I Am a Pilgrim

Something Juancho wrote on his Big Ring Circus blog a day or two ago got me thinking about pilgrims and how we're all on a kind of pilgrimage through this life. In fact, while it can mean a journey to a shrine or to a sacred place, it also means, according to Webster, "the course of life on earth." So each one of us is a pilgrim, whether we feel a sense of purpose and direction or we just take life as it comes.

See, whenever I read something Juancho has written, it stays with me and works like yeast to expand my mind -- one of the marks of a great writer, which he is. The next thing I knew, I was humming an old, familiar country hymn that sent me scurrying to Youtube to listen to the whole thing. Surprisingly, the best version I found is this one by The Byrds, what Wiki calls "one of the most influential bands of the 1960s." Yep, it's right here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omLysJCkP8E&list=RD18omLysJCkP8E  There were the same haunting lyrics I remembered: 
                     I am a pilgrim and a stranger 
                     Travelling through this wearisome land 

                     I've got a home in that yonder city, good Lord 
                     And it's not not made by hand.

Ajax Rock was both a pilgrimage and a destination. For a time, we celebrated births, buried our dead, remembered our pasts, shared our stories and triumphs, and walked with each other on the journey. I miss that and don't know where else to find it. In the past few days, I've read the entirety of ajaxrock.blogspot.com. I've laughed and cried, felt wistful and loved, relived milestones in our lives, and found nobody home. Then I made a decision to do what Juancho and some of you advised when I asked, "To rock or not to rock?" I'm going to carry on, so whether anyone else joins me or I continue the pilgrimage alone to my final destination, I'm planning to do it on Ajax Rock. I may ramble, tell stories, play games or music, scrub the old rock down, be mundane or rise to some semblance of eloquence if visited by my muse, but I can't think of a better place to do it. After all, it's the place Loie and I sat on as little girls, planning our next adventure or resting up from one we'd just had. It's the place we began our pilgrimage, and y'all can come or stay. But I bet our paths will cross somewhere along the way.

So here I am, back to the rock, still trying to fathom the mysteries of life, the twists and turns in our separate journeys that will end in the same place. We have all grown older, some of us wiser, though I can't claim that for myself. No, I've been on a long and circular search for a home for Zach and me after we both lost our houses two years ago. We've been to the mountain top, living in the wilds of Tucker County, moved back to a house in the 'hood in the next county over, and now we're back where we started from -- back in Shepherdstown again.

The reason I can't claim to have grown any wiser is that I'm pretty sure there was one big lesson I was supposed to learn from all that moving, all of that upheaval fraught with worry and disappointment, all of that fear and sense of futility that just left me thirsty and hungry for something I couldn't name. It plumb wore me out.

But now that we're in safe harbor again, I've begun to see that the lesson was there all along, right in front of me. I just couldn't see a big enough picture, because it's hard to get a good view when you're face down on the pavement. When I packed for that leg of my pilgrimage, throwing out most of my possessions and stripping down to the necessities, I forgot to bring something really important -- the thing I seem to have left behind in the rubble and ashes of our old lives. I forgot to bring faith, the very thing that is for me as necessary as the air I breathe and the water I drink. What is it in my DNA that makes me as stubborn and hard-headed as the dickens -- that makes me think I'm smart enough to head off on the journey without my compass or my GPS? When will I learn to walk by faith and not by sight?

The answer to that might come to me as I sit here on the rock again, the best place I've found to ponder and rest for the next leg of the journey. I am a pilgrim and a stranger -- even to myself. C'mon over if you need a place to rest and regroup. There's room for more.