top of page
Bare Trees in Fog

Banned In Florida... PERIOD!

Writer's picture: Marie LaureMarie Laure

Updated: Jun 17, 2023

Hello Friends, near and far.


Summer is upon us. For the first time since COVID, i.e., three years, this summer I will make an international trip. There are two main reasons for the chosen itinerary to Norwich, England and Berlin, Germany. The former is the last place that I visited in 2019 before the lock downs. Some of you will know that my solo pilgrimage culminated in a second book. I am returning there to do a book reading as part of the 650th anniversary celebrations of Julian of Norwich. The latter is a place where Lance lived as a young writer. We are merging our two past experiences together to research an idea that has been coming to us. It seems that the way has opened for us to make the trip now.

While living in a different place, I will be writing a blog that will focus on a particular theme which I have been skirting around for a few years. I have not picked it up in earnest since I first wrote my Christmas letter called Clarion Christmas Call. (I have attached it to refresh your memory, or in case you were not a recipient at that time.)



The note that one message struck in me three years ago, has become a steady drumbeat during the intervening years. I can no longer remain silent and walk the path toward unfreedom in this country. Living where I live these days, creates for me a particular urgency to say something rather than nothing. Writing may help to answer one question that I am often asked regarding how I live here in this "state?" Perhaps, I will come to answer it for myself from a long distance perspective. The second purpose of writing the blog, will be to engage others, like you, to consider your own thoughts regarding our collective future.

The title of the blog is: Banned in Florida . . . PERIOD!

Thanks for taking a few minutes from your busy lives to read this preliminary note. I expect to launch the blog in June.

Let it begin with me . . .

45 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All

Comments

Rated 0 out of 5 stars.
No ratings yet

Add a rating

© 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 . . ."

bottom of page