Today, as many of us prepare in one way or another for Thanksgiving, can we reflect on what it means to be a pilgrim. We can let go of an old story about a particular group of pilgrims sailing to a new land and welcome the truth that we are all pilgrims.
Each of us is born with a double yearning, twin pulls–to venture out, to find a new path or way to a larger sense of ourselves, and longing to be still, to stay put, to find a deep connection with place.
Our pilgrimage begins at birth and proceeds. In our dreams and fictions–and even in our earliest childhood play–we seek ways. We seek ways out of trouble, out of heartbreak, the possibility of loss, the looming inevitability of death. We seek meaning, healing. We yearn to find a way to be more at peace, to be more. We seek to be part of a greater life.
In sitting and walking meditating, we practice letting go of our habitual way of thinking, of our usual stories. We practice sensing what is happening in the body below the thinking. When we realize we are lost in thought (which is most of the time), we redirect the attention to the endlessly changing flow of sensation. A feast of impressions, of glorious, mysterious life, is constantly being offered. The indigenous people who met the storied Thanksgiving pilgrims were aware of this unending stream of gifts from the Creator. But most of us pilgrims don’t notice. We are too busy telling ourselves stories, longing for better entertainment than Creation, picturing ourselves in better starring roles.
But at moments, we experience a deeper kind of knowing, a soul-knowing. Having a soul is related to the deep knowing of life in the body and the heart. Often we discover this knowing when the way seems blocked, when we cannot be satisfied by the stories of the head. A feast appears when we know our true poverty. Soul is the body and the heart receiving and appreciating the gifts of life that keep coming like grace even when we don’t notice. Soul is knowing that we are made to be pilgrims…and to be still and pay attention…and to give thanks. Here is a great poem about thanks by W.S. Merwin.
Thanks
Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water looking out
in different directions
back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
in a culture up to its chin in shame
living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you
over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the back door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks that use us we are saying thank you
with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable
unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you
with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us like the earth
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is
–W.S. Merwin from “The Rain in the Trees,” 1988
Tracy Cochran 