To walk alone—that means to walk away from every formula—the ones given to you by others, the ones you learned from books, the ones that you yourself invented in the light of your own past experience. — Anthony DeMello, The Way to Love: Meditations for Life: The Last Meditations.

 

ONE YEAR AGO this week, I found myself lost and alone on a narrow street in Melide, Spain, with a dead cellphone battery, a desperate need to find a public restroom, and no sign of my travel companion. The realization I was off-course dawned vaguely, but more vivid and panic-producing was the awareness I was abandoned. In the vulnerability of that moment, my extensive experience as a solo traveler evaporated, replaced by formulas given to me by others, namely a long-ago abusive partner who often walked off when I failed to find our way quickly. Now churning in my stomach with unexpected acids of self-doubt, fear, and self-blaming was the Pulpo a la Gallega—octopus—offered for free by a street vendor and consumed just before a wrong turn. Traumas once long-gone bubbled up, tightening my chest, arresting my breath and finally erupting as hot tears of anger, hurt and confusion. I backtracked a few blocks, began to cross a four-lane street, but then froze in the pedestrian median, a pathetic middle-aged woman in a beautiful new country isolated in the desert of memory.

While the reunion with my husband—who had detoured only to find his own restroom among the few available—happened within minutes and we together resumed our journey to Santiago de Compostela as religious pilgrims, leaving behind dis-empowering beliefs about myself required more time. I walked in silence for the next hour, not pouting as in the past, but detaching from false formulas about my responsibilities to others. Spiritual solitude like this—in the midst of others—is the greatest gift of walking alone for all pilgrims of life—all of us.

Ever-renewing self-confidence reminds me that in Christ,
the world is being created in each of us through grace. The moral of my panicked moment on pilgrimage was that
fear and formulas—both unreasonable expectations of others
and unhealthy attachments of our own—detour us from a destination of silence and spiritual solitude.

Jean P. Kelly

I put one foot in front of the other for seven days, 100 kilometers, accompanied by a devoted spouse and hundreds of other seekers who offered mutual greetings along what is considered the world’s oldest and greatest Christian pilgrimage routes. But most of the time, I was in fact alone–with my prayers, my interior witness, and my status as a student of the unexpected. On a moment’s notice the path change from packed dirt to ancient stone pavers, from flat elevations to steep climbs. The Way meandered across an ever-changing landscape of shadow-dappled woods fragrant with eucalyptus to farm fields, voiceless villages to cacophonous cities, expansive vistas and stone-enclosed hidey-holes. The only plan necessary was the place name of that night’s accommodations and eyes peeled for yellow arrows and sunburst kilometer markers pointing us to the final resting place of the apostle St. James.

“Growth begins at the edge of our comfort zone,” the saying goes, a lesson I now take to heart for every journey—across the world or down the street—by resisting paralyzing what-ifs that tempt me to plan too much, pack too much and fail to leave behind all emotional baggage of control guaranteed to make anxiety an unwanted travel companion. As one of my favorite spiritual guides, Anthony DeMello, once wrote, the latter abandonment is most difficult of all. “That is possibly the most terrifying thing a human being can do: move into the unknown, unprotected by any formula. To walk away from the world of human beings as the prophets and the mystics did is not to walk away from their company, but from their formulas.”

Ever-renewing self-confidence reminds me that in Christ, the world is being created in each of us through grace. The moral of my panicked moment on pilgrimage was that fear and formulas—both unreasonable expectations of others and unhealthy attachments of our own—detour us from a destination of silence and spiritual solitude.

“Having seen, you will never be the same again,” DeMello writes of the rewards of walking alone in this way. “You will feel the exhilarating freedom and you will never again call anyone your teacher. Then you will never cease to learn as each day you observe and understand afresh. Then every single thing will be your teacher. …

“Dare to look at everything around you without fear and without formula, and it won’t be long before you see.”

 

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