In Song of the Open Road Walt Whitman wrote, "I think heroic deeds were all conceiv'd in the open air, and all great poems also..."
In the Passover story, this is a time of passageway, of sacred travel. A pilgrimage into the open air, which is both fresh and frightening. An exit and entrance of
danger and possibility, devastation and liberation. The ancient Israelites had to unlearn the internalized burdens of their captivity that they carried with them after leaving Egypt. Barriers fell. It was painful. They confronted themselves and their God. They were changed by their time in the desert. In its open space and open air, the Israelites learned what it is to be free.
Springtime travel is as old as Passover, as famous as The Canterbury Tales, as familiar (and sometimes as asinine) as Spring Break. Open and fresh air is a necessity if your winter was cold and sun-deprived.
The trip only becomes a pilgrimage if the journey is a formative one, changing you and/or your fellow travelers in some significant way. You're not the same person when it's over as when it began. There's some measure of deliverance--into a new understanding, a new perspective, even a new name (I'm reading Manning Marable's awesome new study of the life of Malcolm X, or as he became after pilgrimage to Mecca, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz)--at journey's end.
Something substantial has changed, kind of like how the band Death Cab for Cutie puts it in the title of their song "Soul Meets Body." (video below)
Where have your sacred travels taken you? And where have they delivered you, changed from the person you were? And with whom do you share your stories of pilgrimage?
I'm thinking that today's blog could not have been written by a Méxicano or Salvadoreño or Guatamateca. I am currently on a pilgrimage in Mexico. Indeed I love the way of life in Mexico in so many ways. People LIVE out of doors. The weather permits it - no one shuts themselves up in their houses in my experience - although I haven't hung out much in ritzy neighborhoods where there are high walls around what I can only imagine are gorgeous air-conditioned homes and mansions. In Mexico, most shops close up from 1:00 to 4:00 for siesta - so sensible! And kids go home for lunch and a mid-day break - then back to school from 4:00 to 7:00. Towns and cities are so full of life - people coming and going on the streets and in the plazas and parks, kids chasing each other and kicking balls, teenage lovers kissing as if tomorrow will never come, toddlers testing their limits. It's a rare street that is deserted even at night. It’s spring break, and at night now the plazas are mobbed with families - kids exuberant with the holidays and merchants enjoying the parents giving in to requests for trinkets and dulces. It's fun conversing with strangers on benches and in the restaurants and shops. In my neighborhood at home, neighbors meet only if they happen to be putting out the trash at the same time on a Monday afternoon.
ReplyDeletedmb, I love your posts from Mexico. I write from a perspective of the local weather and context here in PA and that's obviously not a universal view upon springtime and its rituals. There's also another reason I appreciate reading your comments. The dominant US news narrative on Mexico is based in fear: of undocumented workers, of the drug cartels and violence. I don't want to minimize those stories, nor our nation's role in destabilizing certain parts of Mexican society because of our national love of cheap labor, cheap guns, and cheap drugs. But your perspective adds such a necessary counter-narrative, of Mexico's everyday normalcy and vibrancy, instead of being just some kind of lawless violence ravaged land to our south. Thank you.
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