dust and ashes
After I lost my shoe, I definitely thought a lot about my next steps. One foot walked the same old walk, carrying on as usual, though my sole was worn nearly through; one foot placed itself more knowingly, swaddled in extra socks as if swollen by injury, as if I was doing the best I could – despite my own carelessness that dropped the lost shoe behind my gym locker, never to be retrieved.
But isn’t this the usual price of carelessness? Self-injury? Even when my thoughtless, heedless, mindless actions hurt others, they double back and bite me in the heel, too, like a snake in the grass. Or in the dust of the desert.
The way I know I’m taking a misstep is that I feel as if I’m off my stride, out of balance. If I continue, I feel an ache. But it’s not in my foot or ankle – it’s a heartache, low but insistent, the regular pulsing of regret.
Some people say they will never regret. All well and good; maybe these people never had responsibilities to someone they love, someone small or someone old, someone depending on them in very real ways that tied them to frustrating realities. I have experienced regret. I have limped through mediocre choices, too tired to believe I could be more than what I saw reflected in the bathroom mirror each night. Turn out the light, ignore that image, sleep until tomorrow.
“No regrets” is a shallow motto. It is the battle cry of immaturity. Everyone regrets, if they wise up, grow up. Regret is the key to repentance, which is the turning point for resolve.
Religions have co-opted the word “repentance,” but I want it back – it’s a damn fine word. One definition is “sorrow, shame.” But another is “pangs of conscience.” The Greek root of the word repentance can be translated as metanoia: a change of mind. Some call it a change of heart.
“It implies making a decision to turn around, to face a new direction. To turn toward the light.”
— metanoia.org
For each of us, a way of living beckons like a light in the darkness. We call it by many names: the dream, destiny, “someday,” or most usually, “You know what I’d really like to do….” The truth comes out over beers, or while changing diapers or pushing swings, or talking about frustrations at the office or the shop. We get down into the dirt, and we get real. We acknowledge those pangs, like a hunger for something we’ve heard of but never really tasted. Or maybe we have tasted it. Maybe the sweet taste of victory has turned to ashes in our mouths.
Such was my feeling stepping into Ash Wednesday. Like I was still walking with one shoe on, one shoe lost. Because despite my best reframing efforts, trying to convince myself this full-time job is a sweet opportunity to stash some cash and get ready for my next travel opportunity is wearing thin. I have tasted the life I want, and I struggle to convince myself that I’m still on my path. I’m noticing a bitter taste as I work to keep my impatience down. It’s a spiritual heartburn, which feels just as stupid as it sounds. I feel like I know better, and I’m kicking myself.
Therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes. – Job 42:6
Job was a pawn. In the Bible story, God bragged to Satan that Job was “blameless and upright,” to which Satan replied that God had “put a hedge about him and his house and all that he has, on every side.” Satan said that if God took away Job’s sweet life, Job would curse Him to His face. So God said fine, give it a go, just don’t kill him; don’t worry, he won’t turn on me. And Satan promptly proceeded to torture and torment Job.
What the hell kind of god is that? While God watched (or didn’t), Job’s blameless uprightness was shredded – his farm destroyed, his family annihilated, his body diseased and inflamed. What doesn’t kill us…makes us stronger? Makes us question if anything we do even matters?
Being ripped out of the hedge flings us far from the familiar, dropping us hard in the dirt of a crossroads of the soul. It can make us so bitter that resentment is all we can taste. We give up and give in, to our worst beliefs and our worst selves.
Or, looking down the other road, it can remind us that this one life is all we have, and we need to quit taking it for granted, so certain that there will be more days, that we can waste any of them. I had touched on this viewpoint when I was traveling, and found it invigorating. Then I ran short on funds, so I snuck back behind the hedge. I’ve been struggling to break free of the more-than-full-time salaried job ever since, especially over the past year. Hence the heartburn, acid frustration eating me alive.
Choice is power. Sometimes, the only choice we can find is how we focus our minds. Which road to look down. Making the decision to turn around, again, face the direction we know we want, again. Turn toward the light. Again.
Ash Wednesday is a holy reminder that we are mortal. It doesn’t matter what religion we follow, if any. Christians take the palm branches used by multitudes to celebrate Jesus’ arrival into Jerusalem as the King and burn them to ash to remember how a week later, the same crowds chose to save a thief and crucify their King. We are those multitudes. We choose to follow our best and highest callings, the truth of who we are; and then, a week later, we turn on ourselves and choose the thief, Fear, also known by the names Maybe Later, When Life Settles Down, and That Was Just A Crazy Idea I Had.
Ash Wednesday reminds me of the Upanishads, too. In the Hindu faith, holy ash is applied in particular ways to particular areas of the body, including across the forehead. The sacred ash is bhasma; it is ash from a sacrificial fire. The roots of the word bhasma mean “to destroy” joined with “to remember.” It is generally described as burning away evil to remember the divine.
By applying the sacred ash to their bodies, devotees of Lord Shiva embody both the transience of this life and transformation: a state “beyond perturbance,” with nothing left to burn away.
I was still perturbed. How to get to the point where I’ve burned away fear, with nothing left between me and the life I want to wear across my forehead like a rite of passage? What are the ingredients of my sacrificial fire?
My ridiculous, crazy idea is that I can walk the world in a continuous pilgrimage, learning and writing. Remembering I’m just a guest wherever I go, a stranger just passing through. I’ve started. I completed one route, across Spain. I determined my next route: Japan. I made arrangements, had a trip scheduled – and was typhooned out, airport ransacked, mudslides destroying the paths I planned to take. I looked again this year: a raffle for free plane tickets to Japan was rigged against me by limiting itineraries to just 10 days. I needed weeks. Japan would have to wait while I saved my yen.
Without a destination, I was walking in circles, down the hill and past the train tracks to work, then back, past the homeless people setting up their blue tarp tents under the setting sun, up the hill as the train bells clanged and left me behind, rolling away down the line. I have been regretting my decision around work, knowing I am not doing what I’m supposed to be doing. I just don’t know how to do it without money. And I don’t know any other way to get the money to do it.
Like all the best crossroads, I cannot see far down the path I need to take. But I can see where it starts. And I’ve learned that the only way to see farther down the road is to start walking it.
Again.
So in April, I’ll walk a local pilgrimage route – to El Santuario de Chimayo, almost 100 miles northeast as the crow (or in New Mexico, the raven) flies. Peregrinos get themselves to Santa Fe by whatever route they can. Mine will be along the Turquoise Trail, a high road between the Sandias and the San Pedro Mountains I have driven enough times for it to be somewhat familiar. From Santa Fe to Chimayo, we join and walk together – highway lanes are closed to let thousands of seekers make their pilgrimage during Holy Week, that time between waving palm branches at our ideals and carrying our cross up the hill.
At the Santuario, el pocito (“little well”) is a sanctified hole in the ground, offering holy dirt famed for healing. The faithful rub it across their bodies, turning their Job-like afflictions into miracles. Canes and crutches are left behind as testament to transformation.
You’re not supposed to consume the holy dirt at el Santuario de Chimayo, but apparently some people do. While no one has determined scientifically the healing components of this soil, it was found to contain high levels of calcium carbonate – the main ingredient in heartburn remedies.
Up the path a few steps farther sits the Santo Niño chapel. I read that here, shelves are lined with rows and rows of pairs of little shoes – all gifts offered to the Holy Child, to make sure his small feet are protected as he journeys to offer comfort to all who suffer. Even Tiny Jesus walks his own Camino.
I need new shoes, as does Santo Niño. I will bring him a small pair. I resolve to burn this old, worn-out shoe that has walked my old, worn-out path. That ought to be a delicious smell.
To destroy, to remember: can’t be one foot in, one foot out. Sacred ash, holy dirt.
“If you are a stranger, if you are weary from the struggles of life, whether you have a handicap, whether you have a broken heart, follow the long mountain road, find a home in Chimayo.”
— newmexicoexplorer.com