The road less traveled...

As I'm thinking about my long pilgrimage ahead, I can't help but think of Robert Frost's poem, "The Road Not Taken". Many people have already taken a sacred journey along the most famous pilgrimage route of all, the via de Santiago del Compstela, which treks from Rome, across southern France, through the Pyrenees, and ever on to the Atlantic coast of Spain. 

For over 1100 years, Santiago has hosted up to 2 million pilgrims a year. Some have crawled it on their knees. But I am taking the less traveled road...the via francigena.

Each year, only a few dozen pilgrims make this equally arduous trek in modern times. And so my thoughts keep returning to Robert Frost and his roads and birch branches as I embark on a 75 day, 1106 mile trek from Calais, France to Rome, Italy. I'll be exploring what sacred place, sacred space means. I'll be contemplating silence... a lot of silence! But I hope that as a result of this journey, I will hear much more in the silence than I have ever heard before. 

 I leave you with Frost's thoughts: Robert Frost (1874–1963). Mountain Interval. 1920. 

 The Road Not Taken 

 Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, 

 And sorry I could not travel both 

 And be one traveler, long I stood 

 And looked down one as far as I could 

 To where it bent in the undergrowth; 

 Then took the other, as just as fair, 

 And having perhaps the better claim, 

 Because it was grassy and wanted wear; 

 Though as for that the passing there 

 Had worn them really about the same, 

 And both that morning equally lay 

 In leaves no step had trodden black. 

 Oh, I kept the first for another day! 

 Yet knowing how way leads on to way, 

 I doubted if I should ever come back. 

 I shall be telling this with a sigh 

 Somewhere ages and ages hence: 

 Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— 

 I took the one less traveled by, 

 And that has made all the difference. 

 Peace to you in your own journey this summer. May you find the sacred in everyday life spent with friends and family and co-workers. Here's hoping that the veil which hides the sacred is pulled aside once in a while so that we get a glimpse of something even more glorious and fulfilling which carries us through our interactions with others, which fills us with more grace, more compassion, more hope, more joy, more peace, more laughter, more abundance, and more life!