Fear and Courage

I’m listening to an audiobook by Pádraig Ó Tuama, called, “In the Shelter: Finding a Home in the World.” In it, he writes of fear and courage, that they come from the same place, the same place, “in the body,” which has it’s voice to listen to, to hear.

Before I started this trip, I said to more than one person, “I’m a little afraid.” I was thinking of every bad or really difficult thing that could happen. One or two said to me, “It is a courageous thing to do.” I didn’t take it seriously. They are just being kind and encouraging, I thought. A month in now and I’m beginning to think about this in terms of the meaning of this trip for me. I was afraid to do it; I’ve cancelled plans to do it before, out of fear or lack of courage. Is there a difference?

In this sense, then, I guess this trip is a courageous act for me. I’m doing it when I had some fear to do it. There are still bad things that can happen or really difficult things. I remain fully aware of those possibilities.

Still, there must be reasons for a person to begin to dig into their well of courage. For me, why now? Why now when, before, I had Carol’s loving support? Why now, two years after she died?

Perhaps it is because I’ve been looking for an answer to my even bigger question: “Who am I, now that she is gone?

This is where the subtitle of Pádraig Ó Tuama’s book drew me in: “Finding a Home in the World.” What a beautiful title for an adventurous journey! I am here because I’m trying to find a home in the world. I’m sure that sounds like a strange thing. After all, I have a nice actual home, I live in a community of good and generous people, I have all of my material needs met, and more. I have the support of good friends and family. And, it’s not like I’m a young man setting out on life’s journey with all the years of trying and failing still ahead. Some might ask, as I do of myself, isn’t it all good enough and more? Yes. Yes, it is. Yet, “good enough” hardly ever satisfies, to the depths.

It is important for me to reflect on this because I’m not one to travel simply for travels sake. If travel has no meaning other than just to see places then, at least for me, travel is just more accumulation of places done and seen. Therefore, I hope this long trip to Japan answers some deeper need in me that will help me to find a home in the world.

In my spiritual imagination, this adventure has aspects of pilgrimage. I am travelling to places that my imagination has held sacred for a very long time. I’ve written before that I can’t say I know why this is so. And, my relatively new practice in the Japanese Zen spiritual tradition has only concurred with my long held sense. This tradition is beginning to shape my sense of me in the world.

Pilgrimage is a deeply important concept for me as it was for me and Carol when we did most of our larger travels into the wider world. For instance, our last trip together was to England and Scotland at a time when cancer was very much a part of our lives. We went to Norwich, England, the home of Julian of Norwich, a woman, a mystic, and a spiritual healer and counselor. She was one of the great women in a church that has rarely recognized women as spiritual leaders.

We went to Iona, a small island just off the western coast of Scotland where a community of lay persons have created spiritual practices outside the confining restrictions of any formal church. On our first night there, we went to their evening service which happened to be a service of prayer for the sick. Carol did not hesitate to go down to receive the healing touch of the Iona community.

I can’t say how this trip of mine, this pilgrimage, will help me find my home in the world. That is too much to ask of any trip, person, or thing. It will not tell me who I am. It is, however, giving me time and space in sacred and beautiful places to brush up against parts of myself I’ve either tried to ignore or to find those things in me, such as courage, that will help me find the way.