May it be a sweet, sweet sound to Your ears.

I will be glad and rejoice in your love,

    for you saw my affliction

    and knew the anguish of my soul.

You have not given me into the hands of the enemy

    but have set my feet in a spacious place. Psalm 31: 7-8

It is the devil's greatest triumph when he can deprive us of the joy of the Spirit. He carries fine dust with him in little boxes and scatters it through the cracks in our conscience in order to dim the soul's pure impulses and its luster. -Francis of Assisi

Hiking a pilgrimage is not quite as dramatic a shift in vistas as cycling, but still there is the anticipation of each bend in the road, and the glorious light and colors and shapes awaiting us.

Well, beyond each bend somehow up a steep path is waiting… how is it possible to have so many mountains in one day?

Certainly there are spacious spaces spread out before us, and my hiking companion Michael and I can only marvel at this gift. 

And I am glad and rejoice in His unmerited love. 

And sometimes some of the Enemy’s fine dust gets in our eyes, so we have memorized the Francis Prayer: O, Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love; For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; it is in dying that we are born again to eternal life.

Michael is knocking on the door. It is time for a cup of espresso, a sweet cake and cinched belts.

Make me an instrument of Your peace. 

I was reading my meditations from last year in Assisi, and I had written down a reminder from Marco: the music comes not from the instrument, but from the musician. 

May it be so.

Above all the grace and the gifts that Christ gives to His beloved is that of overcoming Self. –St Francis

Lift up your heads, O gates,

And be lifted up, ancient doors,

That the King of glory may come in. Psalm 24:7

And Haman recounted to them the splendor of his riches, the number of his sons, all the promotions with which the king had honored him, and how he had advanced him above the officials and the servants of the king. Esther 5:11

God blesses those who are humble,

    for they will inherit the whole earth. Matthew 5:5

Ah, one realizes the beauty of pilgrimage or journeys out into the desert and why  such a passage has been part of spiritual passages around the world, throughout time.

How to die to Self, in order to find Life, step by step.

Sifting wheat, as in the great empty, harvested fields I am walking through.

Stillness to hear His gentle rebukes. 

And the soaring lilt of a grateful heart.

And walking (sort of, as I wander away from the directing orange arrows or red and white naturalist bars with distracted frequency) the path of a faithful follower of Christ, Francis, one considers the impact, the fruit of a life held loosely, in humility and a welcoming love who noticed Jesus in all that He created. 

Indeed, indeed he inherited the earth.

And we had to be very careful not to slip and fall as we slid down the mountain.

Praise be to God, who gives beauty for ashes : hope in the morning, strength for today.

You give me beauty for ashes. You pull me close to Your heart. You have turned my mourning into dancing. It’s what You do. It’s who You are. I am no longer what I used to be. I am stronger because You live in me. It old has gone; the new has come. Brand new day. Brand new life. I am softer because You live in me.

Dear God, form us into a peculiar people who live differently because we have been transformed by You. May the courage of the early Christians teach us to laugh at fear, to starve greed, and to live with the winsome freedom of the lilies and the sparrows. Amen.

I have certainly seen where the winsome freedom of the ancient hermits led them in 400 B.C.: right up a steep rocky hillside to their very own cave, where really only the sparrows fly and dry weeds cling.

And once a week they gathered in a slightly larger cave, to praise God together and break bread and drink wine. These hollows of decomposed granite are saturated with prayers.

And Sinan couldn’t really wrap his brain around the scorpions and snakes these guys must have faced. In fact, for him, this was proof of God’s power and intervention.

And after the mass was lifted up, the hermits filled a bag with breads and vegetables brought up from the village and returned to their solitude.

Certainly a peculiar people. And yet many centuries years later another peculiar people weighted down with the cares of a complex and dangerous world make a long hot journey to those very caves to marvel. And to rest in the simplicity of transformation.

As I begin to pack up my Erbil bag, entering the bakery one last time for 1,000 dinars of bread and smiling good morning one last time to the woman sweeping the street, fully aware of the importance of closure in a lesson, fully aware of the power of the concluding sentence, my thoughts in spite of themselves drift to the next bend in the road ahead, completely unknown.

Because I think that in many ways it is where this peculiar pilgrimage will begin, sent out two by two, but my companion is Jesus. And in solitude I will know His lovingkindness more profoundly.

If you allow people to praise me, I shall not worry. If you let them blame me, I shall worry even less. If You send me work, I shall embrace it with joy. . . . If you send me rest, I will rest in You. Only save me from myself. Save me from my own private, poisonous urge to change everything, to act without reason, to move for movement's sake, to unsettle everything that You have ordained. Let me rest in Your will and be silent. Then the light of Your joy will warm my life. Its fire will burn in my heart and shine for Your glory. That is what I live for. Amen, amen. Thomas Merton, The Sign of Jonah

This hill though high I covent ascend; The difficulty will not me offend; For I perceive the way of life lies here. Come, pluck up, heart; let's neither faint nor fear.

Deliver me, O LORD, by your hand from those whose portion in life is this world. Psalm 17:14

Teach me, O LORD, the way of Your statutes, and I shall keep it to the end. Give me understanding, and I shall keep Your law; I shall keep it with all my heart. Make me go in the path of Your commandments, for that is my desire. Incline my heart to Your decrees and not to unjust gain. Turn my eyes from watching what is worthless; give me life in Your ways. Fulfill your promise to Your servant, which You make to those who fear you. Turn away the reproach which I dread, because Your judgments are good. Behold, I long for Your commandments; in Your righteousness preserve my life. Psalm 119:33–40

The third question asks: At what stage of life are you at?


This is certainly one of those verses that I have never particularly noticed before, but as a middle school teacher it strikes a whole new chord of terror…with just the slightest of paraphrasing…from those whose portion in life is middle school.

In fact, I often say that this is why I teach middle school, to defend those who need deliverance from the sleek, smug vicious ones who rule middle school with a sneer and disdaining word.

Because middle school is mostly the other sorts, the slightly trembling awkward ones desperately seeking validation mingled with creeping-around-the-edges anonymity. And they never quite measure up because they are eyeing a false scale of shimmering perfection that doesn’t really exist outside of eternity.

And like my Father who walks alongside me through this life, murmuring His love for me and His great validation of me, His beloved child, this is how I want to walk through my rather long day: You are loved. You are delightful. You have a purpose.

Because middle school, like life is not pretty. Yesterday my sub from last week left a little note tucked into my laptop: Hi. Not going to lie to you. This was ranked the #3 in the hardest classes I ever had since 2003. I had fights, one girl actually stabbed a boy with a pen, I had pens, pencils, markers and erasers thrown around and kids running out of class all of the time. I survived one whole week. I totally give you 100% credit for surviving as long as you have. Take care,

Because this is my stage in life right now. I have made it through the Slough and the Valley of Humiliation and Vanity Fair and now see the Delectable Mountains stretching with glorious perspective in the distance. And like my Abba Papa, I want to be a kind and wise Shepherd who encourages wayfarers along the path. Oddly enough it was the slightly frumpy old priest passing out rosaries on The Way that called me to make that pilgrimage.

And riding through the desert, those old Catalinas rise up in my distance, and once again remind me from whence comest my strength. And the rain-drenched creosote pierces through the early morning mist.

Turn my eyes from watching what is worthless; give me life in Your ways.

But let us rouse ourselves and move on.

I have considered my ways and have turned my steps to Your statutes. Psalm 119:59

So here I sit, in front of a wood stove full of cold ashes, the clock ticking in the background. A quiet slightly overcast day awaits me for my last day in Denver, as I sort my thoughts through an Imago Dei devotional passed on by my sister: Meditations for Spiritual Direction. Because this is a pausing moment. Where do I hear God’s voice as I head into the next decade of life? My sort of awkward attempt at a sabbatical is drawing to an end, and then what?

In a recent interview for Regent College, Gordon T. Smith recommends six questions that we should ask ourselves before we begin a process of discernment, the first of which is: What on earth is God doing? In Smith’s words, we need to remember that “the Creator and Redeemer of all things is always at work in our world, and in history.” And history right now is the age of refugees. Well actually, history is full of refugees, like the Israelites were sojourners. And Joseph and Mary and Baby Jesus. And this morning I whipped through Gary Nabhan’s Songbirds, Truffles, and Wolves, the tale of a pilgrimage to Assisi by the Tucson Native Seed Search guru who actually built a fishpond on Rancho La Argentina, um, a long time ago. And most interesting of all to me was his knowledge of seeds and plants, and how when the Italians brought over maize from the New World they did not include preparation details like soaking in lime juice and adding ash, so all of that corn polenta that the hungry peasants used to supplement their winter crops of wheat and barley was missing essential nutrients so the regions in Italy where they were most dependent on maize suffered from an epidemic called pellagra, a severe nutritional deficiency that resulted in delusions and hallucinations. Which explains a little bit as to why so many hungry Italians made their way to the Denver area to replace striking coal miners. Even though during the early 1920’s, the Ku Klux Klan possessed considerable political clout and targeted immigrants, African Americans, and Roman Catholics through intimidation and violence. The Klan reached the peak of its influence in Colorado in 1924, with the election of Klansman Clarence Morely as the state’s governor. And we are going to revisit the Mother Cabrini Shrine high up in the hills where she first built Queen of Heaven Orphanage for little Italian girls from the slums of Denver and whose calling was to bring Christ’s love to the world. 

A full circle. Nothing new under the sun.

And clearly and closely the LORD God is at work just down the street at Doolen Middle School, with its influx of refugee speaking 58 languages mingled with the neighborhood kids from broken down bungalows and trailer parks. And He has called committed skilled leaders to form a team of renewal and fresh passion for student growth. And I suspect that I could muster up an invitation of some sort or another to join in the calling of bringing Christ’s love to the world. And sure a bunch of me wants to stay in Italy and welcome Syrian refugees or to rebuild huts in Nepal, but really and truly He has brought His beloved children to be welcomed right here by me.

And maybe that is what on earth God is doing.

a long obedience in the same direction

Never pull each other to pieces, my brothers. If you do you are judging your brother and setting yourself up in the place of God’s Law; you have become in fact a critic of the Law. Yet if you start to criticise the Law instead of obeying it you are setting yourself up as judge, and there is only one judge, the one who gave the Law, to whom belongs absolute power of life and death. How can you then be so silly as to imagine that you are your neighbour’s judge? James 4: 11-12

This Scripture is not saying “Just mind your own business, keep your nose clean and don’t worry about anyone else.” Rather our role in The Life of the Community is to encourage one another to love and good deeds. Without shredding.

I feel the weight of this every day in the classroom–not to get distracted by the huge bombastic (often political–I am open game now that I have confessed to bing a registered Independent) statements made my know-it-all kiddos, but rather to leave the Spirit to shine light on what is True And Of Value.

Right now, sometimes it is the case of maybe-I-should-have-saids, when what I actually said was, “Make sure you have copied this agreed-upon definition of ‘stewardship.’” Leaning into Be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger. As I learn to step into Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage--with great patience and careful instruction.

And what can I do but once again ask for wisdom, the wisdom that comes from God is first utterly pure, then peace-loving, gentle, approachable, full of tolerant thoughts and kindly actions, with no breath of favouritism or hint of hypocrisy. And the wise are peace-makers who go on quietly sowing for a harvest of righteousness—in other people and in themselves.

A long obedience in the same direction. A pilgrimage. One of my students (from a long time ago) posted on Facebook this morning that she is walking El Camino de Santiago this summer and was wondering what sort of shoes she should wear…and the advise was all the same: Good sturdy, well-broken-in boots: A real down-hill-loose-rock-muddy-knee-and-ankle buster adventure. Bring trekking poles. And a good knife to cut the mud off of the boots in front of the Alberque.

And yesterday Matteo posted a video of his summer pilgrimage, and it was hot and long and it really helped when passers-by squirted refreshing water on the weary travelers. But it was also a journey of joy, of laughter and song and companionship under the overarching beauty of God’s love.

Good images as I head out into the day. To whatever He has for me. Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet and light unto my path.