Episode 9: The Nature of Pilgrimage: Inner and Outer Landscapes - with Regina Roman

Regina Roman has been leading pilgrimages and designing travel/study programs since she was 18. She is a spiritual director at the St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, author of published articles on pilgrimage and spirituality, and is an icon writer. She also studies with various shamans and native American medicine women on the ancient healing traditions. Her gift is in creating the space and the study program for a meaningful experience within the journey. Her wish for us is to sense the experience, feel the wonder and awe, and ponder upon all the threads that bind us through time, place and people. (from the Sapira website – see below)

Update: In our discussion of the Aramaic meaning of Sapira, I should have said if you pray in secret  "your being will blossom and flourish" (Matthew 6:6). - Ron Barnett

 Regina Discusses

- What makes something contemplative?
- Socrates on truth as a wandering that is divine
- Two aspects of the contemplative stance: receiving, expression
- What is pilgrimage? Why go one one? What makes one meaningful?
- Two elements: outer desire to see or experience something; inner wish for transformation
- The story of Gary’s experience of silence, stillness, and absence of boundaries
- Importance of preparation and clarity of purpose
- Holy curiosity and inquiry – the mind and heart as sources
- An Executive Coach encounters the King’s inner chamber at the Pyramids
- Sapira – Journey with a Purpose pilgrimages to Egypt
- The Aramaic Sapira means first glimmer of light/continued illumination
- Amanda Gorman inaugural poet “There is always light….if only we’re brave enough to be it”
- Group silence – "What tugs at your heart?"
- Religious affiliations of Sapira pilgrims
- Pilgrimage - any journey with the purpose of finding something that matters deeply
- Stories of intimacy: Regina’s birth and the nuns, Ron and the psychiatrist
- The I Ching: “there are forces bringing people together who need to be together”
- Grace and gratitude
- Sting and relief; Kabir – “the breath inside the breath”

References Mentioned

Sapira - Journey with Purpose website
The Art of Pilgrimage: The Seeker’s Guide to Making Travel Sacred, Phil Cousineau
Matsuo Basho, Japanese poet
The I Ching or Book of Changes 
Kabir Das, mystical poet

Transcript

Speaker 1:

Welcome. This is Ron Barnett, the host of All Things Contemplative, the podcast that explores the variety of ways in which life's contemplative dimension manifest itself through religion, through art science, and through experiences of nature. And otherwise, I want to welcome you to this first podcast of 2021, the new Year. We have some very, I think, interesting podcasts lined up for the new year, and this is our first one with Regina Roman. We're going to be talking about pilgrimage, but before we do, I wanted to, as I always do, invite you to submit any people or topics that you would like to see on the podcast, and I will see what I can do with making that happen. My email address is on the podcast blog and feel free to drop me a line. So today our topic is pilgrimage, and we're going to be looking with Regina Roman about pilgrimage, religious pilgrimages, possibly, and this is my term, secular pilgrimages.

We'll see where we go. Regina has been leading pilgrimages in designing travel and study programs all of her adult life. She's also a spiritual director with the Episcopal church, and she's authored various published articles on pilgrimage spirituality, and she's also an icon writer, and maybe we can get her to explain what that is, which I don't have not heard of that before. Regina has also has studied with various shamans and Native American medicine women on healing traditions. She feels her gift is in creating the space and the study program for a meaningful experience within the journey. Her wish for us is to sense the experience, feel the wonder, and awe and ponder upon all the threads that bind us through time, place, and people. Regina, welcome to all Things Contemplative.

Speaker 2:

Hi, Ron. Good to be here.

Speaker 1:

Good that you're here. We're going to begin with the question I ask all guests on the program is what makes something contemplative? What makes a person, place, thing contemplative? What would you say?

Speaker 2:

Wow, good question. And I think what I'll do is go back to Plato and Plato in his philosophy of language, which talked about Socrates and his idea of what truth is. And I love how he defines truth. Socrates define truth, which to me is an underpinning of the contemplative stance as a wandering that is divine. And I thought, what a wonderful way to describe truth, a wandering that is divine. So for me, what makes something contemplative is that divine quality at all things. And I love the word wandering because it indicates some type of movement. It is never static. So we could pass by a stone and see nothing but a stone, and then another time we may pass by and there's a certain quality of illumination, the sun might catch it, and there's a moment where we pause and we're connected with something deeper. And for me, that goes into the two components of the contemplative stance. One is receiving the oppression that we are all deeply connected through a common source, and then also the expression that we are deeply connected to a common infinite source.

And in receiving an impression, my goodness, that has to go through so many filters of my culture, my stories, my family. And I notice this often on pilgrimage that we will have a group of people and we could see, let's say a woman in the traditional headscarf and one person may receive the impression as, oh, that poor woman, she doesn't have a choice. It's a lack of freedom, it's a constraint on how she could dress. And then another person will receive that oppression and see the beauty in it and see our deep connectedness. Likewise, how do we express ourselves standing in the contemplative? There is a sense of expressing with an open mind, an open heart, a sense of wonder and awe and curiosity without judgment. So I go back to what Socrates said, a wandering of the divine, a wandering that is divine.

Speaker 1:

Nice. I wouldn't have thought of tracing it back to Socrates. So that's very illuminating. I

Speaker 2:

Think it was met in the contemplative, it was as a truth. But isn't it amazing when we can walk in life, listen in life, look in life and see the movements about us that is divine.

Speaker 1:

Regina, I thought what we would do is sort of lay out some basic concepts in the beginning and then we want to hear about your experience of leading groups of people on pilgrimages. But first we want to define what is a pilgrimage? Why go on one and what makes one meaningful? So maybe we could just start with a real simple question. What is a pilgrimage?

Speaker 2:

I would say a very simple answer is it's an inward journey that unfolds and an outer landscape. So if you are sitting in meditation and not moving, you can have a lot going on on the inside, but I would not call a sitting meditation of pilgrimage. The part about pilgrimage that is so powerful is the inner transformations had to occur. And I love to see how folks who, let's say for instance, go to Mount Sinai and they hear the stories. They know there's a story of the burning bush of Moses. So there is an outer desire to see Mount Sinai, but simultaneous with that is an inner wish to be open to whatever is revealed to them on the mountain. So it's not an expectation as we may have, let's say going on a vacation, we expect to relax, maybe have some good food disconnect from life.

The pilgrimage has an outer desire to see something or be somewhere or to experience the healing waters of lords. But there is also that inner wish of some type of transformation. It could be as simple as saying, I have an inner wish to travel with non-judgment. Now that is very difficult. So for instance, if you're in Cairo and you're bombarded with the senses of the spices and the sounds of the merchants calling saying, come my friend for you, I have a good price. Buy this, buy this. The sights, the sounds, it smells, it's like a commotion and you start thinking, oh, this is crazy. This is too much. These people don't know what they're doing or whatever it is. And then you have to stop and say, whoa, I'm judging. Let me pause and stop.

Speaker 1:

It sounds like that second element is, and maybe we can talk more about this later, is there's an unknown element to what is going to happen. You may have seen a picture book of where you're going. You may have read travel guides, but the inner longing, the inner intention seems to include the unknown

Speaker 2:

Rod that certainly says that very well about having that unknown element and the willingness to counter what we don't know. Because if we know everything, then we're not open to what we might receive. And one of the best illustrations that I could give of that is on one of our earliest trips, we had a gentleman who, and I'll call him Gary, came to the desert because he wanted to experience that stillness, the silence, a place with no boundaries. He wanted to receive that oppression deep in his soul. We had all settled for good night's sleep on this beautiful desert sands. And I was just falling asleep when I hear Gary screaming and I'm thinking, my goodness, what's happening? So I run over to him and asked how he was, and he said, it was so silent, I thought I had lost my hearing. And he just started to scream because it was the unknown quality of such a profound silence. But when he settled back into it by the next day he had such a deep appreciation of having no boundaries. His inner of silence became as deep as the outer silence. And with that, he then later shared with me, he had a sense of hearing harmony of the universe, vibrations of the cosmos, the voice of God, whatever it is that we call it of something more.

Speaker 1:

What makes a pilgrimage meaningful to a person?

Speaker 2:

I would say the very first part is to have a sense of preparation and a clarity about why you want to travel. So for instance, I have had folks who have come to Egypt and within the first few days there was a recognition that perhaps they would've been better off on a luxury cruise or a first class trip, although we stay at first class hotels. So the clarity comes from what you wish to see in the outer landscape, which we help facilitate. But then there are those inner wishes of saying, I'm traveling because I want to open my heart more to be more accepting, to be more aware. So that would be the first thing of what makes it meaningful is to have a sense of clarity. And we do ask our people to try to answer that for themselves.

Speaker 1:

Maybe we should say that the groups of people that you lead, you're mostly leading them, I guess currently on pilgrimages to Egypt.

Speaker 2:

Correct.

Speaker 1:

And we'll talk about your organization that does that. Let me, if I could be a bit of a devil's advocate and ask this. So let's take opening the heart as an example. Why couldn't a person open their heart without traveling, in other words, at their home? I'm reminded of the little zen quote, wherever you go, there you are.

Speaker 2:

Yes.

Speaker 1:

Right. So what would you say, because I must make a confession to you, Regina. I'm a bit of a skeptic when it comes to pilgrimages. People have asked me to go on them to Iona, to Scotland, to places, and I haven't gone. But as we'll talk about later, we can also talk about a sort of a broaden understanding of what a pilgrimage is and when we do that, and I share this a little later when we do that, I realize that I've been on pilgrimages and didn't know it. Yes, yes.

Speaker 2:

Ron. Yes.

Speaker 1:

So back to the meaning question, what makes a pilgrimage meaningful? Anything else you want to add to that?

Speaker 2:

Well, we could certainly play the devil's advocate because that's part of pilgrimage. We do have our devils, we have our angels that seem to always surround us. The other thing that does make pilgrimage meaningful is a sense of what I call a holy curiosity. And by curiosity I mean it begins with a chain of questions, small questions. And what I often notice is, for instance, if we are standing at the pyramids, the questions may begin with the mind, the intellect, when was it built? How many stones did it take? How much does the pyramid weigh? And then there's the questions start coming from a place of the heart. It might be, why does this place draw me? There's an old saying by the poet Basho who said, seek not what the old men where they went to go, but seek what it is that they were looking for.

So don't go where they go, but seek what all these other pilgrims were seeking. Namely what connects us, what are those connections? I'd like to give just a little story of this exact thing being to the pyramids. And we went inside the inner chamber, so it's a very small narrow passageway to the IT side, almost the middle of the pyramid. And you're standing probably a 10 meter square concrete room. So you are surrounded by hundreds of thousands of tons of granite. This was our first day, second day Cairo. And there was one woman who came, and this goes to your question, devil's advocate of a woman who came and her longing was to figure out her life's path in terms of should she continue with this executive coaching? Should she go a different path? And she wanted to be open to the possibilities. We went into the king's chamber and we always have a moment of silence. I invite everyone to stand against the walls, place their hands against the walls, and we talk about the ancient words that resonate like in the Hindu tradition, it's om the first language of the universe. In ancient Egyptian, it was who HU. So we talk about that word vibrations, who it's the whirling of electrons around the nucleus, it's the wings of a bird.

So as we stood there in silence, she had such a powerful moment at such a deep connection with the ancient ancient Egyptian tradition, with the cosmos, with her own total being her heart, mind, and soul, that for her, she had a sense of living within eternity in one second, that one second became impregnated with all of eternity. When we came out later, she said, this pilgrimage could end here and now and I would be happy. Okay, that was only one of 14 days. So she came with one thing but left with something else. And I think the beauty of pilgrimage is that you are given opportunities to experience things that you can't even imagine. So you may come wanting to open your heart and you leave with this sense of not only an open heart but a full heart.

Speaker 1:

And I hear you saying maybe that's not possible at home or sitting in your living room exclusively. There's something about the going there, the inner draw, the inner pool to go. And in one's inner intention that results in the fruition of meaning as you just well described in her case. Would that be accurate to say?

Speaker 2:

Very good, Ron. I would say when you think about it, our brain is a black box in subways because it depends on our senses to receive impressions from the outer world and then formulates and works with it. And that's not saying you cannot have these experience sitting in meditation or at home, but the world is more than an open book. It is so fast. And like the physicist who say, we only know 5% of the entire universe, 95% is hidden to us. And so we travel to hopefully uncover, discover and maybe recover some of the things that have been hidden, perhaps our own inner wisdom, our own intuition. Thanks. Within us that hasn't had the opportunity to come forth.

Speaker 1:

You've sort of started responding to this question, Regina, you have a, is it a business, I suppose it is a business called RA journey with a purpose. Can you tell us about that? And what does that word RA mean? I'm not familiar with it.

Speaker 2:

Ra is a word in the ancient Arabic language. AIC was the language that yashua Jesus spoke. That was the lay language at that time. At superior means the first glimmer of light, and it also means illumination. When we go on pilgrimage, often we look for that first glimmer of light to create some kind of illumination within us. That first glimmer of light could be seeing sunrise at the top of Mount Sinai, which is extraordinary. It's unlike any other sunrise, although physically it's the same. But there's times where we already have a sense of illumination within our inner soul, our inner depths, and then we see those first glimmer of lights that we couldn't see before. And if you saw the inauguration yesterday, I loved the poem by the new poet Laureate Orman. And when she said, to see the light and be the light, I have gone to Egypt so many times and every time I think I know something, I've seen it. I've seen the pyramids, I don't know how many times, and it is always new. There is always something else because something in me has been illuminated and I see more and by seeing more, it also is this wonderful dance of opening up within me for a deeper illumination, wisdom, understanding, and even intuition.

Speaker 1:

The Aramaic just sort of a parenthetical here is in the Bible where Jesus is talking about if you do the right thing, you'll be rewarded. And so the English word is reward, which we tend to think of as certainly in a spiritual context, is not so good being rewarded for something like you perform and you'll be rewarded. My understanding is from people who know Aramaic, that what the real translation of that word in Aramaic is if you do the right thing, your being will blossom and flourish. I don't know if you've heard that or not, but we could say that supposedly that's what Jesus actually said, your being will blossom and flourish.

Speaker 2:

Beautiful, beautiful. And I love that whole image. And it's also, there's another passage where it says a good tree will bear good fruit and a bad tree bears bad fruit. Very moralistic, very judgmental. And as I understand from the Aramaic, it is not good or bad, but the way the Arabic, its rootedness is in the word ripeness. So it would be a ripe tree, bears ripe fruit, but an unripe tree does not bear ripe fruit. And then the same spirit as you're talking about rod, like pilgrimage, if we are in a place of ripening, if we are fed, if we have sun, if we have water, we are going to bear ripe fruit.

Speaker 1:

So Regina, so you take groups of people to Egypt, I think at once a year. I assume Covid has put a crimp in that a little bit.

Speaker 2:

Yes.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I just received my global entry card the other day having started the application process a year ago. So I was very happy to complete it and to receive the card, but now what

Speaker 2:

You look at it and dream of the places you'd like to go to.

Speaker 1:

Okay, I like that. Yeah. Can you say a little bit about what you do on your pilgrimages to Egypt and how it kind of combines those two earlier elements that you mentioned, seeing sort of an outer aspect, seeing a place and all that goes along with that, and also the more inner purpose that is expressing.

Speaker 2:

One of the things we begin with is to make sure everyone is prepared to go to Egypt. So we focus first on the logistics. We have our packing lists, we have recommended readings, we have suggested clothes to bring sunscreen hats. We want our people to be prepared so that they don't have to worry about getting sunburn, instead can focus on being there in the moment, do all the preparations. And that is extraordinary beginning with chiros. So we plan the trip to enhance the whole inner journey. We begin in Cairo and our days are rather full. For instance, going to the pyramids of Spanx, the Cairo Museum, we go to the Muhammad Ali Mosque. We touch upon the beautiful traditions in the Muslim tradition, and we do the fun things of going to the bazaar, learning how to barter a little bit within each of these days.

There is also an invitation for part of the inner journey, and it's very, very simple. It is non-religious. It is not threatening in any way, but it is a tool or practice that can be used every day of life. So for instance, the very first day when people still have a bit of jet lag, we will focus on sensations, our body sensations, and we invite people, just be aware, where are your feet? If you're becoming overwhelmed with the sights and sounds, just pause and feel your feet. That brings you back into the moment. Component to facilitate the inner journey is, as I mentioned, we invite people one day to pay attention to their body sensations. It's amazing how, especially in the Cairo Museum, we get so caught up with the intellectual parts of it that we forget that we are sensing things around us. Another day we will invite people to pay attention to their feelings, what is being triggered from the outer landscape.

And another day we may invite people to be aware of their thinking, their thoughts, and maybe to just invite them to observe in non-judgment what it is that they're thinking about the day. One of the other components that facilitates theater journey on these pilgrimages is we take time to linger at places, to pause, to have moments of silence, to let all these oppressions that come in towards us settle so that by the end of the day we do have a small gathering. There is no recap. It is a simple question of what tugged at your heart this day? And we invite people to speak out of the silence at what tugged at their heart and offer it as a gift to the group and the community, and then to go back into silence. And Ron, I've got to tell you, my gosh, those have to be some of the most powerful moments in all our days and those journeys, the things and the heartfelt observations that come out. So these are some of the things that help facilitate the inner journey along with the outer journey that we are responsible for doing.

Speaker 1:

To ask somewhat of a mundane question in light of what you just shared, shared, but here it goes, the people who go on your pilgrimages to Egypt, are they Christian? Are they Muslim? Who are they? Because I know you go to a Christian monasteries,

Speaker 2:

Saint Catherine's Sinai, we visit the ancient fourth century monasteries in Wadi Naron. This is the beginning of monasticism. But to go back to your question, who are these people? Some people might say a little bit crazy, but for the most part, anybody is welcome that is desiring to have the experience of a pilgrimage. So I would say the majority of our folks in terms of traditions are Christian. We've had Catholic priests, we have had Duns, we have had laypeople, but we have also had atheists, diehard proclaimed atheists who benefited greatly. We have had Hindu, none, I don't think any Buddhists, but it's a good mixture of people, which provides some of the best conversations.

Speaker 1:

I recently, and I think you're familiar with Phil COO's book, the Art of Pilgrimage. I've heard you speak highly of it as a good book. He in that book said that any journey with the purpose of finding something that matters deeply to a person is a pilgrimage or can be a pilgrimage. And this gets at something I mentioned earlier about can you have gone on a pilgrimage and not fully be conscious of having been on one? In other words, you made a journey of some sort, but maybe it wasn't until you got back home or returned home that you realized the significance of the journey. And he does things like, as examples is there might be a art exhibit at a museum that you've wanted to see all your life. Let's say you were born, raised and lived your whole life in New York City, and there's an exhibit there, so it just means catching a subway and going down to the museum or the art exhibit and seeing this exhibit, or it might be returning to where you grew up a homeland. And so I'd like to get your views on that since in my stereotypic thinking what you do is sort of a classic or a classical type of pilgrimage that you go on.

And certainly other people lead other kinds of pilgrimages to different places, all to good effect, all to good effect. But I'd like to get your views on this anos idea that the pilgrimage can be that kind of journey and it needn't be necessarily it including distant travel or going to significant historical places.

Speaker 2:

Yes.

Speaker 1:

Necessarily does that make, what do you think of that?

Speaker 2:

I'll just start with a story. I was bored in a convent in Germany, a small town, and for my 50th birthday, I wanted to go back to that convent with my mother. And as we stood at the door, I was so overcome with a sense of gratitude for all my ancestors because my mother stood there 50 years ago as a pregnant woman walked in and two weeks later came out with a baby. And it was a pilgrimage of sorts to honor and give gratitude to all those ancestors who came before me to bring me to that moment. I was so overcome with emotion and gratitude, and that is a pilgrimage of sorts, and that could be even to an art museum, to see a piece of art. The question I would ask is, what is it that draws you to see this piece of art?

And to have that holy curiosity of asking the deeper questions, which is what makes it a pilgrimage in terms of COO's quote about something that matters deeply is often on pilgrimage. Unlike a tourist trip to a museum or vacation at the beach, is what I notice is there's an element of intimacy. And the word intimacy is often broken into me. See, it is a longing to see and to be seen. So perhaps seeing a piece of artwork creates an intimacy where you are seeing something extraordinary. But that piece of artwork is also looking back at you and opening up, seeing you in a way that gives you new sight. There is that element of intimacy

Speaker 1:

For the listeners, I live outside of Washington DC but I grew up in Kentucky and I'm now retired, but in the sixties, I was a flower child of the sixties and I ended up going to see a psychiatrist at my mother's encouragement. I certainly didn't want to go, but at her encouragement and my mother had left sitting around the house, some books, and they weren't sex education books. This is often common that parents leave around, but they were books on contemplative topics and spiritual topics by PD osinski, by je, by Yoga Nanda. And she had been going to a lecture series by this psychiatrist on the psychology of man's possible evolution by Osinski. And so I went, anyway, this psychiatrist, I only really saw him formally about three or four times, and he sort of became, for lack of a better term, a kind of spiritual father for me.

And he and I ended up going through a psychotherapy training institute together, receiving training to become therapists and so forth and so on. Well, eventually he retires and I move away and my life goes totally different. I haven't seen him in many decades. And I paid a visit to see an aunt a couple years ago in Kentucky, and I had a desire to go and see the psychiatrist, even though he was long retired. He was 90 years of age. He lived on a little farm, had moved out, bought a farm, lived in a little farm at the Foothills in Kentucky, and I went and visited him and we spent the afternoon together on his porch talking about all and everything to quote Good Chief all and everything. Yeah, it came time where we began to become hungry and had a little garden out. And so we went out to his garden and picked lettuce and went in and made a salad together. I realized at the time, all I knew was is that I wanted to go see this guy because he had been so helpful to me as a young man when I saw him when I was 20 years old, 50 years before this visit. And as I began to think, we began actually to prepare for this podcast, I began thinking a lot more about pilgrimage, anos ideas. And it struck me that what I was doing and visiting him was expressing my gratitude, which even now I feel it coming from my heart.

That was in the summer and in the fall, he died. And it struck me, it had this element adventure because I got lost trying to find this little farm. And even GPS wasn't helping me. I finally had to stop at this little, at this home and ask for directions. So I know Kino talks about there being risk, a little bit of risk is very much needed on pilgrimages, manageable risk if that's not a contradiction in terms. So it struck me that I had made a pilgrimage, and it wasn't clear in the beginning, given your definitions, Regina, that I was going on it. It was just a draw to go and to see him. I didn't know that he was going to die. I didn't know if he was sick or healthy or anything. You have an assessment of that journey. The

Speaker 2:

First thing is what a beautiful story, Ron, just so heartfelt, just hearing you talk about it, there's that sense of intimacy between you and this person. The gratitude, which is also part of the ancient traditions of pilgrimage, is to bring an offering. It's not just about taking your offering was gratitude. I mean a beautiful, beautiful, as you also said, adventure, where you have some obstacles, some risks, and it's your own hero's journey. And one of the other things about a pilgrimage is how it lingers within us and how it begins to yeast

Speaker 1:

Within

Speaker 2:

Us and bubble up in different ways. So my question to you is, what is your overall sense of this journey that you made? Journey? What does this mean to you?

Speaker 1:

This gets into the use of language, which is always problematic. I was reading a book recently by Tom Yeomans, who I'm going to be having on the podcast next month. And Tom has written a book called Holy Fire, the Process of Awakening Soul, the Awakening Soul. And one of the things he talks about is identifying who your spiritual allies have been in your life, so to speak, or who've helped your soul awaken. And it could be historical people, Socrates, Plato, the Buddha, or it could be people you've known. And I think for me, the overall gist of this was that there is grace that's operating in the universe. And for some reason it brought together the psychiatrist and myself and then many decades later, my reconnection with his son, the Zen roi. And we had just David and I, so there's that, and I feel great gratitude for that kind of grace, that grace that was demonstrated. And

It's sort of said, why me? Why for example, did I end up working with Thomas Keating for so many years, this Baptist country, Methodist boy from Kentucky, not even a Catholic. And there was a bond there that endured and it's like, and I very much experienced that as some kind of grace. There's a quote from the etching. Are you familiar with the etching? The ancient Chinese wisdom book was two, 3000 years old. I'm not sure how old it is, but very old. And there's a hexagram in the i Ching that goes, there are forces in the world. There are forces in the world bringing people together who need to be together. We may not understand it intellectually before, during, or even after, but it has great poignancy when that happens. Yes. Did I answer your question?

Speaker 2:

You're the host of this podcast now, but you know Ron, wait, you just did so eloquently and with grace is to offer to really this moment that sense that our whole life is a pilgrimage. It is a contemplative travel through time and space, not knowing what forces back at us. And oftentimes when we heed the call, there is that sense of being overwhelmed with treasures far beyond what we could imagine. And yet at other times, as we've talked about, there are obstacles, hardships, risks, real, real difficulties, whether it's health, illnesses, deaths, and to still approach life as you just did with such grace is extraordinary. Would you like to leave pilgrimages around?

Speaker 1:

Well, let me meditate on it.

Speaker 2:

The other thing,

I just have to mention this, that we are nature and we do represent a greater nature. And in nature there's this concept called sting and relief. Sting as in like the sting st of a V or a nettle, poison vy and leaf. And what that means is oftentimes in nature, the antidote to a toxin or a poison or a hardship is close by. So the jewel weed grows often near poison ivy and the juice of it can mitigate the effects of poison ivy. Same with nettle. And I'd like to believe what I heard in your story is often the antidote to our own, whether it's problems, difficulties, questions. The antidote is as close as our own heart. Within our own heart, is that wisdom and that intuition that becomes the balm of what those difficulties are. And I love, and I'll just end with this one thought that who was an Indian mystic?

God was talking to him and said, Kabi, are you looking for me? Are you looking for me in the church? I am not there. Are you looking for me in the temple? I am not there. Are you looking for me on the holy mountain of Sinai? I am not there. I'm editing this a little bit. But he then says to him, I am, but in the tiniest house of time, I am the breath within your breath. And Ron, that's what you just offered all of us, is that beautiful sense, a moment of the breath within the breath.

Speaker 1:

Well, thank you. I would say such is available open to everyone, of course. And I think the keynote is that openness. I think we go to school, we grow up and we sort of follow various norms, getting married, having children, and we're not really taught how to be open to the unplanned, the unexpected, the serendipitous and to the opportunity availability of amazing grace. One thing I do want to ask you, Regina, as we began to move towards closure, I wanted to ask you, is there anything that we haven't touched on that that you would like to touch on? And not that there has to be, I don't want to put you on the spot, but I do want to provide the space.

Speaker 2:

Ron, I think you end up with a beautiful story and life is a pilgrimage. And I would just invite listeners to do simple awareness practices of just paying attention to their body sensations, their heart feelings as you did the way thoughts develop, how we adjust the impressions of life, and then how do we express that? And I think what you offered is within your story is that openness sets of curiosity, a willing to take a risk. In the adventure of that journey, you took sets of compassion, kindness, bringing offerings of gratitude that we allow grace. Grace is always there, but we allow it to find a home within us or to find a home within those that we speak with or serve. So I would say you said it all, Ron, and if you ever do a pilgrimage, I'll certainly come on it.

Speaker 1:

Well, we'll have to do part two, Regina and I promise not to tell any stories. We'll shine the show light entirely on you. I think I've learned a lot from what you've shared today. I hope our listeners have learned something and found it enlightening. I know I have. Again, I want to thank you very much for coming. I've been wanting to sort of meet you, so to speak for some years. Facebook only takes you so far in that regard, and this has certainly been a delight and anything you want to close with

Speaker 2:

Gratitude for inviting me and also for what it is that you are offering to host this. I'm sure this is an adventure in and of itself. So thank you, Ron. I love being with you, and this has been a great pleasure, my heartfelt gratitude, thank you.

Speaker 1:

And the same from me to you. So that'll bring this podcast to a close. I wish everyone well. I'll see you down the road. Peace. And with that, this episode of all Things Contemplative comes to a close. I hope you found it interesting and informative and will join me for the next episode. Peace.