SIBYL MAGAZINE—April 2017/Unknown (Drinking From a Well)

SIBYL MAGAZINE—April 2017/Unknown (Drinking From a Well)

A PILGRIM SEEKING TEMPLES

Sandra Mattucci—Unknown (Drinking From a Well)

The pilgrimage of life is filled with unknowns.  While I walked the Camino de Santiago, I became increasingly conscious of the number of unknowns I met along the journey.  I was walking with the most incredible “No-bodys.”  These pilgrims came from all over the world and were walking for a variety of reasons: personal, religious, spiritual.  Their station in life mattered not and their occupations were not discussed.  Instead, this community of pilgrims simply joined hands with the ancient pilgrims of the past and traveled the long and often arduous road.  Their names—unknown.  Their goal: Santiago.

When I returned home, “back” to where my roots were planted, the amazing “unknowns” I had met continued to take hold of my being.  I transplanted myself into new terrain—physical, mental, emotional and spiritual venues.  Now when I plunge into these present day “trails,” my being knows how to drink from the well which no longer leaves me thirsty.  Deep within this well—as I look “inward,” I cannot see its bottom.  Is there water below, I ask?  Emphatically, I say “yes” but I remain somewhat uncertain.  Yet, I trust in this Unknown—in a spirit and a truth that assures me that every moment reveals graces once the eye is open to see no matter how despairing life might be.  Yes, when harmony pervades my being, it is from this well of unknowing that I walk, that I drink, that I remain mindful each day to the beauty present in my life.

Yesterday is a memory—tomorrow lies beyond.  In anticipating each new day, I stand in awesome wonder as I await what is to come.  My focus: to embrace the present unknown…the unfamiliar.  What unfolds is what is intended to be without my having to do much but live.  I would not want to think that I have grasped this powerful happening because when I believe that I have, I will have lost its wonder.

Living life is DOING and it is BEING.  Since returning from my journey that I celebrated by walking alone and yet with others, I have become much more attuned to understanding that in being I see my life as the cup that continues to dip into the well of abundance.  There I find the sustenance to savor, to taste, to share.  The well does not provide drink for only my own consumption, but it is available to all who thirst.  It provides for a sacred sharing—a holy communion.

Each of us is called to share from our abundance, from our nothingness, from this Unknown, this Community of Creation.  It is then that we are born anew.  A cloud of witnesses sings from a heaven here on earth.  A chorus of birds chants ‘Alleluia.’  How blessed is this UNKNOWN,

Until May,
Buen Camino