'Cause I'm a Mennonite...it's what we do.

I am sure I probably mentioned this before but I was born Mennonite. It's sort of a quirky thing being born Mennonite as people think that means all of you travel in horse and buggies, that you wear black or navy, you don't watch television and you make great sausage. Now, some days I do wear black or navy and some days I self-righteously eschew television, too. I have even ridden in a horse and buggy, but I HAVE NEVER MADE SAUSAGE! Lousy Mennonite that I am! My dad makes sausage, though, so I think I get Mennonite points for that. Oh God! It just occurred to me that someone sincerely looking for information on Mennonites could Google this page. If this is you, TURN BACK NOW! RUN AWAY! YOU WILL NOT LIKE THE BLOG TO FOLLOW!

Anyway I digress. Mennonites digress, it's what we do when we are not making sausage. Or raising a barn. We're good at raising barns. It's what we do. Well, I am a woman, so I would be raising babies and making a charming picnic lunch for all the men folk raising the barn. Except for the fact that I look like shit in a bonnet and a long dress...not that I look good in a short dress, but I digress. It's a Mennonite thing.

So, anyway, I was born a Mennonite. Mennonites take the Bible literally. It's what we do when we are not raising barns, making sausage or digressing. I was raised with fire, brimstone and a healthy, neurotic, immense dollop of guilt. I am the Guilt Queen! If someone notices something missing and it is likely stolen, even though I am the last person on Earth who would have stolen it, I feel guilty! Yes, I do. Somehow it is my fault your wallet is missing.

As a child I would look on with wonder at all my Catholic friends. I remember a song or two talking about Catholic guilt and I could never understand it. Still can't. Seems to me that if you are Catholic, you can sin all the hell you want all week as long as you remember to hit confession on Sunday...and if your sin is really bad, you can offer to pay for a new pad for the priests to live in and you're in good shape. And then there's absolution...no protestant ever gets the luxury of absolution. Mennonites never get cut a break in their pious suffering, so there is absolutely no absolution, there!

So, needless to say, I was raised in a home where nothing from the Bible is ever questioned. I remember, as a child, having heard that "Our God is a jealous God" and asking my Sunday School teacher for an explanation. I couldn't understand how God, the penultimate Good Guy, could harbor as negative an emotion as jealousy. My teacher, bless her meek, inherit the Earth heart, told me she couldn't remember ever reading that in the Bible. Nice try.

I remember, also as a young child, a story of how Jesus, this loving, turn-the-other cheek, guy, went into a place where there were money lenders and he angrily turned their tables upside down. I remember thinking to myself how incongruent this behaviour was with the teaching of who this man was.

I loved Jesus Christ. This beautiful, compassionate man who stood up against everyone and lovingly did what he knew was right. He was assassinated in the most horrific of ways, dying this barbaric death that haunted me in my dreams and made me the martyr I became.

I realized as a teenager I was different. Instead of being attracted to men, as I was supposed to be, as a good Mennonite...it's what we do...I was instead attracted, and that is a polite word...to women. I was well-versed in the Bible's violent exhortations against homosexuals. We are an abomination...like shrimp eaters. Shrimp eaters are also an abomination. Bad, bad shrimp eaters...it's what they do. But I am a Mennonite and I digress.

There is nothing quite like being gay to make one seriously question the veracity of the document called the Bible. I spent my teenage years and my early adulthood hating this part of myself for not being someone God could love. I tried, I really tried to like men. I dated them, I had sex with them...I'll spare you the details. I remember sitting in my car after watching the movie Tootsie with Dustin Hoffman dressing in drag and I was overwhelmed with panic attacks. I was a fucking mess and I was begging God not to let me be gay. I was physically sick...I felt like a freak...I wanted to die.

I will never forget that night as long as I live.

Over the years I realized there were many things wrong with the Bible...like its treatment of women. Or that Christ's entire adolescence was missing. Or that the Old Testament espoused an eye for an eye, when Christ espoused turning the other cheek. Incongruencies, barbaric treatment, polygamy, incest, violence, the fact that only "Christians" can be saved ("Whosoever believeth in me, shall not perish, but have everlasting life.") or how God could let someone like Job be violated and tortured as a human being in a fight between God and the Devil... none of these things resonated with me...none of them rang true. None of them made any sense.

For brevity's sake I will skip my study of man's religions in university and my later opening up to reincarnation as the only plausible reason for some human suffering and just say that I rejected a good sized portion of the Bible as stuff that was just plain wrong. Human beings are imperfect filters for messages from God...the Universe, or Allah...whatever you happen to believe in. That's what I shrugged it off as.

I was setting off to do the Camino and did some research on the history and legend of the road. Catholic legend has it that James the Apostle came to Spain to spread the Good Word and he gained about seven followers. He returned home and was beheaded...'cause that's what happens to good folk...and his disciples put him in a stone...yes...a stone...boat, with no oarsman and no paddles and sent him out to sea.

Many, many years later, a priest, in Spain, was involved in deciding who the remains they found in some cave belonged to. He decided, likely in a convenient dream, that these bones belonged to James who became St. James. This was a very convenient way for the Catholics to take over a pilgrimage that was previously walked by the Celts, Goddess Worshippers and Druids. Bad bad pagans.

The Camino is rife with tales of visitations by the ghostly St. James. In the battles between the Christians and the Moors, apparently St. James was pivotal in helping the "Good Guys" win. In fact he gained the nickname The Moor Slayer for thoughtfully showing up...as a ghost...and winning some substantial battle for the Christians, turning the tide in the Holy Wars in Iberia.

In Santo Domingo del Calzada, on the Camino, St. James was, once again, a hero. Apparently a young man who was studying to be a priest was staying in an inn...inaninn...*grin*...all the good stories take place inaninn, don't they? And they all have innkeeper's daughters involved...although that metamorphosed, over time, to being bad ass farmer's daughter's. But I di--I am a Mennonite!

So, anyway, Poor Unsuspecting Priest Boy was being seduced by the Evil Innkeeper's Daughter and he spurned her advances. Advances apparently should never be spurned...spurning is bad. The inn in question was a Spurn Free Zone. So the spurned innkeeper's daughter decided to place a candlestick in his baggage and called him a thief. The young man was tried, convicted and hung...to die...didn't want to confuse you with the possible sentence of being hung for fun.

His inconsolable parents left the town and Dad had a dream. He dreamt that his son was still alive...that St. James...yes, that handy dead guy...was busy holding their son up so he wouldn't asphyxiate. Very thoughtful of James, don't you think? Especially because he had that whole errand list of Moors to decapitate.

Mom and Dad ran back to the judge, who was eating a chicken dinner and said "Our son is still alive! You must cut him down!" The judge said, "Why, your son is just as dead as the chickens on my plate!" At that point, the dead chicken carcasses got up and danced. The judge had the son cut down and he was indeed still alive. The whole incident was declared a miracle and sworn upon by at least one or two holy priest types, that this actually DID happen. The cathedral in Santo Domingo now houses live chickens to commemorate that amazing, miraculous deed by the ever busy ghost of St James.

I have two words for the many Catholic miracles of the Camino. 1/BULL 2/SHIT!

I had hoped, when I started on my Camino, to be able to set aside some of my cynicism...say that after a few drinks...set aside some of my cynicism (that was fun, wasn't it?)...but what happened was that it grew even stronger. I decided, while on the Camino, that I really should get around to reading the Pagan Christ...a book that raised an interested eyebrow on me when it first came out, but I never got around to it. Hey I am Mennonite...we're late bloomers, it's what we do.

So, I returned to Canada and went over to my very Catholic Camino Coach's home and looked up in her bookcase and found what else? A copy of Tom Harpur's The Pagan Christ. I picked up the book and devoured it.

Harpur does an incredible job of proving, at least to me, that Christianity is a farce. The beautiful stories I grew up with of the beautiful Christ the Saviour were stolen from Egyptian and Greco Roman myths. I am not going to list his arguments...he does so very eloquently in his book...pick it up. I dare you. He also goes on to prove the unlikelihood that a man bearing the handle Jesus the Messiah ever actually walked the Earth. There are no references to that guy ever making his mark in history, except in a handful of books from the Bible that were written many years after he supposedly died. In a time in history when things were avidly recorded, there is no reference to Jesus Christ. Ever. Not one.

Harpur also quotes Men of the Cloth from antiquity who admit, shrugging, that they did make stuff up...it was all for a good cause, so what was the harm?

LET ME TELL YOU WHAT THE FUCKING HARM WAS! It was thousands, probably millions of people who were murdered, including pagans who knew the truth of the cover-up, for this phony religion. It was and is centuries of Jews being put to death and discriminated against for killing Christ. It was and continues to be, a reason for people to discriminate against blacks and women. It was and is the cause of murders and suicides of gays and lesbians all over the world.

It was the cause for me, that excruciatingly painful night where I begged God not to let me be gay, to hate myself and want to die. It was the cause for me to become the martyr I emulated, effecting my relationships and the quality of my life, something I still struggle heavily with.

So, this Christmas, I have a bit of a bitter mood on about the season. For the first time in my life, I don't want to celebrate Christmas, I want to celebrate something real. I want to celebrate in the pagan tradition. I want to revel in Solstice and Yule. 'Cause I am a pagan...it's what we do.

Peregrina Pining...

My cousin just asked me if I felt the withdrawal of the Camino that others talk about. I do feel something rather all encompassing sometimes. The Camino is emotionally, spiritually and physically intense. Tears and laughter were never very far from the surface when I was there. Colors were bigger and brighter. The road was longer, the mountains higher. Heat was hotter, cold was colder, pain...well...okay pain always hurts...but it really hurts more if you have no escape from it for hours and days.

I am back in Toronto in a city I love very much, with people I love very much and missed very much and I am grateful to be home. But I am aware I am missing something. I understand, now, why people get addicted to this road...to this journey...to the intensity of naked experience. I miss everybody KNOWING they are spirit living an earthly existence. I miss the openness of people in talking about it. I miss the quick, yet deeply effecting connections with people all there to look for themselves...for God...for God in themselves.

There is no facade. No matrix. The veil is thinner. You can hear the Voice in your head. The Voice of love, the Voice of wisdom. There is no traffic to drown it out. No clamoring up the corporate ladder of indifference that interferes with the quiet message of your beating heart. Your heart. Your heart that says there is something more to this life...this world...this experience than what we blindly raise up as a false prophet. Our lives have truly become a game of Monopoly with everyone racing to get to the end before everyone else. Or to get out of jail free.

There is more.

There is silence. The silence with nowhere to go...nowhere to be...the silence where you can hear your Guides, your God, your Universe.

There is beauty. The beauty that will make you cry if you are brave enough to open yourself up to it. It's looking at the sun like it is the first time you have ever seen it. It's looking at the mountains like they are living, breathing entities who experience your beauty as you experience theirs. It's looking at the people you encounter everyday and seeing their beauty. Their beautiful, imperfect perfection. It's being able to see the beauty in things we don't normally think of as beautiful.

There is passion. The passion that is being courageous enough to feel everything. Feeling pain and being with it. Feeling fear and facing it head on. Feeling love and opening oneself to the ecstasy of that gift from God.

I think sometimes we cloak ourselves from the vividness of the life we were meant to lead. We attempt to make life into smaller more controllable, bite-sized pieces, when really we are supposed to grab the apple and bite into it with passion, feeling the juice run down our faces and our throats. Living life with passion and eyes wide open is scary...no...it's terrifying...but it's REAL! And it's ours. Our gift to be revelled in.

So, my cousin asks, do I feel a withdrawal? Yes, I do. On the Camino it was ok to cry, to yell, to laugh...to maybe even be a little bit crazy...because life is a crazy place. I guess the challenge for me is to find a way to remember and live those lessons here...where the volume for the distracting noise of avoidance is high, but the volume for truth is sometimes barely audible.

The Peregrina Returns

Yeah...so I walked the Camino de Santiago. Please excuse the delay in this edition of my Blog, but I was busy. Well, okay, not really, but whatever I have been up to seems to have taken up all of my time.

So, let me take this opportunity, NOW, to say, "Yeah Me! I did it! Yay me!!!"

My Camino was a magical experience even in those times it REALLY didn't feel like it. Like within an hour of my arrival in Madrid, for example. I taxied into the airport looking around with the wonder of a child at what Spain looked like. I was very excited and proud of myself for managing my first attempt at travel in Spain by taking a local bus to the Madrid Bus Station, where I was then to grab a bus for Pamplona. From there I would find my way to my starting point...Roncesvalles.

I figured out my second thing to master in Spain would be an ATM, so I found one and tried to take out 100 Euros. It coughed and coughed and I sat there with my extended hand hovering at the money slot...to no avail. I freaked-out thinking I had just lost 100 Euros (About $150 CDN) in my first hour in Spain.

I raced over to a bank of telephones and realized my next challenge. I had no idea how to call my country from Spain. I looked down and saw a sticker, in English, telling me to dial 1-900 Something-Or-Other if I needed to call Canada. I had just bought a phone card at the airport, but the operator refused to let me use it. Instead he had to have a credit card number, so I gave him one. After a convoluted game of Telephone Tennis, I finally got through to my bank. The nice gent on the phone told me I had nothing to worry about as there was no record of my account being debited. I breathed a huge sigh of relief, hung up the phone and reached down to pick up my carry-on bag. It was gone.

I panicked.

I ran all over the bus station trying to find anyone with it or even stuff tossed out of it that the thief wouldn't want. I went over to the Information Booth and asked "Habla Inglis?" She shook her head. I did my best charade commentary on what I thought had happened. She looked pitifully at the pained, desperate look on my face and we stood there like two brick workers on the Tower of Babel, both wishing we could bridge the gap.

I ran over to two other places to report my bag's disappearance. The results were the same. No habla Inglis. It took me some time to admit to myself that it was gone and there was nothing I could do to erase the last 15 minutes.

I started to cry. I felt like a child in a foreign country with no one to look out for her. I was lost. I was scared. I wanted to go home.

Oh? You want to know what was in my bag?

1. My expensive digital camera bought for this trip


2. My sleeping bag -- an absolutely essential item for this journey


3. My girlfriend's MP3 Player


4. My Camino Coach's waterproof backpack cover


5. My hat with the Canadian Company of Pilgrims crest my gf so lovingly sewed on --twice--because she wasn't satisfied the first time


6. My gf's scallop shell ( A pilgrim "must") from PEI -- a place with a lot of emotional ties for her


7. My Camino guide book with yellow sticky notes painstakingly placed throughout, by my Coach -- full of advice and encouragement


8. My Spanish phrase book. Need I say more about that one?


9. The most important thing of all: A card from the beautiful aforementioned girlfriend she had surreptitiously placed in my bag before I boarded the plane. You see, I have this habit of mocking her for being somewhat romance challenged. Well, okay, for being a complete lunkhead in that arena. She texted me after she left the airport and told me to look in my bag. I found the card, opened it and cried. And cried. It was the most beautiful, supportive, encouraging and romantic -- yes, romantic -- card I had ever received. I texted her saying I take back everything I ever said.

So, please understand why I wanted to know who stole my bag so I could scream, "Keep the stuff of monetary value, you fucking fucker! Fuck! JUST GIVE ME BACK THE FUCKING CARD!!!!" (Editor's Note: She has said she will give me another card -- if I go away again for another seven weeks! Love the girl! Really I do!)

Oh, and that phone call? Cost over $50 CDN. I was robbed twice that day!

Then, of course there was the loneliest night of my entire life. Yes, even lonelier than the Lost at the Madrid Bus Station Experience. I had been pushing myself past the point of exhaustion...I couldn't even regulate my body temperature and I was freezing on very hot days. I had developed some kind of stomach thing which caused serious cramping and many rather hasty trips to the bathroom. I was sitting in an albergue surrounded by people who spoke Spanish and Portuguese, but knew very little English. I, of course, had already proven my lack of Spanish verbosity at the bus station in Madrid and I sat there, trying to eat while intermittently bursting into tears and running to the bathroom. I was terribly homesick. I was definitely stomach sick. I missed my girlfriend terribly. I missed my country. I missed my language. I missed the familiar. I wasn't sure I could walk another step.

I got up the next day knowing I was not walking that day. I was taking a bus to Burgos and I was going to care about myself enough to stay there a couple of days until I felt better. I wandered down to the bar downstairs and looked at a map explaining how to walk to another town, off the Camino and grab a bus. I looked at it. I studied it and I headed off. In the wrong direction. I got really pissed off at myself for not being endowed with any sense of direction whatsoever. I walked back to the albergue passing some Aussies I knew who told me some of their group were staying back and taking a taxi to Burgos as they were sick and tired, too.

I hobbled back and finally located them. Their taxi was full. There was no room for me. I burst into tears and they did their best to encourage me and commiserate. I set off again to find the stupid town with the stupid bus, telling myself I didn't need my Spanish-speaking friend (another story entirely, but we had to part company that day) to get by in Spain. I could rely on myself and I could find this freaking town and I would get on this bus and I would do it on my own!

I got lost. Again.

This time I was screaming and crying in farmer's field in the middle of Nowhere, Spain, going: "Who the fuck do I think I am kidding?! What in Hell's name made me think I could do this?! WHY THE FUCK AM I HERE???!!! TO PROVE TO MYSELF I AM COMPLETELY INEPT AND CAN'T FINISH ANYTHING I START????!!!!" And other such self encouraging thoughts and frustrations.

I must borrow one of my favorite cliches here: It is always darkest before the dawn. I found the bus. I found some English speaking company, with an Irish slant, who I would share a room with in Burgos for a couple of days.

I got to Burgos, took a shower and went to sit on a patio and drink vino blanco. While there, I ran into one of my favorite Camino people, Gerry from Ireland, who sat down and told me about all the magical things he was experiencing and the wonderful people he was running into at all the right times. I realized he was the guy I needed to run into that day. He, too, had pushed himself to the point of exhaustion and I had helped cheer him up earlier on on the Path. And here he was doing the same for me now. I didn't run into him after that, but I would love an opportunity to thank him for being one of my Camino Angels (and there were many). Gerry from Ireland changed my Camino from that point onward. All of a sudden, I was looking for the magic that I hadn't been able to see because I was so focused on my pain, exhaustion and frustration. All of a sudden the Camino was a beautiful place with beautiful people and the Magic I had come to expect of it. It was there all the time, I just couldn't see it. Thank you Gerry. I owe you a debt, my friend, wherever you are.

So, after a couple of days of rest and sightseeing, I felt brand new. I adjusted my walking schedule, refusing to keep up with anyone else and went only as far as I felt I could. As someone not used to doing things for me and generally acquiescing to what other people need and want, I had finally learned a lesson.

I met some amazing people along the way. One, whom I will never forget, was a young woman from Edmonton I was very excited to run into, because, of course, she was Canadian and I used to live in Edmonton. I rapped with her a while and just happened to look down at her legs and realized one of them was plastic. She was doing a 780 Kilometre walk (she started in the mountains from St Jean Pied a Port) across some of the roughest terrain I have ever walked on. Some of the most gut splitting mountains I have ever climbed. And she was doing it on one leg. I was humbled. Annika was her name and she was one of the few people I walked with that I didn't witness walking into Santiago, because of the difference in our travel speed. But somehow, I know she made it.

I walked for about a week and half with a guy from Brazil who looked out for me and really kept me going. Wagner was a very heavy guy who had been in a serious motorcycle crash that had done major damage to his body, evidenced by the remaining deep gash in his leg. He pushed me along, sometimes too hard, but he got me through some pretty tough stuff. We shared about 8 words between us which made for some very comically funny exchanges and a few misunderstandings. On some days it was actually a really good thing he couldn't understand me as what I had to share was not fit for human consumption. I thought of him as another of my Camino Angels...he thought of me as his.

I met a crazy young Aussie who had been living as an illegal in Scotland and decided he was doing the Camino with his parents and some friends, while wearing a kilt, with a guitar strapped to his back and wheeling a golf cart carrying his stuff. He made it to Santiago. The Golf cart didn't.

I met some wonderful Americans who I initially shrugged off as American Republican Catholics...until they taught me another valuable lesson about assumptions. None of them were Catholic, one went to a New Age Religious Science church and another was a Sufi meditation teacher. Yes, a Sufi meditation teacher. I spent the last part of the Camino with these people, Norm, Porter, Sue, Ruth and occasionally Francesca. We all travelled to Finisterre together, drank champagne and celebrated our completion of this amazing journey. We talked for hours about spiritual issues and lessons learned.

One night we were in a restaurant with two women from Holland and the question was asked, "What have you learned from the Camino?" I was surprised to note that we had all learned the same lesson. One of the women from Holland said it best: "I was walking over the mountains in Rabanal and I saw some rocks (the white quartz very common in this area). The the sun came up and the same rocks looked like diamonds. I realized it was my choice. I could see them as rocks or I could see them as diamonds."

That was the major lesson for me, but there were many others, like dealing with attachment to people, places and things. On how I was fine before them and only upset after them, because of my attachment to them. Or the importance of living in the now and how having sore feet makes sure you are!

I tell people I didn't really learn any new lessons...I just experienced lessons I already knew on an intellectual level, but needed to experience myself to fully understand. I also did things, like climbing mountains I didn't know I could master. The pudgy middle-aged kid from the prairies managed in a country where she did not speak the language, a million miles away from home and she did it by herself.

Well, that's not exactly true.

I had an amazing support group back home consisting of my girlfriend who pushed my ass up mountains and my Camino Coach who pulled my ass up mountains. Without them I would not be here writing this note of success. To you guys...I owe an incredible debt of gratitude. And everybody on my email list who sent me messages of support and encouragement, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

I had many peak experiences like walking through a cloud on Rabanal. Or like soaking my feet in an ice cold mountain stream. Or encountering people who live their whole lives to support the pilgrims, the peregrinos of the Camino de Santiago. I shared the road, laughter and tears with people from all over the world. I also shared their stories, dreams, pain and glory. I climbed O Cebreiro, a climb described in the guidebook as daunting and very difficult. I did. Me.

I walked into Santiago on October 6th and was handed my compostela proving I indeed did this incredible thing. Some days it all seems like a dream to me, now. I still have some blister residuals and some foot and right wrist issues that I would like to lose, but right now they are a good reminder that I accomplished a feat I would never have known I could.

Yay me!

Through Spanish Eyes...

I have brown eyes. I come from a British/German Mennonite heritage. None of those people have brown eyes...they're always blue or green. I have brown eyes, because, somewhere back in my mother's British gene pool, a Spaniard snuck in. You have to watch those sneaky Spaniards. According to my grandmother, Spaniards were always thought of as pirates. Ahhhhharrrr!!!! Pass the rum, Matey!

So, a sneaky Spanish pirate surreptitiously dove into my gene pool and did the backstroke all over future generations. We have never been the same since. The British blood in our family has been trying to strangle the Spanish blood for generations...but the Spanish blood, even watered down, will not be annihilated!

My family is fucked up. My family's almost Victorian communication style and emotional unavailability have screwed over generations of children who have grown into adults who screw over children. It's not that they don't love their children, it's that they can't tell them. They can't hug them. They can't tell them they are proud of them. They can't even cry for the most part. Anytime I have witnessed my parents cry I have gone into panic mode...it took me until my mid 30's to get over that and play the role of grown-up...'cause normally I am not allowed to.

I often wonder how I became so different. I cry at sad movies, I feel other people's pain to a degree that often becomes detrimental to my own health. I love to hug and kiss people and hold them when they are sad or traumatized. I tell people I am proud of them and I try to never miss an opportunity to tell someone why they are great or why they are beautiful. There was never enough of that in my world.

Somebody who knows my family thinks they are liars. I think he is right...but more so liars by omission than commission. There must always be a smile on one's face and a meal on the table and no one ever commits the sin of anger...I guess there is something to be said for stoicism. Kinda like Queen Elizabeth when Diana died. There is something sickly laudable about lying like a freaking sidewalk about things emotional. Emotions and passions are shameful things to be hidden in the back of dusty closets along with the gay members of one's family. I realized, with a start, that I surround myself with honest people...sometimes brutally so...and I never made the connection why until I contemplated his thoughts on family dishonesty. Without even understanding why, I knew I needed something different.

So, I am going to Spain...I leave in three days. Spain. The place my eyes call home. Some people say it is a past life for me...or maybe even a case of cellular memory. I don't know what it is, but I know I need to go.

Ya see...I have a thing for Spanish stuff. I even lived with Spanish-speaking girls for a while. I love the language...I think it is the sexiest language alive. I love the primal emotion of the music. I love the passion of people who speak that language. I love that life is about dancing, wine, art, sunsets, food, making love, yelling if you want to, crying if you want to...and passionate honesty. Life is to be experienced, not watched from the sidelines and I have unhappily warmed a chair in that location for too long. I want to give up my seat...it has a great view. Any takers? I should warn you, you can feel like you are suffocating sometimes. Like you are Dorothy living the black and white version of her Iowa farm life and the dust from the tornadoes is weighing heavily in your lungs.

I choose to live my life in technicolor. Funny how the thought actually terrifies me, but I am damn well going to give it my best shot. So, if you happen to be in Spain and you see an odd Canadian woman of Uptight Heritage sporting a bottle of vino blanco dancing to Shakira across the meseta, chances are pretty good it's me. The hell if my British blood is going to strangle my Spanish blood. Fuck you Queen Vickie. I am going to see the world through Spanish eyes. Mine.

Marking Milestones...

So, I was sitting on my partner's steps, thinking. I know...a very unusual pastime for me. I was thinking over all the changes I have made in my life and the things I have gotten through and found myself wishing that we could earn something like Girl Guide Badges for everything. Wouldn't that be great?! It would be one way of acknowledging and rewarding ourselves for work well-done, or at least completed if nothing else. A marker of milestones.

Like why couldn't we have a sash, or some reasonable facsimile thereof, and hang it on our fridge or on the bedroom door, or something? Company could come over and we could say, "Hey! That's right! I was cheated on and survived! See? I earned the badge!" Or, "Yep! I got my gallbladder removed!"

Your friends (or family if you are really brave) could file by and catch up with what's been going on in your world. "Oh look! She finally managed to beat that yeast infection -- note the Loaf of Bread badge!"

The possibilities for badges are almost endless. There would be the Loss of Virginity badge, the Marriage badge, the I Survived Childbirth badge, and then the Realizing You are a Lesbian badge, the Announcing it to Your Husband, Surviving Telling Your Kids and Telling Your Parents badges and then, of course, the whole Losing Your Lesbian Virginity badge. Oh! Did you earn the Lesbian Virginity badge before you earned the Announcing it to Your Husband badge? Well, just leave a space for it until after you've done the other steps!

Or how about the Beating Depression badge? Moving Past Mid Life Crisis badge? First Grey Pubic Hair badge? Bifocals? Polyamory? (Oh, sorry! Was that just MY experiment? Well, hey! Believe me, I EARNED the badge!)

Yes. I think there are tremendous possibilities here.

My Aunt Margaret...

Do you have family members that you really don't know from Adam? Or Eve? I have very little knowledge of my father's side of the family. I don't really know why.

Growing up, we were quite close to my mother's side of the family and I can only remember two visits to anyone in my dad's family. One to Tofino, B.C. to visit my dad's sister and one to my dad's other sister Margaret's in Glaslyn, Saskatchewan. Margaret was married to Leslie...Leslie was loud, colorful and tickled me too much. I hate tickling and Leslie is responsible for that. Leslie used to bring us farm cream...I loved farm cream. And once he brought us baby chicks to see and pet.

Margaret. Margaret never said much. Margaret had thinning hair, was kinda butchy but wore tent dresses, didn't shave her legs and wore rubber boots with any outfit. Margaret had this pervasive aura of sadness around her...like she really died years before and was coincidentally still standing. I liked Margaret. Margaret, despite her challenges had the kindest eyes.

I always thought Margaret was a lesbian. She had that kind of energy. A lesbian, with three children and a husband she likely felt obligated to sleep with. I wondered if that was the root of her unhappiness.

My parents sent me a picture of my father's whole family. After spotting my father, I looked immediately for Margaret. I found her. She was standing there looking quite beautiful and I found myself wondering when she stopped feeling beautiful.

My father called me yesterday and asked me if I remembered my aunt Margaret. I said, "Of course, Dad!" He told me she was in intensive care in a Saskatoon Hospital. She is dying. I felt really sad, wondering if the woman ever had fun. If she ever crushed on anyone. If she ever just sat still and basked in the beauty of a sunset. Did she ever feel close to God in an orgasm with someone she didn't want to let go of, afterwards?

I think of Margaret and I think about passion. And what happens to people who don't live life with passion. They wither and die, while standing.

So, Margaret...I raise my glass to you and I send you my sincere thanks for your message. I hope you will soon be in a place with color, love...and passion. It's your turn.

*R.I.P Aunt Margaret who passed on this morning at 5:30 a.m. May there be no weeds in your new Garden.

Lessons from the streetcar...

For a mere $99.75 you can get season's tickets (for a month) to Life Theatre. No, not the kind with good lighting, cushy seats and pretentious purveyors of probosity. I am talking about All the World's Indeed a Stage kind of thing, or This is Your Life Theatre. 'Cause if you really pay attention, you will have your own dramas played out in front of your very eyes. Hey! Now I am not being arrogant, I am sure the Strategic Chess Game of Life is working more than one angle at any given time and there are more people learning lessons than just me, but I swear to you if you look, you will see what I am talking about.

Yesterday, I was heavily preoccupied with writing in my journal when I couldn't help but notice a pervasive, pleased ta meet ya, stench wafting from some poor soul who had just got on the streetcar. Now, you have to know that years of smoking in the past and a few allergies have pretty much dwarfed my ability to smell and sometimes...sometimes I am thankful. But yesterday morning, it wasn't helping me. Nope. And I could only imagine how bad it was for others, with a full-fledged sense of smell, who had just gotten on the car. I opened the window a bit wider and tried to lean into it while resuming writing.

My attempts at putting my mental machinations on paper were once again abruptly interrupted, this time, by the driver. "My God, Sir! You stink! Get off the streetcar!" He opened the door and several people got out, but not Smelly Man. I strained my neck to get a glimpse of this character. He was looking a bit like Juan Valdez and every bit as proud...although the beans he had been picking were likely not of the same genre as Juan's. At all. Seriously. I mean it.

Smelly Man refused to budge, saying he had paid his fare and was going to call the police. The streetcar driver encouraged him to do so and made his own call to Dispatch to have the man physically removed from the car. "Sir! I do feel for the fact that you are homeless, but you really stink! You need to have a shower, Man! Get off the car. You are emptying out the car, you smell so bad! You are holding everyone else up!" At this time, other people started joining into the fray and calling the man down for his aura and telling him to get off and get a shower.

The surreal nature of this unfolding of humanity struck me as rather odd. Like in a dream, I knew I really should say something in his defense, but it wouldn't come out of my mouth. This man was being pilloried and humiliated by his fellow man and woman who could not see that he was proud and human and had feelings. I started wondering to myself why I had found myself in the middle of this absurd exchange. Like I knew it had meaning for me, this twisted trip down the Rabbit Hole. Like I knew it was being played out for me. See above note on the Chess Game.

In the midst of all the loud dismissals of this man finally came the quiet voice of a woman sitting by herself. She said, "Is this really necessary? He doesn't smell that bad now. Is there some kind of rule that says you have to throw someone off the streetcar if they smell? Because if there is a rule, then I can understand, but otherwise, can we just get going? We've been here, holding up traffic for 20 minutes. Can we just go?"

I finally found my voice and said to the driver, "Really, this is quite inhumane." Some of the few people who were left nodded and mumbled under their collective breath. But the driver was too affronted by the sensual onslaught and would not be effected. He decided to divert the car and kicked all of us off.

I got onto another streetcar and sat down, feeling like I had really done something wrong. The Old Me would never have sat silently by while someone was humiliated. The Old Me wouldn't have waited for someone else to say something first. The Old Me would have been front and centre on her soapbox trying to get her point across. Why didn't I speak up?

A co-worker and friend jumped on the same car as me, later down the line, and I shared with her the story of that exchange and another angry, unnecessary, disrespectful exchange on the current car I was on...the details of which don't matter that much to the story. She thoughtfully told me she figured I attracted it because I was angry myself. I couldn't argue that because I had woken up in a perimenopausal crab ass mood that only those who have been through it can understand. I had thought I was doing a pretty good job of keeping it at bay, but then the Universe is never fooled is it? So, "all right," I thought, "I could have attracted the anger to me, okay, I get that." But I couldn't shake the feeling that there was something more.

I got to work to meet my client. I need to add a necessary aside, here, so bear with me. I work with people with acquired brain injuries helping them to attain some semblance of independence. When I started in this job in February I was under the impression that that meant I was to be the teacher and they were to be the students. I have since figured out how laughably arrogant and completely reversed that is. I am the humbled student, make no mistake.

So, I go to meet someone I will lovingly refer to as The Philosopher. The Philosopher is brilliant. He told me that the area of his brain that was injured has gotten out of the way of the rest of his brain and his is now quite psychic. He has blown me away several times in proving that to be sharply accurate. I thought I would bounce the story off him , for his input. He didn't hesitate. He told me the scene on the streetcar had been played out for me and that I watched other people treat a homeless man with exactly the same derision I treat myself and my own homelessness. I sat there with my eyebrows raised. I had never told him how I feel about my current living situation and how I strongly feel the need to have my own place...my own roots. I feel like one of those people I used to watch as a reporter, in court, who were described as being of no fixed address.

He told me that my pilgrimage to the Camino would also be playing out my homeless issues. And that I am also homeless in my own skin. My own energy. I am lost between masculine and feminine energy and looking for somewhere black and white to light. I can't find the bridge. He told me I need to get in touch with my feminine side...as in the creative, receptive side of myself. It's my blocked creativity that is causing me to be completely detached from myself. I sat there with my jaw hanging down. There might have even been drool escaping from one corner of my mouth. I'm not sure of that, but there COULD HAVE BEEN! My homeless nature smells bad to me, he says. I need to accept where I am at as an important part of my journey, he says. The man blows me away, I says.

I am excited about these insights...I don't have all the answers and today I was finding myself feeling frustrated at myself for not having more of them. For not knowing how to pull myself out of this headspace and move on. For not knowing how to release the homeless waif.

So, I was sitting on the streetcar today wondering what the hell I need to do...what IS IT I need to realize?!!! I want to be in a place of joy, not hair pulling, lesson learning transition, which I have been in so long I smell bad! ;)

This woman gets on the streetcar and the driver asks her, "How are you, today?" She looks back at him and says, "Fantastic!" I immediately look up as I want to witness someone who is fantastic and she adds: "Well, I am also grumpy as I don't identify with my shoes anymore. I used to identify with my shoes, but now with every step, I am reminded I no longer identify with my shoes."

I laughed out loud.

Ahhhhhh....lessons from the streetcar!

Other's thoughts...

The person who travels to a sacred site is not the same person when they return home. They have been awakened to a greater respect for the planet, accelerating a beautiful unity and harmony between all living people, cultures, and religions. The ancient one who created these sites help us remember that this is the most important truth there is.
~ Aluna Joy Yaxkin

"A pilgrimage is not unlike participating in ritual or ceremony: we step outside of time, between the worlds, where the rules are different and anything can happen. In sacred space, we are receptive to the voices and presence of the Goddess in a way that we are not in our mundane surroundings. We have an expectation of experiencing that deep pleasure we call joy. Away from home, away from daily responsibilities.... opens up enormous space for the Divine to enter." Joanna Powell Colbert -- Sage Woman

"A pilgrimage is an embodied prayer."--Mara Freedman

Pilgrimage is an art which brings peace to the soul.
Pilgrims are bearers of love, which they carry to special places of the Earth. By holding a joyful consciousness of this love and of the beauty of these places, pilgrims encourage the natural energies of the earth to flow harmoniously. Pilgrims are guided by a wisdom based on both intuition and an understanding of the energy routes and sacred places of power in the world. The gifts of love, hope and joy are inestimable. They have the power to be a friend with the earth, with the divine and with all levels of life. --Peter Dawkins

Mid-Life Crisis?

What exactly is "Mid-Life Crisis?" 'Cause I thought I went through it at age 30. At age 30 I was in journalism school and wondering if I had screwed-up somehow? I was 30, in school, and I really didn't own much Stuff. Shouldn't I have owned more Stuff? And how much had I really accomplished in my life to that point? I was back in school, for pity's sake! And where, exactly was I going with my life? I thought I should have had more answers.

Fast forward to age 44 and I am looking back on the 30 year old and I am thinking, "Wow! I really had it together then!" I had more Stuff than I do now; I had an excitement for and a belief in the future. I had roots, family and friends, a great job and a partner of many years. I believed in myself, my skills, my abilities and that there were great things about me. I wanted to save the world by being Reporter Extraordinaire! I believed it was possible. I believed I could do anything I set my mind to.

It wasn't a cataclysmic change for me...it was slow and degrading like a water leak in your roof that eventually becomes a torrent of wet activity that invades your whole house. One day I just looked up and thought, "Who the fuck am I?" I no longer write for a living...something I took for granted I would always do. I don't even know where to start on things written anymore. I work at a job, where I look at myself in the mirror on days like today and ask, "What the hell are you doing here and how the hell did you get here?"

I look around at how I live. A beautiful friend rescued me from the airport after yet another failed relationship and gave me a place to stay. But this isn't my home. I sleep in a donated bed, I didn't buy, with an orange comforter given to me by another ghost in my life. I am surrounded by boxes of my books I have carted across the country, from relationship to relationship and someone else's home after someone else's home. I look at the clothes in my closet and they are evidence of my current inability to decide who I am. They are as much in transition as am I.

I have a sign on my wall that I etched out in black felt pen. It says, "Lost Waif Free Zone." I have fleeting days when I actually believe that. But then I remember I am about to embark on the biggest Lost Waif Challenge I have ever taken on. I am doing the Camino de Santiago and I will be a waif dependent on the kindness of strangers. I hope to God it is my last foray into Waifyness.

I want a home. Mine. I want Stuff. I don't need gobs and gobs of Stuff. The antiques of pretentiousness and the currency of the Matrix don't appeal to me. Just something comfortable and visually pleasing would be nice. I want a home to call my own, that no one but the undertaker can take from me if things don't work out.

I want friends I can rely on who know the meaning and value of loyalty. I always had many and probably took that for granted. I don't take that for granted anymore.

I want to know where I am going with my life. I want to know it without doubt or second guessing. I want to wake up in the morning, excited about some dream I have...some million dollar idea. I want to feel creative again, instead of remembering, with nostalgia, how I used to have a new idea for a play or a story, everyday.

I want to be excited about work...I want to feel like I am doing something of value, of worth. I want to be appreciated for my skills and who I am as a person.

I want to believe in myself again. Is this my real Mid-Life Crisis? I sure the hell hope this is the last time I have to ask that. I knew it all once. I know very little anymore. Does having the answers come full circle? Can somebody please fill me in? I missed the memo on this.

The Body of Christ has given me heartburn!

I'm not a regular church goer. I am not even sure I could be classified as an irregular church goer.

As a lesbian, I have some justifiable bitches about mainstream religion, in general, and mainstream Christianity, specifically. You know, the whole issue of my being an abomination and my inescapable trip to warmer climes...yeah... it does not sit well with this dyke.

Because I know that I am really not the scourge of humanity, I also know there are other parts of the Bible that are complete and utter bullshit, which makes me question the whole thing. Sometimes that causes me discomfort.

You see, I was raised in a very religious household in a rather serious religion. I come from a Mennonite family and from a faith where fun is questionable and probably immoral...like dancing, laughing, smoking and certainly drinking. I think we always skipped over the Bible lesson where Jesus turned water into wine at a wedding where everyone was having fun. I digress.

So, not being welcome in that religion because of my sexual orientation and my sacrilegious desire for fun, I went off in search of other belief systems where I could feel like I belong. That was years ago...it involved church shopping to various faiths or Houses of God without any particular faith. I eventually felt a calling to all things pagan and immersed myself in a form of Native spirituality. Most recently, I have found myself drawn to Wicca; a calling from my Celtic roots, I am certain. At least witches know how to have fun, mostly don't care if you are gay and, despite all that, they can still be reverent folk!

But this morning...this morning...I got up and went to the Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto. Ok, it's not exactly mainstream, but it has parts of it that remind me of my church oriented youth...usually parts that have historically made me cringe, hyperventilate and want to run for my very life. Regular church makes me feel claustrophobic...I have even been known to sweat during weddings, even if the inside temperature is actually cool.

An ex of mine...the same one responsible for taking me to St. James Cathedral in my first blog entry, took me to MCCT for the first time, about 8 years ago. I walked into this church as a lesbian refugee from the Bible Belt of Alberta. I was nervous, knowing my penchant for anxiety in churches. I sat down, the service commenced and I started to cry. Uncontrollably. Sobbing. Couldn't stop it. Couldn't understand it. Still don't. I could try and fit excuses for it and they would make sense, but it was really beyond that. My partner just put her arm around me, knowingly, and said nothing.

Since that first time, I have sporadically visited the church and watched other people break down in tears with the same confusion. I still have a hard time, myself, not crying when I go there. It's not an unhappy crying...maybe more of a mix of joy, feeling overwhelmed and a feeling of love or maybe even Love that has been so absent from my other church experiences. This morning was no different.

There is no fire and brimstone at the "Gay Church." There is only love and acceptance. Jesus isn't someone spewing about the impurity of sex or the degenerate nature of homosexuals. He never tells you not to have fun. At MCCT he is instead a loving activist for change who's been known to drink wine and maybe even dance a little, who knows?

I don't really know who Jesus Christ was and the older I get the more questions I have...was he God? Are we not all God? Was he a greater soul than any of us? Did he really die on the cross? Did he rise again? Questioning the Bible has led me to many questions about Christ himself and wondering what the truth is under all the subterfuge of religious crap and power mongering.

I find it amusing...cause that's the kinda weirdo I am...that I am setting off on a 750 KM trek that calls itself Catholic to some and the trail of Druids and Goddess Worshippers to others. It was the scene of violent carnage between the Christians and the Moors...a place for saints to experience God and a place for sinners trying to burn off their crimes to avoid Hell. A place of extremes. Religion has created a world of extremes. Of polarities. Black and white. Good and evil. Right and wrong. Maybe my truth lies somewhere in the middle.

Maybe the point of the whole thing is balance and inclusion. Maybe I don't have to decide who Christ was...maybe he is not the Christ of my youth. Maybe he is not the Christ of mainstream Christianity. I am not so sure about the Body of Christ...but the pre-fabbed, pressed wafer representing him, this morning, managed to upset my stomach. No offense, Jesus. But maybe that's my problem...maybe I don't like Jesus pre-fabbed and pressed to fit someone's idea of what is best to feed the masses.

Maybe I can find the truth...my truth...on the Camino where people have been fighting over it instead of listening to it for zillions of years. But this morning...this morning...I felt strangely ok in a church about Jesus. A church filled with abominable people who, according to some Jesus worshippers, should buy stock in sunscreen. It may not have all the answers I need and some things may still cause me indigestion, but I really do feel the Love there. Thanks for reminding me, MCCT, not to be such a cynic.

Walking...

When I smoked I used to take my Camaro around the corner, a quarter block, to buy cigarettes. I think about this as I return from a 10 K walk down Toronto's Queen Street East. How did I get from there to here?

On my first New Year's Eve, in Toronto, watching the year odometer turn over to the auspicious new millennium, my then partner decided to take me on a walk to a downtown cathedral. An ex-nun, she still had a reverence and fascination for churches. I don't recall much about the visit as I really didn't share her enthusiasm for all things Catholic, but what I did receive there was going to come back and haunt me almost a year later.

Fast forward to Christmas, 2000, and I went home to the awkward, frigid embrace of the winter prairies to visit my family. My mother decided she wanted to buy me a book for Christmas and true-to-style she wanted me to pick it out for myself. Milling through the New Age section of the local bookstore, I found it. Shirley Maclaine's The Camino.

The Camino de Santiago, translated, means The Way of St. James. St. James, of course, was one of Christ's apostles who, legend has it, was buried in what became known as Santiago de Compostela, Spain, consequently becoming the end to a pilgrimage of many hundreds 0f kilometres. MacLaine spent 30 days on her mind-bending pilgrimage, both internal and external, for the 780 kilometres from St. Jean Pied de Port, just over the French border, to Santiago.

Through MacLaine's book, I found myself completely engrossed in the magic of this ancient road that follows the strands of starlight belonging to the Milky Way.

My Christmas was spent obsessed with this book, the trail and this inexplicable desire to do the insane. I wanted to walk it myself.

I returned to my Toronto apartment, in body, but my mind was still lost in a foreign continent, curious about my own very foreign desire to walk for over 700 kilometres.

I was reading something MacLaine said about the history of the scallop shell as the symbol of this path, when I found myself flooded with niggley, vague memories of the cathedral I visited, almost a year previous.

I realized, with no shortage of goosebumps, that that cathedral had been named for St. James and I remembered the gift I received there that night. I had a hunch it was in a "junk box" at the back of my closet and I raced over to it, dumping it upside down on the floor, frantic, for reasons unknown to myself, to find that gift. A flash of gold caught my eye and I grabbed it. The gift...a gold scallop shell. The mark of the Camino pilgrim.

I sat there, holding it in my hand, for an interminable amount of time, not understanding the whole length and breadth of this experience, but knowing I was receiving a very strong Nudge.

Over the next five years, I found myself "accidentally" flipping to TV channels who just happened to be playing travel shows about Spain and the Camino or in depth documentaries on subjects like the Knight's Templar -- ancient protectors of ancient pilgrims on an ancient road. Or I would run into posters of My Camino author Sue Kenney's speaking engagements in places like the St. Lawrence Market or in obscure spots like on a telephone pole halfway between Toronto and Bracebridge. Friends would look at them, then at my astonished visage and laugh, knowing my own amazement at all the messages I kept getting. Me. A now 40-something, not particularly physically fit person, who would much rather be than do, was being pushed to walk hundreds of kilometres.

So, I quit smoking and started to walk. For a couple of years it was nothing more than a couple of kilometres and always a distant dream.

As often happens, though, I found myself distracted with life's dramas and lost in self-pitied miseries over life not going how I wanted it to and the Camino took a back seat. One day, my beautiful partner, disillusioned with my decision to marinate myself in negativity, said, "When I met you you were going to do the Camino. What happened to that?"

At the time I didn't really appreciate the reminder, but sat stewing in it, suddenly feeling very tired at the prospect of walking 750 K. It seemed much easier to just fly to some of the world's other sacred places, like Machu Pichu or India. Not wanting to simply dismiss all of the Camino synchronicity I had experienced, though, I felt I had best ask the Universe about it. "Okay...if you still want me to do the Camino, will you give me a sign?"

Forgetting all about it and just hoping the urge would pass, I went grocery shopping. I walked past the beverage aisle and I looked up to see a can of hot chocolate...the brand name? Cocoa Camino.

I stood there laughing at it and myself, wondering what fellow shoppers must be thinking of me. The Camino beckons.

So, for the woman who used to drive her Camaro around the block for cigarettes, life has now become all about walking. Every free block of time becomes a push to walk and walk some more. I'm now up to 10K walks and must push on until I am at least capable of 25 K a day.

I watch the weight drop off me and my calves define themselves. I lay in bed and play with flexing my leg muscles, as alien to me as the country I will be heading to. Foreign , yet not foreign. They say that people don't just do the Camino on a whim. Instead they are called home to do it. I leave Sept. 3rd. I am both terrified and excited.

As I finish writing the paper draft of this blog entry on the streetcar, I hear the driver yell out, "Roncesvalles!" and I smile. Roncesvalles is a Toronto street and also the starting town of my first pilgrimage. One foot in front of the other...

Ultreya!