Just got word that my friend Joan is half way through walking the Camino. She is seventy and alone and brimming over with courage and devotion. She loves God, Christ, and Mother Mary. Sometimes I get sad that a lot of kids today don't grow up with wonder and awe. When I get to know a friend like Joan, I feel so blessed to be fully in the presence of love. When she left for this walk, her courage and faith were so strong that she said if she died on the walk she would be happy. If she succeeded in finishing the pilgrimage she would be happy. If she had to turn back at any point she would be happy.
Her life has brought many of the usual challenges. They have made her more trustful and loving. How can we give this kind of gift to our kids and grand kids? What is the switch that turns a seemingly bad break into an opportunity to trust more? I think it is faith, believing in something that you can't prove. "Blind faith", what a great redundant expression! And blind faith kind of requires us to be grateful. If we can believe in a loving God, then all has to be well at all times. There can be no exceptions. If all is perfect because God loves us, then we have to be grateful at all times for the perfect out working of our lives.
I think this is my lesson from my friend Joan.
I think it is pretty much the same rap as I have given about karma, only with different words. Everyone who thinks about it has to know that at the mystical level, all great religions are the same. If you read the biographies of great mystics, you will forget the era, the religious affiliation, the words being used and find that the experiences they describe could often be interchangeable in a blind test. There it is again the 'blind' bit.
Many years ago when my son was starting college, I took him to a big auditorium at Harvard University to hear the great Sufi master, Pir Valiyat Inayat Khan. I wanted to see Pir at that time because he was very old and speaking nearby. It was a rare opportunity. This was my experience: We drove from New Hampshire and experienced all the usual tension of finding a parking lot in Harvard Square. (Sadly a very big challenge. The roads, after all were 400 year old cow paths.) Then the challenge of finding the building. Then the horror of seeing the line to get in. We got in. We found good seats. Pir V. came on the stage in all his handsome white robed, white haired, white bearded dignity.
He looked out at the packed audience, buzzing with the chatter and excitement of all of us. He spoke and said that we didn't have time, and he didn't have time to talk "about" spiritual stuff. He said, "lets do it." He asked us to close our eyes and he would get us started on a bit of a meditation. Holy shit!. I closed my eyes, my last conscious thought was wondering if it would be boring, and then heard him saying to open our eyes. Two hours had passed like one second. I had been so far out in the universe that I had memories of looking at the earth from other times and fantastic distance. I felt vibrantly happy and totally peaceful.
He allowed as how "That was pretty great." Then he said because he was a musician he had prepared for us a little treat. He had practiced a group of singers who came onstage and sang The Hallelujah Chorus by Bach. It was a great treat. Then he thanked us a left the stage. You could have heard a pin drop. This was not your usual Harvard lecture. There was nothing to critique, no room to be intellectual. This was a pure mystical experience.
I was so spaced out that I couldn't drive for a while. I was forced to eat chocolate for quite a while to get back in my body. I am still grateful. I can still get a great flashback, although I have never been able to replicate that meditation.
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