Amboy, California
Sunday, March 20, 2011
6:00 a.m.
“The Holy Spirit guides you into the life eternal, but you must relinquish your investment in death, or you will not see life, though it is all around you.”
A Course In Miracles
Text p. 225
Twelve days have passed since our group of 6 persons, 2 RVs and 2 automobiles left the pier at Oceanside, California under the banner “sole2soulwalk.com -- a 7-month walk across America: Imagining a World Where Women are Equally-Valued Decision-Makers in Partnership with Men.”
“What’s well-begun is halfway done,” said Benjamin Franklin, and I feel that our enterprise has enjoyed a great deal of loving and enthusiastic support which has launched us into the stratosphere of our mission. So far so good.
There have been, however, some challenges. The first one was a death in the family of the driver of my vehicle (RV2).
Smitty (Lester Smith, Jr.) is an angelic presence -- by that I mean an unflappable, heart-centered man -- a good and trusted friend of many years on the spiritual path who has volunteered to drive RV2 for the first month and the last. When he heard that his sister’s ex-husband had died, there was no doubt he would be drawn back to Los Angeles for the funeral to support his family.
Smitty, an extremely competent mechanic, boatbuilder, musician, author, and jack-of-all-trades has breathed life and love into our 1984 “Lindy” RV, freely supervising its repairs and undertaking many of the modifications and upgrades himself. Although my daughter Viveka, is a back-up driver, still, Smitty’s unforeseen absence gave us a bit of a tumble.
The second circumstance that has affected our progress was the disappearance of an adapter plug needed for my daughter to recharge her high definition video camera. Since her major function on this trip is to create a documentary film, this is both an urgent and important matter. All attempts to find a replacement quickly failed. When she realized that it was inadvertently left in the wall socket of a McDonald’s restaurant inside of the Walmart store in Hemet, California it was retrieved by McDonald’s personnel, but by that time, we had gone too far to return.
Fortunately, Smitty and I have a good friend, a former member of our Unity church in Culver City, who now lives in Hemet, and he was willing to send the adapter plug to us in Amboy, California, one of the only post offices in this desert area. So, we have been waiting for the weekend here in Amboy, a relic of an outpost on the old route 66, and may have to wait through Monday, but hopefully not longer than Tuesday.
And the third major challenge has been lack of -- or at least very intermittent -- cell phone and internet service. So here we sit at this railroad junction, parked in some cooling shade with all of our needs met for the moment, with nothing to do but absorb the purifying influence of the open landscape, and the fresh promise of Spring, as the equinox passes by under the full moon.
Detoxing? Withdrawing? Sleeping more than I might?
Oh yes, I forgot to mention a fourth major challenge: a 24-hour virus that passed through my lower bowel area, and kept me in bed for almost two days with pain that felt like menstrual cramps. (Go figure. I am 72. Not likely!) The second morning concluded with fever-like sweating.
But although this first dispatch has been all about physical conditions, obstacles and setbacks -- all rather mundane out of honest necessity -- the trip so far has been mostly about staying focused upon my mission. It has been about the sheer joy of walking the land, the rhythmic crunching of my footsteps mile after mile; the thoughts that come through, that can be turned into prayers and be lifted up and released. The pilgrimage is a very real aspect of this journey for me. I will speak more of this later.
It has been about certain uniquely beautiful souls with whom we have connected, couples, individuals, families, all spinning through my forcefield with a certain trajectory that can be felt as the landscape seems to move through me, rather than the other way around. The questions become, “What can I offer this person in this brief time we are together -- from a couple of minutes to a couple of hours?” “Can I listen carefully enough to determine if there is the possibility of a genuine exchange of value?” “What part of the message of our mission might lodge in a fertile spot in their experience?”
I feel that I am part of the nature of exchange -- like a bee or a hummingbird passing from flower to flower, both giving and taking something of value. Culture and civilization have always progressed in this manner: one person, one idea, one imagination, one inspiration, one heart at a time.
For now, I must stay focused upon my clear intention for this mission: “Leaving all baggage of the past behind, I seize the opportunity of this NOW moment to practice the art of the possible.”
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