Reflections

62.5 more miles to go on my pilgrimage. The Camino de Santiago has been around for more than a thousand years. It’s 480.8 miles across the rolling hills of northern Spain. Medieval pilgrims started where they were. I did the same, virtually, as the pandemic dictated, at the start of 2021… It’s just that I thought I’d already be changed by now.

It’s been hard to talk about God lately. Something in how I experience the divine is shifting, and I can’t really put words to it yet. The old way has fallen away but the new one has yet to emerge. This shifting happens in all of our faith journeys. It’s a natural part of the process.

In this season of reflection and gratitude, I am reminded of what my son and I witnessed seven weeks into the pandemic in May 2020. I offer it again now. May it help us to remember how deeply connected and beloved we all are.

I grew up in the Catholic Church, but not in the ways you’d imagine. It’s true I wore my special Sunday dress to Mass, the one with the flowers and the ribbon tied in the back. I sat in the pew next to my parents.

This afternoon I sit on a swing, listening to the cicadas sing. Sunlight streams through the treetops. My son is whizzing past me, his legs pumping hard. Orange shorts and bright purple tank top fly back and forth. A sense of peace washes over me. I am enough. My son is enough. Right here, right now, in the middle of a seemingly endless global pandemic, this moment is enough.

It’s funny how a summer can change you. In June, I remember thinking that we had turned the corner on the pandemic. Here it is mid-August and I am wondering if the pandemic will ever end. This time last year felt just as daunting, and the tiniest of red geraniums stirred new hope in me. I offer this story again, praying that grace finds you wherever you are and carries you forward.

Years ago, I wrote the prayers of the faithful for Mother’s Day. It is a lay ministry, crafting the petitions sent forth by over 3,000 people on Sunday mornings at church. We prayed for everyone who is a mother, everyone who aches to be a mother, and everyone who declined the role or had it declined for them. It is a day of beauty and of pain. That same May, as I waited for my adoption to finalize, I spent Mother’s Day at a Haitian celebration.

I was 43 miles into my Camino de Santiago pilgrimage when the pain surfaced. Not from the typical blisters or corns. Nor the pulled muscles or sunburn. I’m walking a virtual 480-mile pilgrimage across the northern part of Spain (via an app on my phone). I’d been averaging around three miles, sometimes five, each week. I was finally gaining some momentum when an overwhelming sense of anger became my most unwelcomed companion.

No doubt, it has been a year. 365 days of uncertainty, death tolls, variants, vaccines, and prayerfully hope. I was curious to know what I wrote last spring when we assumed the pandemic might only last a few months at best. I offer my words again in honor of the one-year anniversary. They seem as timely now as they did then.