Writing

50-28 – Like a Birthday or a Pretty View

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High school was a time for friends and music and concerts. I still feel the ramifications of standing too close to a speaker in a closed building listening to The Stray Cats. Now that was an experience and an amazing memory.

There was Berlin, the Thompson Twins and others, but none more important to my life as the five Brits known (and still known) as Duran Duran. Named for Doctor Duran in Barbarella. With their hair and their makeup, their synth pop. The three unrelated Taylors, Nick Rhodes, and Simon LeBon creating music that was danceable and singable, but also moving and inspirational, a creative catalyst for my writing and exploring what was barely in my mind’s eye, but that wanted to come out in ways.

My friends and I would go to the park, climb up on the big stage at the amphitheatre. They would play their air instruments, and I would take their pictures using my air camera.

Click, whirr is the sound a camera makes, and I was the paparazzi following them on tour.

We were 100 Club, and we opened for Duran Duran. We wrote creative fiction, not song fic, maybe closer to fan fiction. Mine was a murder mystery – Murder at the Odeon. and it was my second moment of fandom and writing colliding.

Duran Duran also contributed to our creativity with their videos – The Chauffer, Night Boat. Their videos told stories that encouraged us to tell our own stories.

My current text notification is Late Bar, one of my favorite songs from them, conjuring up holes in walls, drinking, and mystey. It influenced a poem I wrote for the yearbook called Spies, which in turn encouraged a new Dungeons and Dragons game that was called Top Secret that was role playing for secret agents and government spies.

Their Hungry Like the Wolf was very much like Indiana Jones and New Moon on Monday reminded me of those undercover agents sneaking around foreign lands.

Thirty odd years later and I still listen to them. They remind me of high school, and college but they also fill me with new bouts of creativity and writing inspiration.

3/8 – Pilgrimage

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​”This (Holy Year) is the opportune moment to change our lives!” the pope has said. “This is the time to allow our hearts to be touched!…May pilgrimage be an impetus to conversion.”

 – Pope Francis

 This is what Pope Francis said when he opened up this Jubilee Holy Year of Mercy. He also mentioned that a pilgrimage would be equally beneficial closer to home if a trip to Rome wasn’t possible.

That intrigued me, and I began to think about pilgrimage in a more tangible, more accessible way.

In a mere five weeks,  we are coming to the conclusion of that Extraordinary Jubilee Year.

In some ways, I have done much towards creating a better understanding of mercy – for myself and for others. I have also reflected much more on forgiveness – again, both for myself and for others.

It took me some time to initially walk through our Holy Door; to feel as though I were ready; worthy of the entrance. I didn’t want to rush through and have it be done, like a ticky box to b checked. I wanted to discern and meditate on what it meant, and perhaps that meant that I would never walk through the portal.

I’ve written before about how I did finally reach a moment to enter, and then a second moment. When our family went on a short holiday to Niagara Falls, I wanted to go to reconciliation and to enter through the Holy Door with prayer and reflection before our journey.

Niagara Falls is one of those places that I grew up visiting and loved as a child, and that I eventually shared with my husband and later with my oldest son. Now, I was going to share it with my two younger children, but I was also going to see the magnificent and powerful falls with new eyes; eyes that had been touched by G-d and by faith.

I had spent much of my year of mercy as a spiritual pilgrim, going to places that struck me as important on my journey. Sometimes that was as simple as sitting in Starbucks or outside on a bench with a cool breeze waving my hair around.

Sometimes, it was taking a week in the spring to visit some local historical places, taking my camera and my journal and discovering new things about the places, the people, and myself despite my lack of stamina.

I went to the Shrine of the North American Martyrs, wandering in the rain, praying, and just being in the stillness of such a place of faith.

I joined three ministries at church; things that I felt a calling to, in education, in adult faith formation, and in service. Time is short, but I’m working through the process of balancing it all. 

I went on two weekend and one four-week retreats that reenergized me, and my creative spirit was able to blend with my faithful spirit. It gave meaning to the Scriptures and the environment, and propelled me forward and given me strength.

My pilgrimage of writing has been equally in the forefront and as important as my spiritual pilgrimage. I am always on the path of a pilgrim, whether I write about it or not. It is who I am.

This year of mercy will remain with me much longer than the physical year.