Days 4, 5 and 6
We left Pamploma today, famous for the annual running of the Bulls down the center of the old city. The walk was especcially beautiful with rolling hills on both sides of el Camino. The pastoral land of sheep and cattle of the last three days has given way to corn and...
Clearing & Cleaning Differences
How is our journey a travel of ministry and not just a tour? We start today on the pilgrimage to Santiago. I am asking Spirit to guide my feet. Each action, small or large, is done with consciousness. Traveling as a Quaker includes three stages of the journey: 1)...
All Fares Well
My neighbor Jude and I spoke across a raspberry patch. Prickly sucklings run between our fence. The honeybees buzzed, the day floating down on us like rose petals. Wait. Honeybees? Why was Jude watering the raspberries? I finished eating all those red dollops of...
On Leaving
We had planned to leave Cambridge on Monday morning, soon after I finished a conference call that could not be rescheduled. After a whirlwind pack up and clean, we finally left the house at 4:45pm. We arrived very late that night at Minga's parents home on Maryland's...
A New Leaf
Are you all ready? Have you packed everything you need? Written your last will and testament? Yes and No. It’s true that Jonathan and I are embarking on a 10 month journey taking us half-way around the planet. Baltimore to Denver to Seville to Jerusalem to Kigali to...
Cool Spring during Heat Week
Police are discriminating against people of color, black and brown are getting stopped, frisked and killed. April 14 was Stop Mass Incarceration Day: police cannot continue to kill innocent citizens. This week is also Heat Week at Harvard U. Today students have closed...
Quaking for Peace
Some proclaim that peace is possible. Really? Where? Does it last? Quakers and Amish and some intentional communities have islands of peace. Some scientists think we can abolish war. I certainly pray for it. I thought our economy depended on war. Certainly our...
Changing Myself, Not the Climate
I wrestle with what Holy Spirit asks of me. Since I swim in the waters of the empire called the USA, I'm blinded by my culture. This full moon the Spirit presents stronger than ever as Gaia. I’m reflecting this month on Native American voices that I heard in a book...
Climate Change is our Love Story
I am growing slowly, steadily. Imagine a dandelion, stretching its yellow tendrils. in the face of climate disaster I’m humbled but not cowed. I am reconfiguring the pieces of my life. The tempests, the droughts, the melting ice caps are speaking to us louder than any...
Peace with a Pint of Irish
I was in Ireland all of 20 days and I've been puzzling "why is the human race so violent and yet so loving?" How can this be? I can't find a kinder warmer people than the ones I met on Dublin streets. The Irish seem more active in their churches than other Europeans....