I Guess I'll Just Keep On Walking by Noel Braun

Author:Noel Braun [Braun, Noel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Personal Memoir
ISBN: 9781925282719
Publisher: Sid Harta Publishers
Published: 2017-05-11T00:00:00+00:00

Intermission

The journey is

far from over

13

It is only by going down into the abyss that we recover

the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure. The very cave you were afraid to enter turns out to be the

source of what you were looking for.

—Joseph Campbell.

Sometimes I’m not sure what to make of my life over the last ten years. I stumbled around after the death of Maris. I was lost. My life assumptions, my identity had been shattered by her suicide. I had to put myself together again. I travelled. I was drawn towards pilgrimage. I was seeking an anchorage that would bring some stability into my life. I heard of the ancient pilgrimage route, the Camino de Santiago de Compostela. Modern day pilgrims were following the same routes. I joined them. At one stage I thought that my travelling was a reaction to Maris’ death, a way of working my way through my grieving. It was more than that. The same longing (or restlessness?) which sent me on the Camino in 2010, 2011 and 2013, to Chartres and to Taizé continues to drive me as if I were on a quest.

Back home I was on another pilgrimage, trying to apply the lessons of the Camino to my life, making my life a pilgrimage and every step a prayer. I moved out of my family home of thirty years into a retirement village. I was ready to leave behind the memories of a life with Maris, to make the final sort of her belongings and to keep what I valued. The retirement village was nice, its gardens were beautiful. It is situated on the edge of a national park. My view looked straight into this national park and through the trees I caught glimpses of the ocean. The people were friendly. We had our own inner community, the residents of a group of nine units. We looked out for each other.

The management promoted the idea of comfort, security and taking the worry out of life. There was a finality in that message as if a life of adventure and inquiry was over… I wasn’t ready to settle into God’s holding paddock and be content with reminiscence and looking back. I like to think I still had a glint in my eyes.

The longing continued. My quest, my search was by no means finished. In 2013, three months after moving into the retirement village, I returned to France and followed another of the Camino routes from Montpellier and across the Pyrenees. Every day, I thanked God that at the age of eighty I had the health, fitness and enthusiasm for such a mad caper. The route was more difficult and some days, I felt I had nothing but a faith in God’s care to keep me going.

Back in Australia I abandoned the security of living thirty years in Sydney. I moved out of the retirement village to the Snowy Mountains, adjacent to Mount Kosciuszko National Park. Such an action is at

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