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Holding Down the Fort


Another Saturday in St. Augustine,

another protest march pushing back on

. . . EVERYTHING!


Signs and flags run the gamut from "No Kings" to "Hands Off": Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, University Students, and to support Ukraine and those deported illegally to El Salvador.


What strikes me is not so much those who turn out each Saturday, but those who quite literally on the other side of the street leisurely stroll, shop, and eat ice cream while the world as we know it is on fire! Two worlds!


We have our work cut out for us, and that means everyone is called upon now to add their signs and voices to the cry to stop what is going on in the United States of America at the hands of our government.


Not a day goes by that another long-held legal right doesn't slip between our fingers. These drastic changes in health care, in education, in safety nets are irrevocable for those of us living in such a time as this and will be irretrievable for generations to come, if ever again.


There is room for everyone on the grounds of the Castillo de San Marcos, a fort built because England was expanding her empire, and Spain needed to stop them*.That very fort where those of us gather, 330 years later, know just as they did then that Freedom is not a given, but must be fought for over and over again.


Freedom is meant for all of us, not just some of us. The time is now for one and all to hold down the fort together in solidarity. The time is now to stop the unthinkable aftermath that will not be the best of two worlds, but the worst case for way too many of us.


Photo courtesy of Jane Watts taken in Hyannis, Massachusetts
Photo courtesy of Jane Watts taken in Hyannis, Massachusetts












 
 
 

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© 2023 by Marie Laure

​Six Stages of Pilgrimage:

  • The Call:

  • The opening clarion of any spiritual journey. Often in the form of a feeling or some vague yearning, a fundamental human desire: finding meaning in an overscheduled world somehow requires leaving behind our daily obligations. Sameness is the enemy of spirituality.

  • The Separation:

  • Pilgrimage, by its very nature, undoes certainty. It rejects the safe and familiar. It asserts that one is freer when one frees oneself from daily obligations of family, work, and community, but also the obligations of science, reason, and technology.

  • The Journey:

  • The backbone of a sacred journey is the pain and sacrifice of the journey itself.  This personal sacrifice enhances the experience; it also elevates the sense of community one develops along the way.

  • The Contemplation:

  • Some pilgrimages go the direct route, right to the center of the holy of holies, directly to the heart of the matter. Others take a more indirect route, circling around the outside of the sacred place, transforming the physical journey into a spiritual path of contemplation like walking a labyrinth.

  • The Encounter:

  • After all the toil and trouble, after all the sunburn and swelling and blisters, after all the anticipation and expectation comes the approach, the sighting. The encounter is the climax of the journey, the moment when the traveler attempts to slide through a thin veil where humans live in concert with the Creator.

  • The Completion and Return:

  • At the culmination of the journey, the pilgrim returns home only to discover that meaning they sought lies in the familiar of one's own world. "Seeing the place for the first time . . ."

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