspires you. These are the two places we need to go often.
I’m grateful for your notes and encouragement as I’m preparing to begin my Portuguese Camino journey. One reader called it a “bucket list walk”.
That makes me smile. And I’ll say this; a bucket list for me is spending time places that heal and replenish.
Here’s the deal: Care of any kind begins with self-care. We too easily don’t see or make the connection. We see shifts and threats to our life and our world, and then we set out, mentally and emotionally and behaviorally, to make changes, as if we need to find “the precise script”. Wondering, where should we be (instead of where we are)?
Forgetting that even when life is catawampus, our choices—to care and give and make a difference—spill from our replenished self. From that replenished place we can see, listen, relinquish assumptions, and choose to make the world—our small world that we touch—a safe, compassionate, inclusive, kindhearted, healing place.
Relative to replenishment self-care, I have always found this helpful. When the Shawnee and Chippewa (and other early people) went on hunts or vision quests or long journeys, each traveler would carry in a small rawhide pouch, various tokens of spiritual power—perhaps a feather, a bit of fur, a claw, a carved root, a pinch of tobacco, a pebble or a shell. These were not simply magical charms; they were reminders of the energies that sustain all of life. By gathering these talismans into a medicine pouch, the hunter, traveler, or visionary seeker was recollecting the sources of healing and bounty and beauty. (Adapted from Scott Russell Sanders, Hunting for Hope)
I do know that if my medicine pouch is filled with a need for control and answers (for closure), I can easily be seized with fear, panic, rage, despair, depression, exasperation and frustration. (You get the picture?)
But what if? What if the “tokens” in that pouch are not a magic wand to undo life, but instead, the power and the freedom to embrace the life we have been given. And to see in this life, this day, even in the very muddle of the ordinary, even in the very chaos of the ordinary gone awry, the permission to experience a whiff of the holy.
That God is not waiting until we have it all figured out.
The gift of life is in this present moment.
Yes. That’s it. We can choose. This is an invitation to participate in this life. To bring all that I am to the table of this moment. To invest my heart. To spill light where I can. What Barbara Kingsolver calls a “conspiracy with life”.
THURSDAY NOV 14 — Stories are reminders of sufficiency, and the sacrament of the present, and help us not give way to any restrictive narrative of fear. Today, I want to share a Camino story to honor my friend Phil Volker.
And here’s what we learn from Phil: You never know where you will find miracles. It could be in your own back yard.
In 2014, Phil Volker completed 909 laps on a trail, walking the distance—a 500-mile trek—of El Camino de Santiago, a well-known Christian pilgrimage in Northern Spain. Except that Phil Volker lives on Vashon Island in the Puget Sound, where he walks most every day around a well-worn half-mile path through his 10-acre property.
One other note: Phil Volker has stage-four cancer.
And this: his story makes my heart very glad.
If his doctors give final approval, this summer Volker will go from backyard pilgrim to actual pilgrim when he flies to Spain to walk the real deal.
“I wanted to experience it,” Volker said “but if I don’t get to go, I’m going to be happy with what I’ve got here. It’s more than I thought I could do.”
Volker’s journey began three years ago when he was diagnosed with colon cancer, something he now calls the first “C” in his life.
The diagnosis led him to the second “C,” the Catholic church (more specifically St. John Vianney here on Vashon) where he’s found meaning, support and friendship.
“Having a life-threatening obstacle, it straightens your priorities out,” he says.
Volker first learned of the walk after he was given The Way (a 2012 film featuring Martin Sheen and the El Camino de Santiago). I remember the first time I watched the film. It hooks you where you least expect it. “The Way” is a poignant and inspirational story about family, friends, and the challenges we face while navigating loss, including the loss of our expectations and dreams. Martin Sheen plays Tom, an American doctor who comes to St. Jean Pied de Port, France to collect the remains of his adult son Daniel (played by Emilio Estevez), killed in the Pyrenees in a storm while walking the Camino de Santiago known as The Way of Saint James. Rather than return home, Tom decides to embark on the historical pilgrimage to honor his son’s desire to savor the journey. What Tom doesn’t plan on is the profound impact the journey will have on him and his “California Bubble Life.” In flashbacks, we learn that his son died estranged, embarking on a life Tom called wasteful and frivolous. In one scene Daniel tells his father, “That’s just it Dad. You don’t choose a life, you live one.”
That’s why Volker’s story resonates. He’s living life. Even as life turns left.
Life seems to ignore the script we have in our mind. And when that happens, we walk. We walk toward, or we walk away. Either way, we begin a journey—a pilgrimage to find or restore or forgive or heal, or to forget or bury; or perhaps, just to have the deck of our world shuffled.
Phil Volker is walking toward. And El Camino has become his third “C.”
“It’s become an international phenomenon,” Volker says. “You’re walking in the footsteps of millions of people who have come before you.”
Believing he was too ill to travel and walk such a long distance, Volker (who is also a hiker) set about recreating the walk closer to home. Last December the trail was blessed by Father Marc Powell of St. John Vianney, and Volker began to walk.
Walking the trail Volker frequently passes posts with scallop shells—the symbol of the Camino. He walks by hanging bird feeders, well-worn hunting targets in the woods and a small steam with a line of rocks to cross it. When a dog in a neighboring yard approaches the fence, he promptly produces a treat from his pocket.
“It seems to be different every time,” he says of the walk.
There’s a reason. Volker is seldom alone as he walks on any of his 909 laps. Over 100 friends, family members, acquaintances and even doctors from Swedish Hospital have accompanied Volker on various legs of the walk.
(Note: That number swelled to over 1000 through 2021.)
Volker keeps careful records in a logbook, daily recording how far he walks (as many as 6 miles a day), whom he walks with and where he would be on the actual Camino.
The walking is not only good for the soul, it seems, but also good for his health. Because recent scans have come back clean, Volker says, it bodes well for his trip to Spain. If two more scans come back clean, doctors will give him the okay to skip one chemo treatment and spend four weeks in July and August walking the El Camino; where he will walk the final 100 kilometers to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, a stretch required to receive a certificate of completion.
Yes, Phil Volker is looking forward to what the Camino will hold, but at the same time says he’s already been changed on his own backyard journey.
“It’s really enriched my life. My life has never been richer than it is right now,” Volker says.
Coming to the end of last week’s walk, Volker bends down to pick up a stone and tosses it onto a large pile of rocks in front of his home. He explains that each rock represents a prayer said either by him or a guest after finishing a walk, similar to a tradition on the real Camino.
“All of these things got prayed for,” he says. “Maybe there are miracles in there that happened.”
As long as I focus on any destination, and not the journey (the pilgrimage), I’ll keep asking “what’s next?” And give myself a healthy dose of grief for being a slacker.
Which is a good way of saying that I’m missing what the ordinary, and my own back yard, is trying to teach me: there’s a wonderful bright shadow to embrace.
Thank you, Phil Volker, for walking toward.
(And here’s the rest of the story… Phil was able to walk the kilometers needed into Santiago to receive his certificate. His journey is recorded on film, Phil’s Camino. Phil died in 2021.)
FRIDAY NOV 15 —
Today I began my Camino walk, from the Porto Cathedral.
I’m walking the coastal way.
I write this on November 14, and as I walk, I carry with me the memory of my Father, who died on this day in 2020.
On that day, my world shook a little yesterday.
Rest in Peace Jerry Hershey. I’m glad you were my dad. Today, I’m remembering great stories.
I’ve told this story before, but want to tell it again to honor my father. I am the son of a brick mason. I am the eldest of five children. Which means that my summer options, as a schoolboy, were limited. I could be a hod carrier (mixing mortar—called “mud”—hauling bricks, blocks or stone and intuiting the needs of masons not known for their patience).
Or, I could be a hod carrier.
Being a hod carrier is real work. I mean, physical work. Dog-tired at the end of the day work. And I couldn’t wait to grow up and go to college, and get a real job.
My father’s leadership style, typical of Midwestern fathers of his generation, was straightforward, “Don’t loaf. Don’t whine. Don’t make excuses. This’ll make a man out of you.” (I will admit, as a high school football player and wrestler, I couldn’t have asked for a better workout regimen.)
Even so, college beckoned. Real work, you know, where I could make a real difference. And become somebody.
And I did. After two degrees and an ordination, I set out as The Reverend. No longer just a hod carrier, or just a construction worker.
On one visit to Michigan in my late 30s, my father and I drove the streets in the small town of Sturgis, drifting in his pickup truck. We could drive for miles without saying much. (Not a bad skill to learn.) The truck slowed as if by volition, and I wondered if something was amiss. Then it hit me. My Father slowed to regard a house that he had built; decades prior. He parked by the curb. And he told me stories, about building the house, about the owner, about members of the crew and about pranks played on the job site.
For the rest of the afternoon, we meander the streets, looking not just at houses or chimneys, but also at the quality of work that has stood the test of time. These weren’t just buildings. They were works of art and labors of love.
And then we stopped in front of a house I recognized. Where I spent a summer on a crew, just a hod carrier, building someone’s dream. (But I hadn’t seen it.)
And the light bulb came on.
Now, I never use the phrase “just a” any more. About anyone.
I know this for certain: it doesn’t take much to nurse resentment or regret. There are times when whatever we are doing seems not enough (no doubt a miasma of guilt or shame and the vagaries of public opinion).
My Father never signed a contract. His handshake was his word. One man told me, “When Jerry Hershey shook your hand you knew you were going to get something you would be proud of. Something that would stand the test of time.”
What did my Father build? Houses.
What did my Father do? He made a difference.
It doesn’t take much to cover our light with a bushel. And there’s a whole lot of fear and worry and apprehension and hurry and the need for perfection that can do the job. But here’s the deal: what we do, and who we are, touches lives, plain and simple. This matters more than ever, in a divisive world, a world on edge, a world where a kind word or gesture makes all the difference.
So. What if we let our light shine?
What if we build a world where people matter.
Where humanity blossoms, permeating inclusion and dignity and mercy and creativity and kindness and magnanimity and hope.
Here’s our “Camino” quote for tonight, from Henry David Thoreau, “Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.”
And tonight, I am thankful for real walking shoes.
Prayer for our week…
Let This Be Our Prayer For The World…
Let the rain come and wash away
the ancient grudges, the bitter hatreds
held and nurtured over generations.
Let the rain wash away the memory
of the hurt, the neglect.
Then let the sun come out and
fill the sky with rainbows.
Let the warmth of the sun heal us
wherever we are broken.
Let it burn away the fog so that
we can see each other clearly.
So that we can see beyond labels,
beyond accents, gender or skin color.
Let the warmth and brightness
of the sun melt our selfishness.
So that we can share the joys and
feel the sorrows of our neighbors.
And let the light of the sun
be so strong that we will see all
people as our neighbors.
Let the earth, nourished by rain,
bring forth flowers
to surround us with beauty.
And let the mountains teach our hearts
to reach upward to heaven.
Amen.
Rabbi Harold Kushner
Photo… “Hi Terry, Inspiration and peace from last night’s sunset at Long Beach, WA. Thanks for all you do. Blessings,” Linda Fahlgren -Moe… Thank you Linda… I’m so grateful for your photos, please send them to [email protected]
