The Water Witch, Part II: The Pilgrim
Finding the answer to life is like someone who finds a treasure in a field, and going home, joyfully sells all she has, so that she can buy the field. It’s worth giving everything. It’s worth seeking. It’s searching for treasure. It’s traveling on a quest. It’s going on an adventure. It is pilgrimage.
Dear Lucy,
In Letter #2 I tried to answer your question about … “that missing thing” in your heart. I understand. Our hearts can feel like a vacuum sometimes: empty and dry. My grandmother who told me about water-witching had a faith in God that legislated church prayers but did not explain or pertain to the paranormal or superstitions of her day; it vaguely held Him at a distance, the head and controller of it all. In my letter to you, I used her water-witching as an analogy for human hearts seeking water, water for their souls, fulfilling and peace-giving.
Tibetan monks believe they can achieve fullness in oneness with the gods by escaping into a constant vocal hum that continues 24/7 in their mountain monasteries: in shifts, lifting and resonating like one unifying string. The Singing Bowl in yoga is a similar sound of complete focus and relaxation. These are performed by people seeking peace. Some would say they are escaping reality because of its pain. Even non-monks, regular folks, who live in stressful reality find great relief in this “OM,” a mimic of that sound reverberating with the song of the universe.
Some believe that Oneness with the Divine is the answer and that it gives more than just peace and escape but fills a longing — the Sehnsucht, German lit. for “seeing search” — that hunger to see, to know, to be known by the Ultimate Knower and then to be given sight in return. Most world religions, including Islam and Hinduism, require pilgrimage as part of the journey to enlightenment.
The Middle Ages is packed with stories, especially of Christian pilgrimages. A 19th century Russian classic by an anonymous pilgrim was given to me by a deep-thinking, spiritual friend. It is a true story: ancient, deep, and fascinating, about a Russian who records his pilgrimage without telling us anything personal about himself. He gives no name; we learn only that he is thirty-three years old, has a withered arm, and walks carrying a knapsack that holds only dry bread, his Bible and the Philokolia with its prayer of the heart.
There is a place near Greece that remarkably juts 37 miles into the sea and climaxes in a 6000 foot cliff that plunges straight down to the waters. From caves in that cliff, hermits still draw provisions and visitors up in baskets. The whole peninsula, some 150 square miles, is one vast monastery. And though the monks now number less than one-tenth their original number of 43,000, there remains the feel of a springboard to heaven. Here is the kenotic, or self-emptying strain in Christendom — its hesychasm, the way of stillness, of repose.
This is what that pilgrim did, just like millions of others have done before and since: he began a journey with what he had and what he knew, in search of peace and joy. He walked from north Russia to Jerusalem and his fascinating tale is one of surprise meetings, sharing of food and profound insights.
The Russian Pilgrim starts on his way. He visits the churches where famous preachers are to be heard; perhaps they can throw some light on his problem. He hears many fine sermons on prayer — what it is, how much we need it, what its fruits are. But none tell him how to obey his religion’s admonition to pray without ceasing.
Finally, he comes on a starets, a spiritual director, who knows. The prayer that does not stop, he tells the pilgrim, is The Jesus Prayer: the uninterrupted calling upon the name of Jesus with the lips, in the spirit, and in the heart, while forming a picture of his presence and imploring his grace during every occupation — at all times, in all places, even during sleep. The prayer is couched in the words, “Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me.” A Christian mantra if I ever heard one.
Not all are called to this monkish life, but all are given a desire (whether they recognize it as such or not) to seek the Divine and have Oneness with Him. Jesus prays this for his disciples as recorded near the end of the gospel of John and here I present just one way toward achieving this. As in the previous letter I wrote you Lucy, about my own daily custom, our pilgrim here also first sits alone in silence, head lowered, eyes shut. He tries to be calm and patient and put all other thoughts aside. As I shared with you in that letter, other ancients focused on the three-fold prayer: “Lord have mercy. Thee I adore. Into Thy hands.” This pilgrim says the seven-word prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.”
The idea that a name packs a punch is not as strong in our present culture has it is elsewhere and as it was in ancient times. In my travels in Africa, India, and most of all in the Philippines, people I meet shyly ask, “May I know your name?” …like I’m gifting them a piece of myself. The Way of the Pilgrim contributes to the mosaic of mysticism by the extension of the Divine Name mantra. (Something of this idea may have been entered into the Hebrew prohibition against uttering the tetragrammaton, JHVH, from which we get Yahweh or Jehovah-God, or perhaps what you’ve more commonly heard lightly, irreverently, given in surprise or emphasis as “By JOVE!”). Anyway, in my experience there is power, great power, in the Name of Jesus.
As I wrote in that letter about water-witching as analogy for seeking, C.S. Lewis writes of Sehnsucht in a letter to his life-long friend, “I know quite well that feeling of something strange and wonderful that ought to happen, and wish I could think like you that this hope will someday be fulfilled. . . Perhaps indeed the chance of a change into some world of Terreauty (a word I’ve coined to mean terror and beauty) which is, in some allegorical way, daily offered to us if we have the courage to take it.” And in his own pilgrim story, Pilgrim’s Regress, Lewis writes, “I still believe that the experience is common, commonly misunderstood, and of immense importance: but I know now that in other minds it arises under other stimuli and is entangled with other irrelevancies and that to bring it into the forefront of consciousness is not so easy as I once supposed.”
(I add, this was near the beginning of Lewis’s own search for the treasure that lies at the heart of everything.) “The experience is one of intense longing. . . . This hunger is better than any other fullness: this poverty better than any other wealth. . . the human soul was made to enjoy some object that is never fully given — nay, cannot be imagined as given — in our present mode of subjective and spatial-temporal experience.” A few chapters later, Lewis’s pilgrim experiences much the same as John-the-disciple on the Isle of Patmos (which is, interestingly, not far from that jutting Greek peninsula of monks)! Lewis’s Pilgrim’s Regress continues, “Then came the sound of a musical instrument, from behind it seemed very sweet and very short, as if it were one plucking of a string or one note of a bell, and after it a full, clear voice — and it sounded so high and strange that he thought it was very far away, …the voice said, ‘Come.’”
Lucy, I hope your journey takes you to this voice — the One at the center of it all. I also give you advice from Pilgrims Regress, “What does not satisfy when we find it, was not the thing we were desiring.”
If you keep seeking you will find. Only light can dispel darkness; we cannot fight darkness with darkness but with light. You will be illuminated on your journey. And speaking of journeys, here is more of the wonderful Russian Pilgrim’s story. The tale delightfully details each step of the way up to the Pilgrim’s finding that once his mind was trained in the prayer, his heart also became included and he began to find joy in everything about him: nature was more beautiful, people more loveable and his heart lighter and happier than he ever could have imagined! And then the story continues… but you must read it for yourself, my dear Lucy.
Of course, each person’s path is somewhat different, but we can learn from the gurus, the rabbis, the teachers of old and hopefully from teachers and mentors of today. Speaking of which, Lucy dear, I will shed more light on your pilgrimage and answer your questions about my own personal quest in the next couple letters. Hang in there, my dear, and just start. Breathe. Bow. Right where you are.
Love, Sophia
