Simony?

In one of the interviews I did recently I was asked if I took seriously the notion of “carrying sins”. I answered that while I tried not to take myself too seriously, I absolutely did feel the responsibility and weight of the “confessions” that had been made to me. They were privileged information and profound acts of trust, and I treated them that way.

I still do.

If you have read the book, you will know that one sinner gave me the sin of gossip to carry. It would have been easy to make “gossip” of the sins, but I never spoke of them on the road, and it is only with permission that I name them in the book. I sincerely hope I will go to my grave without putting the names of sinners to the sins.

That said, I have never forgotten an email I received from one of my sinners when I reached a net cafe in Córdoba. He asked me whether I was committing the sin of simony, which is defined variously as something like “the buying or selling of ecclesiastical privileges, for example pardons…”

It was a conscience-check for me, and a cause for heaviness of heart until I had wrangled with it, and myself.

Today, I was sent the link to the app above.

I don’t suppose it is simony – there don’t seem to be any indulgences or privileges being sold – but as one of my Facebook community asked me, “Shouldn’t it be free?”

And I’m curious about how it is to be used when in the confessional.

Perhaps I will have to lash out and buy it.

Or not.

I may have to take a long walk to consult my conscience first.

For the Sake of Strangers

 

Today, the edge called.

It doesn’t happen often. Mostly I can walk myself away from it.

But it was a persistent morning of blue.

Nothing more to be said. Except that when walking can’t shift things, I go to the only source I trust.

Poetry.

As I was leaving to walk the Camino Mozárabe, one of my ”poem friends” gave me this. It was true on that road, and today, although it isn’t actually true, somehow reading it is enough. I don’t need to meet strangers because I met the poem. And so I am found, just as it foretells.

Poems. The lived experience of others making sense of the world.

This one is by Dorianne Laux…

 

For The Sake of Strangers

 

No matter what the grief, its weight,

we are obliged to carry it.

We rise and gather momentum, the dull strength

that pushes us through crowds.

And then the young boy gives me directions

so avidly. A woman holds the glass door open,

waits patiently for my empty body to pass through.

All day it continues, each kindness

reaching toward another – a stranger

singing to no one as I pass on the path, trees

offering their blossoms, a retarded child

who lifts his almond eyes and smiles.

Somehow they always find me, seem even

to be waiting, determined to keep me

from myself, from the thing that calls to me

as it must once have called to them –

this temptation to step off the edge

and fall weightless, away from the world.

 

I’m so grateful poems can find me, and I’m reminded that “blue” is a colour I love.

Maybe I’ll sit with it awhile.

And remember to look up…

 

That poem won’t be in the Poetica programme. There just wasn’t room for the entire swag! But the ones that found me on the road will be, along with those that made me walk, and some that were written for me.

Please join me in celebrating words, journeys, and the talent of the sound artist, on Radio National. The Poetica programme I wrote and performed is available now for Podcast. I was so lucky to have had such care taken with the making of it.

Details can be found here:

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/poetica/2012-05-05/3967108

Stop a moment and listen.

It’s like looking up…