Unpack Your Socks

I've blogged numerous times in the past about packing for the Camino. Last week I read a blog post "Unpacking from the Journey" https://www.episcopalcafe.com/unpacking-from-the-journey/  and it made me think... So here's a reflection on the notion of unpacking.

Most people who have ever backpacked or gone on camino spend lots of time wondering what to bring. I'd say most Camino pilgrims who have read up on the pilgrimage have spent HOURS thinking, shopping, weighing, evaluating. Not a single item goes in that backpack or daypack without careful attention to its weight and utility.

I'm down to the following for me:

• One pair of walking shorts/pants combo.
• One pair of shorts in case you have to wash your shorts. 
• Two quick dry shirts.
• One lightweight jacket
• One poncho
• Two underwear
• A buff (scarf/bandana combo)
• A light charger for your phone that also acts as an extension cord so that you can share the limited outlets with others.
• A wide brim hat.
• Prescriptions
• Vaseline & Compeed/Mokeskin/blister patches
• Water camel
• Day pack
• Walking stick
• Lightweight/cheap flipflops/sandals
• Toiletries
• Either a sleeping bag (for rustic trails) or sleeping bag liner for Camino Frances
• A lightweight back brace because I have back issues
• And most important: 4 pairs of incredible socks

With the backpack, it shouldn't exceed 10% of your body weight for a long journey. Every little bit counts.

I am careful in how I pack. I place daily things at the top or sides and less frequently used items deeper inside. There's lots of attention to packing every day before I head out. I adjust the pack midway to make sure the weight is evenly distributed so I don't hurt myself.

Most people overpack. They bring too much. My first camino was wildly overpacked. I wasn't even close to only 10% of my body weight. And my second camino, the 600 miler, I allowed myself to overpack but had just enough sense to remember lessons from the first one; I brought things I wouldn't mind leaving behind. Because that's what I did on that first camino. I left 1/2 of my stuff behind.

We carry too much.

Like the stone that sits in our pocket to be left behind at the Cruz de Fero, our fears and anxieties hold us down, causing pain in hidden ways - perhaps not at first, but eventually. We trudge on thinking we can't do with less because if there's an emergency we will be without. But as we do so, we creep ever so slowly towards our own internal emergencies.

And that's when we realize you have to leave things behind.

We dump things. It's somewhat comical, somewhat sad, and always with calm knowing when I watch someone at the albergues deciding what to dump from their backpack. They yearn for the quick fixes that will help them feel better.

It's so much like life itself that I sometimes wonder if it needs saying. But we forget. And on our next trip, we need reminders. And on every subsequent trip, like the journeys around the sun we make every year, we learn a little more about what to take. For example, I've learned that socks matter more than anything else in the backpack. Seriously. Socks can make or break a long walking trip. I remember as a child that I was disappointed when I got socks for Christmas or birthday gifts. But now? I ask for them. And I am careful that I never leave behind something as special as socks.

The real lesson in packing is not what you take, but what you leave behind.

Leave behind those stones, those comfortable trinkets of our hearts that we think we need but just get in our way. Bring only that which makes every single footstep lighter, every single moment brighter, every single experience remarkable. All else leave behind.

And if you take them, leave them on the side of the road, like the grave markers you see all along the camino, marking and remembering that which you choose to leave behind. Laundry detergent? Good bye. Extra clothes? Adios. Heart ache? Adieu. Tears? Let them evaporate into air we share between us.

We talk about what we bring and not what we leave behind. We also forget to talk about what we do at the end of the journey. We unpack.

Some people turn that bag upside down and dump it out on floor. Most people take things out carefully, putting things down briefly, and hurry to get the clothing into a proper washing machine. If we bought some souvenirs, we set them aside to enjoy. We share the gifts as soon as we can.

Other things take longer. Sometimes I wonder where my water pack or poncho is and I realize it's still in the camino backpack. We simply don't spend anywhere near as much time unpacking as we did packing.

In fact, this ritual of unpacking happens as often as we pack. For every time we pack that backpack - every single morning - we unpack parts of it - every evening. You have to reach in and see what's in there and decide if you need it right then or there or it can be set aside for now.

It took me a while to realize it, but that ritual of unpacking is meditative and spiritual. You simply have to pause. If you unpack hastily, it makes re-packing that much more difficult. If you unpack without thinking, you might misplace or forget where you put something. If you unpack without reflection, you could just be unpacking something that you didn't need.

And such is life. We forget to pay attention to unpacking the events that make up life itself. We do it hastily, or thoughtlessly, or without reflection and we wonder why we spend so much time thinking and packing again the next day.

But if we pause, reflect, and think, what wonders we discover. I get delighted, just thrilled every day on camino, when I take out a pair of dry clean socks. I wash the laundry including the socks, and as I dry, I joyfully take out and put on the soothing clean ones. They might not bring you as much as joy as to me, but for my feet, they're better than even a foot bathe.

Wouldn't it be great if we could do that with our lives? Do you know which things in your life, something as trivial as socks, make you happy? Comfort you? Soothe you? Heal you?

Do you ritualize that joy? Do you take your joy for granted? I hope you don't take your socks for granted. Don't wear, wash, hang out to dry your socks without recognizing how they felt on your long walk.

I put on my socks with joy every day. I wash them at the end of the day's journey, ridding them of the soil but knowing that the toil and dirt wears at them just a little bit every day. But I have them for now. I let them dry and then pack them. And the cycle repeats.

So I must ask... what are the socks in your backpack, the things that could bring you joy daily? What are the socks that you pack lovingly and unpack with anticipation? Or do you forget about the joy that socks bring you, putting them on without remembering what they mean to you?

May you unpack your socks that are there waiting for you in your backpack, there because they were packed just for you, and may you wear those socks with comfort and joy.

Joy Finding

Our crazy little creche on our fireplace is an oddball mixture of the mass-produced and predictable along side the delightful finds from somewhere on our travels. At the core are a manger, Joseph, and Mary that are made in plaster. The plaster baby Jesus showed up on Christmas morning, having spent the past few weeks in hiding behind the manger. The Magi are off to the side of the mantle, slowly but surely making their way to a January 6 Epiphany appearance, on the Twelfth Day of Christmas.

Meanwhile, a zoo of sorts sits around the scene. There's the glass camel Christmas ornament that we found in Luxor, Egypt. There's a clay Pucara bull from Cuzco, Peru that we found after our hike to Machu Picchu. The little Dala horse that I got during a winter visit to Stockholm, Sweden watches over the baby. An African giraffe and zebra from Ten Thousand Villages are perched beside the creche. A disproportionately large terracotta horse from Xian, China towers over the plaster sheep. And scattered around this scene are angels from so many places and St Nick, historically and literally from Turkey.

So many shopping finds. It occurred to me that though we purchased the animals or were given all these angels, they represented joyful moments that delighted us or the person who gave them to us. The discovery of these individual creatures brought pleasure. And I totally enjoy bringing this weird assortment of characters together as our nativity scene every year.

I was pondering about why I liked doing this. I giggle every time I see that fireplace this time of year. One aspect is that it's bringing unexpected things together to tell a story. But I think what makes it particularly enjoyable is that these finds are positioned by us to tell a story about the greatest find: the finding of the baby Jesus. They are in a story about finding something joyful in unexpected places. They are literal store finds in a representation of the great finding.

And when the Magi appear at this nativity scene, the finds get wackier. Because multiple nativity sets have come and gone over the years, we have a baseball team of plaster Magi. Added to the caravan is a wooden Don Quixote from Avila, Spain (as in St Teresa of Avila). And the nested dolls from Russia, deliberately unnested as the women search for Jesus. And so on and so on.

All that searching, seeking, yearning. All that finding. All around the discovery of a newborn baby. Joy sometimes comes both in the finding and in the struggle to find.

This past Christmas day, we spent the morning with Stephen's family. Then, mid-day, we headed an hour away towards San Diego where my parents were visiting my sister in Murietta for the week. It was a big family coming together from miles around to spend the afternoon and evening together. My sister's twin boys came from Northern California to surprise their grandparents and sister. She hosted a feast for us all, and my parents got to watch their large family playing games, breaking bread (or pancit), and telling stories.

When Stephen and I got home late that night, we opened our own gifts to each other and went to bed. We never heard the phone ring. When I awoke the next morning, I listened to a voice mail message and read countless texts from my nephews and sister that my mom had fallen in the middle of the night and they had to take her to the emergency room. They found my mom in the bathroom, blood everywhere as she gashed her head on the corner of the wall. As dawn approached, after a CT scan showed she was fine, they were able to return home, a little scared, a little relieved, a whole lotta tired.

I cannot imagine my niece finding my mom like that, as unlike me, she's never worked in a hospital. I heard the fear in her voice when we spoke. My mom, though, says that she wasn't scared. She wondered if this was the end, but she wasn't frightened. She couldn't stay awake so perhaps she was unable to process what was happening from an emotional level. She was relieved they heard her fall, had found her, had lovingly cared for her. My Dad was thankful that the family was around to help.

I suspect that it's not normal to compare the finding of a newborn baby, the incarnation of love and life, to finding a mom bleeding on the floor, but I felt the connection nonetheless. There's a lot to think about when so much happens in such a short time.

My mom is in her 80s now and needs to remember to use her cane, especially when she's tired, in an unfamiliar setting, when she's alone. We wonder sometimes how long we'll have her and pray that it'll be for many more years, but we know we can't control it. My family found her, lying in blood, in a humble room like a bathroom, with fear, with love. They wondered if this was the end. She's fine now and we pray we can enjoy our time together as best we can.

Jesus was found with Mary. It was probably messy, bloody, scary. Mary was tired and in an unfamiliar setting. She knew that the baby was to be called Jesus ("God Saves" in Hebrew) and perhaps wondered how long she would have him, knowing she didn't control it. In a humble place, she gave birth to love. She and Joseph probably wondered what this beginning would bring. Jesus the baby was safe in their arms and they probably enjoyed their time together as best they could.

Joy comes unexpectedly. Sometimes there's anticipation, sometimes there's sheer surprise. Sometimes we have to go out of our way to arrange the figures in our life to bring joy to us. Sometimes we walk miles, sometimes we walk down the hall. Sometimes we just sit in the emergency room or in a manger, waiting for word, waiting for Good News.

We cannot make joy appear. We can only position ourselves, orienting our hearts and minds in a way that gives us the opportunity to see it, feel it, grasp it in our hands. Whether we grasp the hand of a baby, or grasp the hand of an older parent, we cannot make ourselves joyful at what we have. We can only be open to it. Be ready for it.

Many times, we walk away in horror, sadness, brokeness, when what we hoped for and what we yearned for does not happen. Our need for joy, for unending love, of inter-relatedness, can suffocate under the realities of our mortal lives. We don't always get what we want. We can't force a fairy-tale ending to every story.

Yet we can still hope, because the promise of Christmas was fulfilled. In the worst circumstances, there's always a chance for hope. And even if things turn out badly, we dive deeper into what things matter most, because at one time we had found love, we saw it, we touched it.

So when the unthinkable happens, when the fears and the exhaustion and the tears build up inside you threatening to bring you down, remember that you can still be surprised. You can still discover Good News in the most unlikely of places. You can orient yourself to the star of the east buried in your heart, perhaps while the tears are falling from your face, and offer a precious place, a humble place, for joy to be born. And maybe, just maybe, joy can find you.

The Counselor is Inn - Reflections from a Christmas Party

Every year, I wonder if I'll be invited to any Christmas parties and, if invited, whether I'll attend. Since becoming a Lay Counselor for All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, I know that we'll always have at least one invitation. But this year, with me feeling downcast because of recent national events, I was wondering if I could be up for the cheer. Last night, at the Lay Counseling Ministry Christmas potluck, I felt refreshed and enlivened.

As we gathered, many of us talked about our recent fears for our country. There's something about sharing our concerns and sadness, our vulnerability and our worries, in a setting of joyful anticipation that seems cruelly ironic at best, or at least woefully inappropriately timed. But it felt soothing to know that there are others who are in the same boat I'm in. I felt at ease being the safety net (or safety pin) for others, as they were a safe place for me. We could share in trust.

You sort of expect that, given that this was a group of people who offer themselves up to listen and offer counseling to other parishioners in a professional, discreet fashion. The ministry offers 10 free sessions with a counselor to any parishioner who needs an ear, a sounding board, a wailing wall. Though we will refer you to professional psychologists if your situation puts you in harm's way, we are able to support many in the community for a few months. And last night, we supported each other.

In doing so, we were able to smile and laugh and be merry. It refreshed the spirits.

One moment at our dinner table stuck with me. In our discussions, it came up that in many Spanish-speaking countries, there is the practice of the "posada" in the week before Christmas. In villages and cities, people go from home to home, eating, drinking, laughing, sharing stories. It symbolizes the way Mary and Joseph had to go from inn to inn to find a place to stay. Rather than turning the stranger away, the modern custom welcomes these wanderers into their home for food and warmth.

Now, when I say inn, I'm not talking Marriotts, Hiltons, or even Motel 6s. The concept of a modern inn didn't exist yet. Instead, people in the time of Jesus would go from home to home to see if there was a place for the traveler to stay and rest. The innkeeper was us. So when Mary and Joseph were turned away at the inn, they were turned away by normal people, people like us, because we had no room.

Or, perhaps, we made no room for the strangers among us... for the strangers who came to us in time of need.

And then Stephen and I noted that the word "posada" did not technically mean journey or party, but was the Spanish word for "inn". When people celebrate the posada, they celebrate the refuge itself, the place of safety and rest, and comfort.

It didn't occur to me until this morning during my daily meditations and prayers that all this came together into a common dialogue. But it made the night's festivities seem more meaningful to me.

We don't always feel able to offer refuge to the journeying wanderers in our lives. Sometimes, we just turn off the lights and lock the doors, to our homes, to our hearts. But we are reminded that if we do, we don't make room for joy, we don't make room for solace. We don't make room for the baby Jesus.

May your posada be full of joy and open to those who come knocking on your door. May your journey take you to the place where hope and warmth comforts and consoles you. And may we all recognize that in the belly of that stranger who comes to our doors lies the Christ who has come to bring us the Good News and Light.

Letting Joy Find You - Advent III

This coming weekend, we will light the third candle on the Advent wreath - the pink candle - which is a symbol of Joy.

It sure is hard sometimes to talk about joy, especially at this time of year. It's dark outside more often than it is bright. It's cooler, and if you lived in my neighborhood last weekend when the wind storms came, that coolness isn't helped by a power outage. I think that the power outage shorted my PC, too, so I'm not exactly feeling perky right now.

We light this candle not because we are joyful at the moment but because we remind ourselves that there is a reason for joy to come. As Christmas approaches, we are counting down the minutes to a day when we celebrate a truly joyful occasion. For Christians, we are recognizing that despite everything, despite our problems, our wandering our hearts, our selfish priorities, there is unconditional love for us. The unconditional love isn't far off in the distance, disconnected from us, impossible to appreciate or even fathom.

It's a love that through the birth of Jesus shows that there is no distance between humans and God. God is among us, walked and walks with us, breaks bread with us. That, surely, is something to celebrate in times when we need joy.

I nearly wept when I saw that the North Dakota pipeline path will be rerouted. Even if the next administration attempts to circumvent this decision, for now, for this moment in time, we acknowledge the worthiness of a people, their water, and their land. There's much to bring joy when people matter more than the profits of a distant investor. In the midst of the frigid plains winter, joy can still come down and quench our thirst for justice.

Earlier this weekend, on a break from the Los Angeles Episcopal Dioceses annual convention, I walked around a nearby lake, through the dwindling light as evening approached, and reveled at the way the sunset light shimmered on a water. I stood under the darkness of the trees to gaze at the serenity. It was easy to see light reflecting on the lake because there are no obstructions. And then I marveled at the way the light found a way, in a straight line like light rays travel no less, to pierce through the canopy of trees, to allow slivers of beams to shine down upon me. The rays were small, almost imperceptible, but they found me and warmed my skin nonetheless.

Like light, Joy doesn't seem possible in darkness. But it will find a way to touch you even when you least expect it, if you notice that it's been there all this time. May your eyes be opened to the joys that surround us, bridging that chasm between our darkness and the light that cannot be stopped.

Is your Journey an Adventure?

I saw this image on the web and had to share it, as it caused me to think. It's about adventure, and the Camino de Santiago, the whole journey of life for that matter, is an adventure.

The picture is certainly a bit of fun with a whole lot of tongue in cheek about adventure. And, I hope you don't have to worry about cutting off an arm.

Yet many times we worry about our difficulties and focus in on them, forgetting about the happiness we encounter. When deeply involved with those troubling times, we might not even see the joys of life around us. They're there, but we obsess about the tough parts.

I certainly can get that way. Once I'm in pain or things aren't going as planned, I start worry about contingencies. Even if there's nothing I can do for the moment, it's all I seem to think about. In the end, though, as the picture suggests, if we aren't about to die, then it might not be as bad as we think. And, it might even add to the adventure.

I recall the many difficulties I've had while traveling on vacation, on Camino, through life... They weren't fun at the time, and yet today, I sit back and tell stories about what happened. How I hurt or was scared or angry. In the rear view mirror, it doesn't look as menacing as when I was in it at the moment.

So I'm try not to stay in that "are you about to die" moment, trying not to micromanage an outcome, to control what cannot be controlled. The world needs us to be present with each other, as well as with the trials testing us. If we can approach life and each other as the adventure that never stops exciting us, I think we'll find ourselves less fearful of the daily threats and troubles around us. We'll be able to see both sides, the unsettling side AND the joyful side.

And then, then we can take pictures to remember, stories to tell... and post them on Instagram.

Easter reflection: Out of grief comes hope

A garden near my home has a gazebo where the posts are made of prickly cactus plants and the roof of thorny bougainvillea. It sits in a garden full of flowers. I call it the Easter garden because, despite the thorns and needles, bountiful, beautiful life surrounds you.

Grief stinks. It's a painful process that has been studied scientifically and yet, at its core, grief remains a traumatic human experience that we cannot elude. Many have learned or are taught that there are seven stages of grief.

- Shock or Disbelief
- Denial
- Anger
- Bargaining
- Guilt
- Depression
- Acceptance and Hope

Some folks consider shock and denial one combined stage, as well as bargaining and guilt. Irrespective of how you define these stages, most people consider the transition between these stages to be highly common and almost necessary to incorporate the concept of death in our lives. When we meet someone how cannot proceed, who seems stuck in a stage, we are stricken by a sad awareness that their grief process has been stalled, and we try to assist them if they're willing to be helped.

The Lenten journey towards Easter is a metaphor for this process. We are shocked on Ash Wednesday in the reminder that to ashes we return. We try to deny it, except it's impossible to ignore the mark of ashes on our foreheads. Our mutual mortality is destined and no amount of reality refusing will wash away such a reality as easily as soap can wash away those ashes.

Throughout this season, in moments of reflection and in the lectionary bible readings, we see examples of all sorts of the other grieving stages. All this culminates on a Good Friday laden with guilt and depression. It is bound to happen and we know the story well.

But Easter, blessed Easter, brings closure to this process. It is not a guarantee of happiness. A friend at church who is grappling with the tortured grief of the death of his young wife reminds me of this reality. It affirmed for me my grief for having lost a brother-in-law and a couple of friends this year: the end of grief isn't happiness, but integration and acceptance.

Easter can be joyful because of the hope it inspires. But it isn't really about joy at its core. We aren't promised a joy. We are promised to be reunited with our Creator. Given that sin is our perpetual distancing from God, such a reunification represents an eternity without sin and a beautiful perfection is in store for us.

It's a joyful event, but joy isn't the promise. Joy is an amazing by-product of the promise. Easter and all the wonderful things we do to celebrate it is about ensuring that we see the ground and ashes ahead, and know that can grow a new life, a new restored hope from such fertile dust.

And with that hope, we become truly alive once again.

Advent 3 - The Candle of Joy. So be Joyful. Now!

The third candle of Advent was lit at church this weekend. It's the candle of joy. I'm all for joy. After all, we look forward to Christmas because we expect to be full of cheer, mirth, and happiness. We're exhorted to be joyful in the Bible, such as in Romans 12:12 - "Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer."

But it's awfully hard to be joyful all the time, much less an entire liturgical season. Thankfully, the candle is only for the last half of the Advent wreath. Nonetheless, at this time of year, the streets are filled with cars heading to malls, people stand in shopping queues that will last seemingly for hours, and the gift item you were looking for can't be found anywhere. I do almost all my gift shopping online precisely to avoid these problems.

And for this, I'm supposed to have some creepy smile of joy that doesn't often feel sincere?

Joy isn't even what we think it is. Joy is internal. All the back-slapping, laughing, carousing, and joking we think of joy is on the outside. It's the outward manifestation of something going on inside. Like all things on the surface, that external happiness can be spackled on with a trowel and made to brighten our facade. It can easily mask cracks and pains that we want to hide.

I admit, I'm usually the optimist. I'm not content to say the glass is always half full; I would rather drink what's in that glass and ask for another. But you can't make someone joyful or optimistic. Joy comes from within. And sometimes, you hit a granite slab and that well runs dry. Even the very act of smiling can be painful.

I was with the same person for eighteen years. For a long time, we were happy and gay. Not carefree, because the young have a lot of worries regarding money, but somehow it didn't seem so bad. When the relationship began to fray, I became confused and depressed. Oh yes, I put on a smile as was expected. But I wasn't happy, and I certainly wasn't content.

When it all came crashing down and the relationship ended, there was no faking it. I couldn't smile. I had no joy to tap into to bring those smiles out. I took a sabbatical from choir because literally every hymn made me cry. I didn't cry out of sadness for me or for others.

I cried because I had no joy welling inside of me, and music is, at its heart, powered by that joy. When asked, I would explain that I felt as though the Holy Spirit forgot who I was and left me a vacant sack of memories.

That season of Christmas and Easter was awful. I had no strength to fake a grin. Sure I'd laugh with others, but it made a hollow sound, a tinny chuckle heard as though laughing into an empty can. It took time - a slow, painful journey of personal reconciliation and reflection - to find that the love of God was inside me still. It was obscured by my pain, by my guilt, by my self-flagellation. I needed to wait out this game of hide and seek and let that love once again walk into the light.

There's no magic way to bring joy back into your dark spaces. I wasn't a Grinch with a heart ten sizes too small, waiting for the Whoos to sing around a wrecked tree. And when I see people today with sad, empty eyes, I don't try to cheer them up or force them to feel happy.

I just hug them. Or e-hug them. Or smile with them. And most of all, I listen to them.

And together, maybe, just maybe, we'll eventually hear a little sound of joy. Maybe, just maybe, we can light that third candle and let a little light shine out through the darkness of winter.