Welcome to the Story Paths Newsletter, a Storyteller’s Diary edition.
I'm on pilgrimage again, but it's different this time.
Before, it was overseas, inside the myths of those palms, hills paths, trees, and temples. Singing poems in the tongues of those mothers and wizened sages, walking away from our worldly lives and identities, and toward a common divinity. Barefoot in those holy lands.
I'm on pilgrimage again. These lands are holy too, I reckon, but far less exotic. I'm journeying now into my own past, into places and moments where I changed.
As I write this, I’m near the river that I grew up by. I’ve been visiting the trees my sister and I climbed when we were children. Going to the hills that we sledded down, and the schools where I learned and played.
I'm getting my legs back. Or rather that I'm inhabiting my legs: walking on the ground instead of flying.
The land feels primary. People have moved away, moved, died, been born. No one who knew me then still lives on my old block.
I nearly skip up the stairs of the front porch and go on inside my old house. But I'm a stranger to these people. They don't know me, nor I them.
Yet the trees remember me, and the stones. Different bushes now grow on the hillsides, but from the same soil. I touch their bark and leaves as I pass, and I am a child again. I am both child and man.
Then and now. Time folded like paper, two corners touching. Three corners, four, more… Kairos timeless moments nestled like jewels in kronos linear time flow, past-present-future time flow.
Then is now, now is then, then is now.
I’m of this place. Then is now.
Now is then. This is my Kairos pilgrimage.
This is the first day of a new calendar. First moment.
That calendar is always beginning.
People matter too. My sister and her child. My old friends. I belong again after a hard winter outside beyond the hearth. A winter with new friendships that couldn't yet take much weight.
I have roots. This matters. I am on my roots pilgrimage.
In a pilgrimage, there is the hardship of making a journey, of living simply and keeping a spiritual purpose in mind and heart.
There is also the joy of coming home with each step.
A pilgrim crosses a land that is full of stories. Cultural stories, and also stories of their personal life, with their family and friends.
In your life, has there been a journey that felt like a pilgrimage? Perhaps more than one! For this moment, I’d like to hear about one journey of yours where stories, memories, land and movement intertwined.
If you’d like you can pick one and share it with us in the comments.
Storyteller's Diary: A new kind of pilgrimage