Saturday, July 7, 2007

Alternative Pilgrimage on a California Highway

Someone must have praying for me. Good praying, I mean, not the sanctimonious prayer of some, where the person tells God what the prayee NEEDS (in their opinion). No, this one was coming from someone who knew me enough to want me to have God present to me during my pilgrimage-on-the-California-highways instead of my pilgrimage in Ireland, where I wasn't because I have no discipline and cannot save money. I didn't even have the money to be doing this camping trip which was really a pilgrimage on the ... you get the picture.

Doogie and I (Doogie is my Westie and soul mate) set out one early morning in mid-June for San Diego, and planned to camp there two nights before heading up the coast to Oceano Dunes, stay there for two nights, and then get up to San Francisco. Then we were heading over to Lake Tahoe or Utah, and down to the north rim of the Grand Canyon or through Flagstaff. I was going to be flexible and open, because I don't get to do that in my work as a parish priest enough (you know how those people can be; they are more interested in schedules and actually following the schedulesthan they are about being spontaneous in the Spirit!).

Except that someone whispered doubt into my ear just before I left... and so I abandoned the trip midway, and I could have seen it as a complete failure if somebody hadn't been praying for me.

After two good nights and a full day of dog beaches and dog friendly shops and cooking over a gas stove in San Diego in between, we hit the road for Oceano Dunes. I was prepared to ditch this portion and find a plan D. Oceano Dunes -- I had read and they didn't exaggerate -- was one huge camping and ATV beach. I envisioned 20 -some people on quads zipping all over the beach, up and down the dunes, and the possibility that there wouldn't be much privacy. I was going to listen to my gut (Mizz Holy Spirit herself) to see if it felt safe once I got there. I shot up I-5 because it was close by the campsite, and decided I would just bear down and get through Los Angeles as quickly as possible using sheer will power. Like every big city, there were many detractors telling me how many hours it would take me to get through beyond the city.

It wasn't that bad, really. Except that bearing down and ramming through is one of the best ways to miss the scenery, which I KNOW wouldn't have happened if I had gone on the Ireland pilgrimage with Gil Stafford and his group. One of the stated principles of his group "Peregrini" -- which I vaguely remember from seminary has something to do with traveling -- is that you should NOT miss the scenery.

Fortunately, I came to myself like the son in the story of the generous father (also known as the prodigal son), and got off I-5 a little after lunchtime to take the 101 toward the ocean. The 101, I found out later, has a worse reputation than LA for its traffic snarl-ups, or "parking lots" more accurately.

I finally got off at an exit whose sign pointed toward "Beach Traffic", and took a pit stop in a shopping center. After letting Doogie pee and smell a couple of unhealthy-looking trees in the parking lot (you would be too if hundreds of traveling dogs peed on you every year), I took him to Starbucks and parked him with a scruffy looking guy that looked like he would throw down his life if someone tried to take Doogie from him so I could pee and smell the coffee in my own parking island (okay, that's over the top...)

Doogie and I sat outside Starbucks grateful not to be moving and grateful not to be in the sweltering Arizona heat, and we people watched. Within sight of the shopping center was a middle class neighborhood. I got out my Atlas and tried to figure out where we were. We had been driving five hours by then, and I realized how silly I had been originally to think I might be able to get to San Francisco in one day. I was even beginning to wonder if we would get to Oceano before it got dark, but remembered they have daylight saving time there in California. We don't do DST in Arizona; there is no need to inflict MORE daylight during our time off when our employers are not paying the AC bill.

I had missed the signs saying where we were. I have full-blown ADHD, but that usually doesn't apply to traveling. I'm more like Jess Blair in his book I Don't Know Where I'm Going but I Sure Ain't Lost which he WANTED to call "I Walk Most Safely When I Don't Know Where I'm Going". His publisher was into selling more books and thought the title needed to have an "ain't" in it like his other books (I Ain't Much Baby But I'm All I've Got was his most famous) and gave it the other title. But I DO walk more safely in new places; I am more aware and more alert to signs and I see great places to relax and eat and enjoy and sit and journal -- well, uring vacations, anway, which could be part of the problem -- that I don't see when I am in my own hometown and into the daily grind.

And while I was on the highway I had been in that mode! I know highways, I had two or three maps, so I was in head-down-just-make-good-time mode. Until I came to myself and got off the highway. But now I was in a town whose name I didn't know and not sure when I was going to make it to my next campsite.

So I asked a very sweet looking white-haired lady on her way into Starbucks.

"You're in Ventura!" she answered me with such glee that I would actually USE the word describing her. I felt as warmly welcomed as any stranger could be, and she helped me find it on my map. When I told her that I had been on the 101 and lost track of where I was, she waved her hand at me and in mock disgust (I don't think this woman could do real disgust), she said "Oh, that 101!" as though not even the smartest person with a GPS and a human navigator both could avoid getting lost on it. Besides, I wasn't LOST. I was just disoriented slightly, and needed to get my bearings.

I left there with the buzz of caffeine and renewed confidence instilled in me by the mother of the the Ventura Chamber in Commerce (well, she ought to be!). We made it to Oceano just two hours later, and got to see lots of ocean on the way. It turned out to be fortifying in needed to deal with the harsh reality ahead.

The REAL Oceano Dunes was much wilder even than the image in my head. First, it was very windy, and many of the 200+ campers had flags on poles in the sand or whipping about from the TV antennas on their RVs, including the Dixie flag, which, after living in the south for 23 years, makes me nervous. Dixie-flag-flyers seem to drink heavily, and when they do, they don't like liberals or women or small white dogs. Well, I made up the last part, but the point is, they make me nervous.

Every once in a while, when I wasn't stuck in the sand or being towed OUT of the sand by one of the Dixie-flag-flyers (they're nice BEFORE they drink), I glimpsed a tent in the midst of all the RVs, looking in the gale force wind like it wasn't going to be there the next morning. And these were decent-sized four- and six-person tents. I had discovered that my Big Five Sporting Goods tent that I had gotten for a sweet bargain at $21.99 was only three-feet tall. Not only did I not look graceful getting out of the tent, but there is no hope of changing clothes inside it, unless you do it lying on your back, which is not easy to do with a little dog who seemes compelled to lick my face if I ever sit or lie still. I wondered where I might find some privacy from the people whom I was sure all knew each other.

And there were quads, all right. Dozens of them. But there were also jacked up pick-up trucks that could have popped my car like a cockroach, or carried my car to a campsight, which almost had to happen three times. In fact, it became so embarassing to be towed out of the sand, that I promised Ms. Holy Spirit and myself that if it happened a third time (because God's signs always come in threes), I was going to leave. So it happened and I did leave. I checked three motels there in town and even the Motel 6 was $150 a night, and I thought there's no way I will pay that much when I missed out on a trip to Ireland because of money and I had already spent $100 on gas, another $150 on campsite reservations, and on the money for food alone I could have flown to Maine to see a good friend (that had been Plan B -- I was in California camping on Plan C, which makes sense alphabetically anyway).

After fortifying myself with a burger and fries and a diet coke, which is NOT as oxymoronic as thin people make it seem, I could think more clearly and make a plan. By this time, I had spent two full days driving and one full day camping. Like my life, I was spending more time getting to the goal than enjoying it once I got there. And the journey had not been that wonderful so far (on my camping trip, not my life, which was defintely better).

That's when I think the anonymous praying kicked in. With great clarity of mind and the calm that comes only from the acceptance of reality, I decided to turn around and head back toward Arizona. San Francisco would wait for another time, when I had more money. As it was, Santa Barbara was an awesome place to visit, and I will make it an intentional destination the next time I go there. It was good that I was heading home. I was out of cash, had lost my debit card before I even left on my trip, and almost no one accepted out-of-state checks. Using my parish American Express to buy gas and another burger on the way home, I put my head down and missed all the scenery getting from LA to Tucson in eight hours. Some habits are hard to break.

Oh, and what had been the doubting comment whispered in my ear, after I had described my proposed itinerary?

"You wish," I kept hearing my friend say as I traveled. I guess sometimes even doubts can be wisdom for some of us foolhardy people.

Friday, March 16, 2007

On the dubiousness of perfection

I am a failure at living a life about social justice. Oh, I recycle, and turn lights off, write my congressman when I can, and boycott Nike, but when I think of a real social justice life, it would involve living simply, and not consuming so much, and being peaceful and meditating twice a day. I know people who actually do these things. And they are vegetarians, too. I barely have enough self-disicpline to stay on a diet for longer than two weeks, much less avoiding meat completely. Or doing anything else consistently for that matter.

Most spiritual people I know are orderly and disciplined and don't move a lot, whereas I move about once a year or whenever the carpet gets dirty, whichever comes first, which is often since I have two dogs. As someone who would have been daignosed ADHD as a kid, and actually was diagnosed as an adult, my life can get chaotically disordered and while I keep my house fairly neat, my checkbook is never balanced and my life is even less balanced.

What I do have that could be considered spiritual are friends and community and a willingness to be honest with myself and others, and maybe even a little bit of humility about never being anything close to perfect. In fact, I look at attempts to be perfect with great suspicion. Perefectionists are people who will never know the joy of finding the right person to do the right job for you, because they do not need anyone else. Perfectionists are tense and rehearse everything in their heads before they make a move, as though making a mistake would cancel out the right for them to take up space on the planet. Which boils down to their belief that you HAVE to be perfect to earn that right.

Forget God and God's unearned grace. These folks have earned their way into the kingdom through sheer, gritty self-determination. And they make me nervous with their perfectionistic glances and the judgment sitting right behind those glaring eyes. I ave not earned anything. I can get giddy with delight at being allowed to play in the kingdom's playground at all.

Perfectionists do not need support groups, either. Oh, they might show up in some of them, out of the pain caused by their perfectionism, but when it comes to actually relying on another person, it just isn't possible. So relying on God, whom we can't see, is an even trickier proposition.

But when I am at my spiritual best, which is relative to my spiritually worst times, I am able to see the scared kid underneath all that neatly ironed and well-groomed facade -- the scared kid who learned somewhere that if he didn't get it perfect, it was a complete failure, and he didn't deserve to be loved. And I am grateful for the mother who used to cuss at me and roll her eyes when I was a handful, but who never let me forget that she loved me. Like God does. Even when I am far from perfect.

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Everything in excess!

"Everything in excess!" wrote Robert Heinlein as Lazarus Long, the centuries old salty character in a bunch of his sci fi books. "To enjoy the flavor of life, you've got to take big bites. Moderation is for monks."
What would Lazarus Long say about our current sqeamishness with truth? It has become more important to be careful and not rock the boat than it is to speak truth. There is even a quote floating around out there that Archbishop Rowan Williams can't even defend claiming that he said, "Unity is more important than truth."
I can't imagine that. But if what they say is true, that he hates conflict and just wants peace at all costs, then perhaps he did say it.
Unity may be more important than being RIGHT, maybe. Or unity may be more important than having all the answers. But if some wise person has some truth to offer this crazy world, I sure hope she isn't sitting back worrying about whether it will disrupt the unity. In fact, I might be bold enough to say that without truth, our unity is on shaky ground, indeed.
Let's have an excess of truth! Even if we only believe it's our truth. Let's claim it boldly and let the monks make everyone happy. Although Joan Chittister doesn't seem to care whose unity she disrupts. Salut!