An Unexpected Pilgrimage
A picture I took at a retreat at Sunflower Beach Resort in Senya Beraku, Ghana. (Image Credit: LeAnn D. Jenkins)
I wrote the first poem in this series, in March 2022. By the end of April, I'd quit my 9-5 and left Chicago where I was living at the time. The past few years had seen countless doctor's visits, 3 minor surgeries, 2 emergency room visits, months of severe insomnia, digestive issues, and hair loss.
Even though I am a mystic and a Spiritual Director, it took a year and many different places to “get” what my body and spirit were telling me. April 30, 2022, I took only what I could fit in my car and made my way to Atlanta, Georgia to do a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) with a friend. We had hopes of starting a co-op down the line. After two months, I realized I hadn’t rested at all. I’d moved from work to different work. I rested two months, then started making big plans again to buy land in Georgia and build a house. Those plans failed drastically and I had to move back home to Texas. After that upheaval is when I got the message in the second poem of the series.
Then, I started looking at doing what I couldn’t do in Georgia overseas. I went to Ghana at the end of March 2023, with a logistical mind. Get the details about what it would take to build an oasis. Two months into the trip, standing in the dungeons of Cape Coast castle, I realized with my whole self that I am a miracle; there’s no reason that I should exist. And yet I do. The tone of the rest of my trip changed. After that, I got the last two messages in the series.
These poems and messages were made at the end of a long unraveling and a pained release - a description that can probably be applied to our collective life during these past few years. The visuals in the following posts were made from roaming my home, finding objects, and putting them together, temporarily, with intuition and experimentation.
Both the words and the creative process represent the uncertain beginning of new ways of moving that I'm seeing in my life and the lives of many people around me. They foresee that these meandering, experimenting, foraging ways can make something lovely, messy, and complete out of whatever we have and what we are given - not what we're told we have to get at expense of ourselves.
An Unexpected Pilgrimage is a series of poems or messages from the Spirit and visual art that I will be posting over the next couple of weeks. Sign-up to receive updates and follow along.
At the end of each poem will be an invitation that is a variation of this:
Breathe.
Look or listen.
Feel what you feel.
Wait.
Consider what your story is to tell and what you have to tell it.
