Do or Do Not

We all know the quote, right?  “Do or do not.  There is no try.”  Pretty deep for a puppet, I must confess.  But humans are not puppets and the world we inhabit is not Star Wars.  Yet it is a fact that something worth doing must be done, even badly. For that is another saying, though less cited, “Anything worth doing is worth doing badly,” from G. K. Chesterton.

What am I talking about, though?

It has been a month since my last post, and the reason why is that I was ‘doing something,’ namely my first leg on the Via Francigena, a 2000 km pilgrim route from Canterbury to Rome.  My total this time was 240 km, of just short of 150 miles over 11 days of walking.

Now, I did keep an extensive diary, which I did post on Facebook, but these posts are meant to be reflective not immediate.  It will be some time before they appear here.  One thing I can say is that Chesterton is wiser than Yoda.  While I made it to Arras, it was hardly a success.  You could say, quite accurately that I was…

Stumbling

That’s literally true, as I hit the ground hard at least once.  My right knee is still a little tender from that.  But it’s also true figuratively.  More than once I got turned around along the trail (thank you, Google Maps!) or stumbled while trying to find the right words in French, or some other confusion that being in a new place affords.

Now, I did some cursory research (meaning I googled for a while) and found out that ‘stumbling’ is a popular word for spiritual writers, with blogs and books called Stumbling Toward Grace, Stumbling Toward Zion, Stumbling toward Sainthood, Stumbling Toward Obedience, Stumbling toward God,  Stumbling Toward Eternity.  All of them are first person accounts of spiritual failure and redemption.

This is Not That

Pilgrim Life is not about getting there, it is about the going – the doing – which inevitably involves stumbles and falls, literal and figurative.  Pilgrim Life is about doing life badly.  Not the least of which is neglecting this blog.  I did think, “Well, I will post along the way.”  But then that would become what I was doing.  I would have been doing it for the blog, not for the walk.

And that is the opposite of Pilgrim Life.  Do or do not.

Do that and nothing else.

There is the real challenge.  “I do one thing at a time; I do it very well; and then I move on,” said the famously snooty Charles Emerson Winchester III.  Good spiritual advice but horribly hard to follow.  For as the poet Adrienne Rich observed, 

we take on
everything at once before we’ve even begun
to read or mark time, we’re forced to begin
in the midst of the hard movement,
the one already sounding as we are born.

Some would now go on to talk of Foxes and Hedgehogs, but doing one thing means stopping when it’s done.  I reached Arras and was done, for now.  I returned to Michigan and now resume this blog, for now.

That is enough.