Hello loves,

I just got another beautiful “AJ’s impact on my life” letter and it connected to the second thing I would have talked about at the funeral if I’d taken more time.  As I mulled the letter over, I half-remembered a poem that referenced that topic. That same night, as I went through my FB memories, a post showed up from eight years ago with the precise poem in question as well as an examination of how I was learning that particular lesson myself through experiences as a pilgrim on the Camino de Santiago. 

HERE IT IS: when we are vulnerable, raw, open, and in need, people can show up and love us. However, if this is a muscle we rarely flex, it can feel INTENSELY uncomfortable and undignified. This meeting-of-need asks of us a high price in exchange  – our ego, our pride, our privacy, the illusion of self-sufficiency.

By inviting us into their home, their family, their backyard, the hospital room, into the intimate details of their child’s body and their own hearts, D & J gave us a powerful example of how this principle works. Privacy for communion.  The illusion of ego for hot meals. False pride for grocery runs.  AND THEY EXPERIENCED BEING CARRIED BECAUSE OF IT. And beyond being carried, they are now connected in a deeper way to their community, and their community to them. By having needs, having them met, in turn helping meet needs…these all are healthy strands that continually connect us to each other and remind us that WE ARE NOT ALONE. Not to put too fine a point on it, but at the Last Supper when Jesus instituted Communion – when he broke the bread and shared it among his disciples, THE BREAD HAD TO BE BROKEN TO BE SHARED. Brokenness was the first law of communion.

Brokenness brings us together.

The programming is strong. I know that many/most/some of us have a part inside that’s cringing, insisting “No! That’s too high a price! I never want to be a burden! I can carry myself! No one gets to see my brokenness but me!”  If we can listen closely, though, our higher, wiser self will gently sit that proud, cringy part down and insist “THIS is how it’s supposed to work! No one lost any dignity! There was only kindness.  Only thoughtfulness. Only generosity and play dates and cleaning fairies swooping in at the last minute before company arrived. Wouldn’t YOUR life be better with that kind of support?”

Like the resonance that we all felt in witnessing the tremendous love surrounding AJ – the resonance that reminded us of our own beloved-ness,  this master class of Brokeness Opens the Way for Communion is the lesson that many of your have written to me about and something you’re newly curious and willing to explore in your own heart and life. 

“If I let people know what’s really going on…maybe I can experience being loved and carried also.  I’m willing to try.”

FB May 17, 2015.   Living Water

In my Camino experiences, need of any sort set me up for a sacramental experience when it was filled. I still can’t figure out how and why God seems to care about some things and fill those needs so quickly while others, seeming acutely urgent, wait. It’s all part of The Great Mystery. 

“Wherever a pain is, that’s where the cure goes;

wherever poverty is, that’s where provision goes.

Wherever a difficult question is,

that’s where the answer goes;

wherever a ship is,

water goes to it.

Don’t seek the water; increase your thirst,

so water may gush forth from above and below.

Until the tender-throated babe is born,

how should the milk for it

flow from the mother’s breast?” ~ Rumi

When my water was out and it was blazing hot and many km to the next town or fountain, a fellow pilgrim sharing with me became luminous communion. Jesus claiming to be the Living Water all of a sudden made sense in my very cells.  

When I was desperate for a siesta and the only grass available on either side was beyond a fence that said “privado” I heard a small voice say “Trust me. Walk on.” I walked around the bend and discovered a warm, protected non-privado area next to a creek,  with ripe blackberries hanging nearby and cobalt dragonflies flitting over the water, in the sunshine. “I will provide rest for your soul.”

I accidentally left my towel behind and discovered, in the lost and found of the very next pilgrim hostel, a newly laundered hand towel that I carried for the rest of the way. “So then, do not worry about what you will eat and drink and wear, for your Heavenly Father knows you need all these things.” Including a hand towel. 

I believe, no…I KNOW that exhaustion and need peel off my outer layer of callousness and the illusion of self-sufficiency. My tender inner self soaks up beauty, get wrapped in provision, remembers what matters, and that she is seen, cherished, and not forgotten.

*The Camino de Santiago is a 500 mile, 1200 year old foot pilgrimage in northern Spain, heading west toward Santiago de Compostela, the burial place of St James the Apostol. Thousands of people walk it every year. To learn more, the movie The Way is a great place to start.