Friday, March 1, 2013

Birdsong in my heart...



This is from Heron Dance Studios http://www.herondance.org/ -- I subscribe to the daily ejournal and this was one that was published this week. I really love it, especially in light of our next journey (to Panama!) For part of our trip, we will be sea kayaking and camping on the beach.


Each pilgrimage is a circle
we travel to return transformed.

The key to pilgrimage is to embark on the trip with a heightened intention. We are not just tourists. We're going to honor someone or something. By honoring what is sacred to us, we make it more real in our lives.

Inevitably, we return from pilgrimage, and this is an essential part of the meaning as well. We're supposed to return to our normal lives, except that we return transformed, carrying the experience with us forever, having touched the reality of what we love. . .

- Deng Ming-Dao, from The Lunar Tao
. . . .


What is life really about?

I used to go on journeys to find out

Pilgrimages to places free from artificial constraints

Free from self-imposed limitations.


We go on pilgrimages to the edges of our lives

To see what life is like on the other side.

I used to go on pilgrimages to live with Indians in the bush

They accepted me, but reluctantly

I was not of their world.


The circles of my journeys are smaller now

I paddle the sacred river

To submerge myself in that watery world

To make it more real in my life

To touch what is sacred inside

And then return transformed,

With birdsong in my heart.


. . . .