tag:trail.nd.edu,2005:/newsNotre Dame Trail | News2017-08-28T12:00:00-04:00tag:trail.nd.edu,2005:News/790852017-08-28T12:00:00-04:002018-11-29T13:13:52-05:00Mass for Mary, Seat of Wisdom Homily offered by Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C.<p><strong>Opening of the Academic Year Mass in Celebration of Notre Dame's 175th Anniversary</strong></p> <p>On November 26, 1842, Fr. Sorin and a few companions arrived in South Bend after an over-250 mile trek from Vincennes. He had good reason to rest after the long trip, but he insisted on making…</p><p><strong>Opening of the Academic Year Mass in Celebration of Notre Dame's 175th Anniversary</strong></p>
<p>On November 26, 1842, Fr. Sorin and a few companions arrived in South Bend after an over-250 mile trek from Vincennes. He had good reason to rest after the long trip, but he insisted on making the three-mile walk to campus that very day. He arrived here, as you walkers arrived today, and was overwhelmed with the beauty of the campus that, unlike today, was covered in fresh snow.</p>
<p>Then the more difficult journey began. That was the journey involved in building a great University, dedicated to Our Lady, Mary, that would be a force for good in this new land. Sorin and companions would have to endure financial uncertainty, disease, occasional hostility from neighbors and fires to realize this dream.</p>
<p>As Sorin and his successors built Notre Dame, many joined to help. There were Sorin’s companions, the Holy Cross Brothers and their successors, who literally built the buildings, farmed at St. Joseph farm that fed the University community and taught in classes. The Holy Cross Sisters came in 1843 and opened a school in Bertrand, a few miles to the north, and in 1855 moved to the current site of St. Mary’s College. Members of the local South Bend community provided invaluable help, and the state legislature of Indiana approved a charter for the University in 1844, even though it was at the time a fledgling operation that lacked the ability to offer anything resembling a university education.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.nd.edu/features/opening-mass-homily/"><strong>Read the Full Homily Here.</strong></a></p>Notre Dame Trailtag:trail.nd.edu,2005:News/790562017-08-27T18:00:00-04:002018-11-29T13:13:52-05:00Reflections from the Trail<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">The number of times I’ve been asleep on an airplane and woken up to find a fetching stream of drool down the left side of my shirt is greater than I care to admit. The more tired I am, the greater…</p><p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">The number of times I’ve been asleep on an airplane and woken up to find a fetching stream of drool down the left side of my shirt is greater than I care to admit. The more tired I am, the greater the likelihood of this happening. Also, I find, the more attractive the person sitting next to me, the more likely I am to experience said affliction.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">I’ve got three hours to Seattle – about the length of time it typically takes me to write these posts. And as I am utterly exhausted <em>and</em> surrounded by folks who could very easily be the next cast of <em>Grey’s Anatomy</em>, you, dear reader, may very well be the only thing between me and abject humiliation.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">The Trail is complete. Few things underscore this for me more than the screen on the back of the chair in front of me. For the last two weeks I’ve been moving with a groundspeed of about 3.8 miles per hour. Current groundspeed in mph is 467. For two weeks, I have barely been able to see over the miles of Indiana corn. Right now I’m 36,000 feet in the air, somewhere above the western suburbs of Minneapolis. The sun was kind. We had a few days when the temperature in our final hours on the trail was in the 90’s, and one or two days towards the end when we started out in the low 50’s, but otherwise the weather and winds were kinder than we could possibly have dared to hope. Now, though I am perfectly comfortable where I sit, twelve inches from my shoulder on the other side of this window the temperature is 60-below-zero.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">This is re-entry.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">In about two hours, I will most likely fly directly over my wife, somewhere around the Idaho panhandle or possibly even Spokane, as she makes the final leg of her journey west and new life begins.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">I’ll wave. She probably won’t see me.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">As we approach Seattle, if the weather is clear, I’ll get a great view of Mount Rainier, the great lady who watches over my new city in much the same way the Golden Dome and Our Lady watch over campus. She’s 70 miles south and east of Seattle and often enough she’s hidden by clouds or haze. But when the weather is clear and “the mountain’s out” as they say, she is at once awesome and majestic and humbling in her beauty.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">I’m over North Dakota now. Gosh, there are a lot of little lakes and ponds down there...</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">The wonders of modern travel are one thing, but I’ll tell you what really lets me know my time on the Trail is over: I know nothing about anyone around me. They are perfect strangers, every one.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">If I reposition the map on the seatback screen in front of me, and zoom in to Indiana, and mosey around looking for cities and towns whose name I never knew before, one that pops up is Tell City. Bill Borders is from there. So is Micki Kidder’s family. These are people I never knew before.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">I know them now.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">There is so much I’ve learned over the last two weeks. So much that will be impossible to describe. I’m not saying that as a confession of my shortcomings as a writer, but rather to say that there are, in fact, certain things which cannot be fully described. They can be <em>implied</em>, <em>inferred</em>. But to be fully understood, they must be experienced. Any parent who has ever spoken to any non-parent about parenting knows what I mean.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Still over North Dakota, a bit west of Bismarck, and there are strange, long, impossibly straight shadows on the earth outside. They catch my attention and I’m trying to figure out what they are – tree lines along railroad tracks, perhaps? – and then, it comes to me. Of course. They are the shadows of the contrails of the planes which have crossed these plains ahead of me.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">This is how we live now. We live fast. We sit in chairs in the sky, shuttled city to city among strangers, with technology woven into the furniture, so that – with the world at our fingertips – we forget to touch what is right in front of us.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Montana, now. This state is enormous. When my daughter and I drove across it last year, it took a more than a day to get from one side to the other. Today, I’ll be across the western boundary in about an hour, flying over all those lives I’ll never meet.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Two weeks ago, it took five hours to drive from South Bend to Vincennes. In the two weeks it took to walk back, I met the chairman of a council of Native Americans and, with him, prayed to the Creator for guidance and safety. I met a young girl transferring from Purdue University to Notre Dame to begin her pre-medicine studies. I met her parents. I met a woman whose children had been to Notre Dame and who learned we would be passing and so who set up a small cooler of frozen popsicles. Her house was lovely – old fashioned white board with a wrap-around porch amid cornfields as far as the eye could see. Susanna (of course, Susanna – the one with indefatigable joy, offering blessings to every passerby we passed by) asked if we could keep her in our prayers, and the woman said we could, and we shared her prayer with Whoever it is that hears the requests of us humans.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">We met young folks and old. Months ago, long before the Trail but directly in preparation for it, I found myself talking to a young girl at the register of an Office Depot. At a glance, she was any high school kid working the sort of tedious job high school kid’s work, one of the hundreds of faces you pass in a day assuming you know their story, assuming you are the hero in your own story and the people you pass are extras. Speaking to her, I learned that she was fighting leukemia. It was a good reminder, before this thing even began. There are no extras. Everyone has a story. Everyone is a hero, just in stories we don’t know.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Last night, with our journey freshly complete, I stood in line at the bookstore waiting to order a coffee for the road up to Chicago. An older gentleman saw my t-shirt and, with an immediately infectious grin, came up to me and asked if I had walked the Trail. I told him I had and he shook my hand and gushed “Wow! I thought about doing that, but then I thought, no, at my age that’s prob’ly not such a good idea.” He’s Harold Hoffman, ND ’49, ninety-one years old and spry as all get-out. He gets back to campus once a year, and he wanted to be there to see us come in.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">I don’t consider myself someone addicted to the accoutrements of the 21st century, but I’ve certainly engaged in them enough to comment and I can tell you there is no technology which has given me anything like the simple joy of shaking the hand of a ninety-one year old man who timed his yearly pilgrimage to coincide with mine. To welcome me back to the place we both call home.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">I’ve learned much over these past two weeks, and probably much more that has yet to bubble to the surface of my thoughts. I’ve had the time to reflect on some life decisions. I’ve had time to consider what it is that I call faith. I’ve had the time to speak to God (yes, I do believe that there is something which is very much greater than I will ever be able to comprehend and which, for simplicity, I will call God) and the space to ask Him questions (again, pronouns for ease of conversation) and the quiet to listen for answers however they may come.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">And some have come.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">And some are left for me to determine, like the arrows telling me only that I must choose a direction and make of it what I will.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">The Rockies ripple along hundreds of miles of soft haze and wildfire smoke below and to my left.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">What lessons I have gleaned are my own. They are pertinent to me. Some are what I came to consider. Others pushed themselves on me in the days before departure. Others still showed up unannounced on the Trail itself and took my breath away. They are mine. They are my treasures. What insights I can share with you, I have. But some are not for the public. Some are simple and personal – fundamental adjustments to my compass – subtle changes to the fabric of my person, and thus my perspective, which cannot be told, which can only be lived.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">I will say this: <em>Talk to people</em>. And when you do – when you <em>give voice</em>, when you <em>push out sound</em>, when the communication you effect is <em>outward</em> – make it invitational. By which I mean, ask people to<em> talk to you</em>. Look people in the eye and hear their story. Don’t berate how divided we have become and then do nothing to bring us together. Hold open the door of conversation, and listen.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Over Idaho now, and maybe even a red Jeep packed to the zippers of its ragtop with the beginnings of a new life.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">I miss the people I have got to know these last two weeks, these mushy titans whom you’d never expect to see cry. The giant bear of a cardiologist and the sharp CEO and the guy from the championship football team. Or the quiet, self-proclaimed proletariat architect or the rarely quiet activist or the woman who nearly backed out in self-doubt just days before we began. The priest, the brother. The two sisters who left us far too early for my liking in order to return to their ministries elsewhere. The other doctor and the surgeon. The seventy-something year old ironman proudly, and the joy of watching him cheering on his seventy-something year old missus when she joined us the final couple days. The administrators from the University whose feet carried their hearts home. The aviator and the student and the quiet firecracker. The husband and wife, never far apart. The writer. The husband, father, and volunteer arborist. The one who fought back. The one whose blessed life of highs has seen more than its fair share of lows and who meets every day with laughter and the powerful love of her family. The one whose heart bubbles genuine praise and blessings like Tinkerbell sprinkling fairy dust. The one who made it his mission to be a pain in my ass and who laughed at each and every one of my jokes. The little one, half my size, who out-walked and out-biked me every day; whose lightness of being is an astonishing tribute to the heaviness of missing.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">All these lives.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">We are better for each other. And, at the risk of turning this post into a tome, we are better for each of the pilgrims who grew our numbers over the last five and three days, and even the last day itself, reminding us that there was always someone new to meet, to hear, to introduce ourselves to, to offer encouragement to and draw encouragement from. </p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">The Cascade Mountains down there, and – there she is – Rainier, still blanketed white even at the end of August, towering over everything from horizon to horizon.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Yesterday morning we led the band out of South Bend toward campus, stepping off with the Victory March. But we did not arrive to fanfare or the proud sound of pounding drums. Instead, we slipped onto campus in silence. We paid our respects at Father Sorin’s grave and hoped somewhere, somehow, he understood that we understood his mission and had made it our own. We walked between the lakes to the Grotto and then to the Log Chapel, and there we placed stones as prayers and intentions, each rock in the growing pile proof that we are not alone. Neither in our sorrows nor in our joys and never in the wonder of living.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">And then, suddenly, it was over. We didn’t parade to the Administration Building. We did not cheer under the Golden Dome. We ended our pilgrimage in the same way all great things come to an end: nearly unnoticed. As a writer, I often find that I don’t know I’m writing the last sentence until it’s already been written. This was a lot like that.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">The Trail is over and now so is my flight west. I’m back on earth, sitting again (I kind of can’t believe how much I’m sitting today – it actually feels unnatural) on the light rail to Seattle, then north to the University District where my oldest daughter will meet me and take me home. We’ll try to finish getting the house ready for when my wife and her father finally arrive.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">To go on this pilgrimage, I had to let go of who I was. The same can be said for returning from it. I’m not on the Trail anymore and it’s time to let the Trail go. I’m home. In the real world. Which is, of course, where faith and courage and character are called upon to meet the challenges of life. If you are one who believes that Jesus was the Son of God, it’s worth remembering that he was undeniably the Son of Man – that whatever the bliss of heaven, he lived and struggled and walked the earth, got dirt under his fingernails and drank tea made with questionable water.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">We mustn’t spend our days, not even our hours, holding on to what we were. We have to let go, we have to choose a direction, left or right, so that we may become what we will be.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Peace. And Godspeed.</p>Timothy Deenihantag:trail.nd.edu,2005:News/790542017-08-26T07:00:00-04:002018-11-29T13:13:52-05:00Reflections from Day 12<p>​This isn’t over. We have not officially arrived at campus yet, even though we’re staying at the Morris Inn and went to Mass at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart and watched Rudy on the giant screen in the stadium and I have another couple dozen pictures of all the landmarks I already have a couple…</p><p>This isn’t over. We have not officially arrived at campus yet, even though we’re staying at the Morris Inn and went to Mass at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart and watched Rudy on the giant screen in the stadium and I have another couple dozen pictures of all the landmarks I already have a couple dozen pictures of, each. We have not yet walked onto campus. And that matters.</p>
<p>We have walked from Vincennes to South Bend. We arrived at a green in the center of town earlier today. So, essentially, we made it.</p>
<p>Crossing the Saint Joe River today felt like we made it. We took our last bit of rest on the other side, the downtown side, more to tighten up the package (as the state troopers refer to the moving crowd in their care) than to actually rest. We had only a mile and a half left in the day at that point. A mile and a half, as Lisa said to me, until whatever comes next.</p>
<p>I don’t want to sound like I’m over-dramatizing the significance of what just happened. We didn’t perform any miracles. In it’s simplest terms, it was a very long walk. </p>
<p>But I won’t pretend it was only a long walk. It was something much more than that. Much more than any of us who made that long walk ever expected. Which is why it matters that it isn’t over yet. Nearly done isn’t done.</p>
<p>So, regardless of my comment yesterday, that the pilgrimage was finishing and that all that was left was the parade, these last three miles matter. And that means I cannot write a looking-back piece until I’ve finally arrived, until I’m no longer required to look forward.</p>
<p>Perhaps that’s what I needed to learn today.</p>
<p>It’s very easy to be distracted by the noise. This coming Monday’s life was working hard to encroach on Friday. There were more people on more cell phones today than I’ve seen the whole way, even accounting for our inflated numbers. I will even confess I was one of them. The issues of real life pressing in, refusing to wait, demanding my attention now that this thing is nearly over. Even as it’s not over yet.</p>
<p>This is the way we live, now. But also a reminder that we might not want to live like that.</p>
<p>The house we have finally left in Connecticut for this move is a house with so many unfinished projects. Home improvement projects begun with the best of intentions and seen through to nearly-done. And then, life.</p>
<p>I’ve written a 550 page novel. The story has a beginning, middle, and an end. It’s taken me years to complete the writing part, but it’s still not finished. It needs to make it to print. A small, but, I think we can all agree, significant stage in its journey.</p>
<p>Funny how the last stage, which should be so easy, so often gets overlooked. You’ve done the hard part. You bought all the materials and all the paint and built the window seat and tacked in all the trim, and now life is demanding your attention elsewhere and the damn thing never gets painted.</p>
<p>We have walked from Vincennes to South Bend. But we haven’t walked to Notre Dame.</p>
<p>Ever heard of going the extra mile? Every day on the Trail, there were these signs along the way telling us when we had one mile to go until a pit stop. Those were the longest miles. I think they were meant to be encouragement, but they totally had the opposite effect.</p>
<p>And of course we completed each stage. We didn’t stop at the sign and reckon it was close enough. We walked the extra mile, which, of course, wasn’t extra at all. It was the mile necessary to complete the task at hand.</p>
<p>Extra isn’t extra if it’s what needs to be done.</p>
<p>We talk about going the extra mile in service or in friendship. Businesses advertise that they go the extra mile to take care of their customers. You describe your best friends as the ones who will always go that extra mile to do what needs to be done. But if it needs to be done, then that friend, out of all your friends, isn’t the one who did something extra, they’re the one who didn’t give up. They didn’t discount what was needed by saying it was good enough. They went the distance. And that, in my mind, is what really matters.</p>
<p>In this Christian faith, I don’t <a href="https://trail.nd.edu/news/faith-life-and-other-uncertainties/">know if Jesus was the Son of God</a> (if that’s a hard line to read, I don’t mean to offend – please refer to my earlier post on the unprovable nature of faith). I don’t believe I can know that. But really, I often think it doesn’t matter. Or at least, I think that I have more to learn from the man who was fully human than I do from the sacrifice that was, as we are taught, fully God. </p>
<p>I can relate to the human. I can learn from him. I can look at his struggles and see the reflections of my own. I can see the fears and all the reasons to call a thing good enough. And I can remind myself that he didn’t. Nearly done was not done. Good enough was not good enough. He taught us to lean in, to find strength in love, and to see a thing through it’s hardest part: completion.</p>
<p>He taught us to go the distance.</p>
<p>So this pilgrimage is nearly done, but it’s not done yet. And these last three miles will mean the pilgrimage is changing yet again – from our 32 to 130 to 300 to what we expect will be comfortably more than 3,000 – but it will still be the pilgrimage. It will feel more like parade (complete with marching band, I gather) but will, in fact, be something much bigger than all of that. </p>
<p>It will be the extra three miles that were never extra to begin with. It will be the distance we need to go in order to remind ourselves to go the distance.</p>
<p>This isn’t over. Not yet.</p>Timothy Deenihantag:trail.nd.edu,2005:News/790232017-08-25T06:00:00-04:002018-11-29T13:13:52-05:00Reflections from Day 11<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">The celebrations have begun.</p> <p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p> <p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt;">…</p><p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">The celebrations have begun.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Yesterday we were joined by the three-day pilgrims, swelling our numbers (if the numbers I am given are correct) by as much as ten times our original core team. We were 32. We became 130. We have grown to something like 300.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">What I’m reminded of is a lesson I learned in grade school science – that energy is constant, it simply takes different forms.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">In this instance, the intensity of the first eight days is opened up and shared and becomes something more like community in this home stretch.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">That’s a good thing, I hasten to add. As we walk now, in lieu of the quiet there are those with music speakers in their backpacks playing Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” and everyone in earshot sings along. It’s pretty awesome. It means conversations abound in every direction, so that even if you yourself are quiet, you cannot help but hear the reasons for everyone who has come to be a part of this thing. Classmates and roommates reunite, the Murphy’s celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary, for Alan (or Allen?) and Connie it’s their 26th. Some celebrate their university. Some celebrate their kids’ university. Some, their parents’. Luke has beaten leukemia, and for him we rejoice. Others have not been so successful. There have been heart attacks and cancers and battles lost, and battles that rage on. One has beaten the cancer so far, but is waiting for the next shoe to drop. Another lost her husband, and with him the will to get out of bed in the morning. She needed something, <em>anything</em>, to be a part of, and found this.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">They’re all here. This cacophony of purpose. These lives. All these lives. Every single one of them real and intricate – commonly beautiful and uniquely worthy of being told, if only I had the time.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">But I don’t. I’ve got one more day.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Technically two. I shouldn’t discount the actual last day, but it will be so different from everything that’s come before it already feels like a different animal altogether. By the time we finish walking Friday, we will be in South Bend. Saturday will be an event, no doubt, but the distance will be largely ceremonial. Three miles from downtown to the heart of campus in the company of thousands. That’s going to feel more like a parade than a pilgrimage.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">So. One day more.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">(And if your head now has <em>Les Miserables</em> stuck in it, you’re welcome.)</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Funny. At this moment, there is nothing more to say. It’s been two weeks of reflections and reporting, but right now – in the dark that blurs the line between yesterday and tomorrow – my head is quiet. The calm before the storm, perhaps.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">One more day.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">I’ll proofread this soon and send it off to Bill Borders’ son, Patrick, to post. I’ll splash some water on my face and dress. I’ll slip on my shoes but only loosely so that I can get downstairs and have medical put some moleskin over the hotspots on my feet to make sure, after all these miles, I don’t stupidly blister up this last day.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">I’ll get some coffee (finally, some good coffee) and breakfast. And I’ll hug Mark Alexander, the big mush that he is, and fist bump Pablo and Pat, and Tim Huddle will raise his arms above his head when he sees me and say “TD!”</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">And then I’ll return to my room and throw anything I might need in my pack and head downstairs and get on the coach to the park we left last night. I get to lead everyone in prayer this morning, and we even have a little surprise planned for our friends in Hawaii, and then we’ll line up, and we’ll set off, and we’ll do this – one more time – before we bring it home.</p>Timothy Deenihantag:trail.nd.edu,2005:News/790022017-08-24T08:00:00-04:002018-11-29T13:13:52-05:00Reflections from day 10<p>​I’m struggling tonight. So many thoughts are pushing to make their way into words, they’ve crowded themselves at the door and no one can get in.</p> <p>​My heart is heavy tonight. I’m challenged in a way different from any day on this Trail thus far.</p> <p>​I’ve been struck all day by the question,…</p><p>I’m struggling tonight. So many thoughts are pushing to make their way into words, they’ve crowded themselves at the door and no one can get in.</p>
<p>My heart is heavy tonight. I’m challenged in a way different from any day on this Trail thus far.</p>
<p>I’ve been struck all day by the question, "Why?"</p>
<p>These ten days, this moment in time, has been nothing if not inspirational, but to what end is inspiration enough?</p>
<p>Our pilgrimage paused briefly today to recognize and honor a pilgrimage of a different sort. There is a monument in Plymouth, Indiana, to Chief Menominee of the Potawatomi nation. It’s situated not far from the place where, in 1838, he and 858 of his people began what became known as the Trail of Death, a 660 mile march across four states as the Native Americans were driven by the army from their land. </p>
<p>It would be hard not to feel the resonance, pausing the joyous celebration of our walk, to honor those who were walked to death on a journey twice as long as our own, not of their choosing. </p>
<p>And so we said prayers.</p>
<p>Some days before, when our pilgrimage was still just the core team traveling light, we passed a home flying three flags – an American flag, a Confederate flag, and a POW/MIA flag. Personally, I will confess: I struggle with the irony of flying flags of the union and of disunion next to each other, but that struggle is academic. What was not academic, what was intensely personal, was that I was walking arm’s length behind a recent graduate of the University of Notre Dame who is far more intelligent than am I, whose generosity of spirit is evident to anyone who meets with him, whose very name is a celebration of the goodness at the heart of the Christian faith, and who is black; and I wondered which of those qualities would that home’s inhabitants recognize.</p>
<p>And my heart was heavy. </p>
<p>And we walked on. </p>
<p>Later we had lunch.</p>
<p>I wish I had more to say about that, but I don’t. And that’s the point.</p>
<p>I wish there was a manual for how to be good, but there is not. And please, don’t tell me that the bible is such a manual when its words are so often twisted – or often enough not twisted at all – to justify hatred, bigotry, and war.</p>
<p>No. I don’t believe such a manual exists. So, in its place, I look for heroes. People whose lives are their teaching. People whose character may be my lodestar. </p>
<p>When I find them, I find they are guided by many things, but never are they guided by any need to be comfortable. </p>
<p>They tend to be people who don’t back away. They tend to be people who lean in, who step up, who act on principle rather than fear. </p>
<p>They tend to be guided by curiosity, and distrustful of certainty. </p>
<p>They tend to wear responsibility like a comfortable pair of jeans. They tend to leave things, places, people, better than they find them. </p>
<p>They tend to act more than they talk.</p>
<p>They tend to lift the heavy weights and walk the long miles. They tend to be there when they are needed, or go there when they are called. They tend to reach out when to touch is to heal, and they tend to let go when to hold is to hold back.</p>
<p>They know pain. They know worry. They know fear. They know sorrow. They know doubt. And they know not to let these things guide them.</p>
<p>They know that the opportunity to be strong brings with it the responsibility to be strong.</p>
<p>And they tend to love.</p>
<p>They tend to love courageously.</p>
<p>They are, as Father Sorin called us all to be, a powerful force for good. In a country which needed it then and needs it now.</p>
<p>If this pilgrimage has been anything for me, it is the opportunity to surround myself with people such as these. And to challenge myself to be such a one in return.</p>
<p></p>Timothy Deenihantag:trail.nd.edu,2005:News/789442017-08-23T06:00:00-04:002018-11-29T13:13:52-05:00Reflections from Day 9<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">I love crickets. I really do.</p> <p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p> <p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt;">…</p><p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">I love crickets. I really do.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Like, crickets are my favorite soundtrack. I’m sitting in my room at the retreat center with the window open so that I can allow a breeze through and I’m listening to the crickets.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Crickets may actually be one of my favorite surprises from this trip back to this side of the country. I don’t hear them in Seattle and I hadn’t noticed their absence until, here in Indiana, I suddenly hear them again.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Funny how thoughts are filed with certain memories, as if labeled by a code. The sound of crickets in the night has always been reassuring to me, reminding me somehow of the fact that I am still my mother’s son.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">We lived in an old house in a small town east of Pittsburgh. We had no air conditioning and the windows were wide open all summer long unless there was a rain was blowing sideways. I remember evenings sitting in my parents’ room coloring a Batman coloring book. My mother would save the ironing until the heat of the day had passed. Pirates on the radio and the window open for the breeze.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">And that has me remembering our porch. Sleeping on the porch on summer nights with no school. Our home was on the side of a hill looking over our small hometown of Wilmerding, PA; home to the Westinghouse Air Brake Company and all its workers and the various churches and social clubs and restaurants. In my earliest memories, I think of it as the idyllic Bedford Falls from <em>It’s A Wonderful Life.</em></p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">The porch reminds me of the crickets and the crickets have me right back to sitting here with the window open to the night.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Funny how you travel the world and you make this pilgrimage and you walk 270 miles and it’s just the crickets that takes you over.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">The 5-day pilgrims joined us today. A hundred additional walkers, added to the core group. Our numbers have grown. Things are changing. And that’s good.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">It’s funny to me how we worry about the changes that are coming as if we can stop change.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">The core group has become a very tightly knit bunch, as you might expect, and so of course there was some concern for how the additional pilgrims might change the dynamic. At the same time, I had wondered how the new people joining us would feel about walking into the fold. Would it be exciting? Would it be intimidating? Would it matter at all?</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">It was fantastic to have them join us today.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Let me rephrase that.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">It was terrific for us to grow today.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Of course, the dynamic changed. Of course it did. How could it not? But that’s not a bad thing. As we get closer to campus, I can already feel the experience turning more from one of solemnity to one of celebration.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Yes, there is Mass. Yes, there are daily devotions. Tonight after dinner we even received pages of prayer requests from Notre Dame clubs from around the world - pages of individually printed sheets of prayer requests from every Notre Dame club around the world for each of the pilgrims, old and new, to take with them and keep in their hearts and offer up in prayer. I don’t know the actual number of requests divided among us all, but it’s got to be in the thousands.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">So, it’s not that the solemnity is gone, not by a long shot. There is piety and prayer.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">But there’s also growth and change. And it’s growth and change which prove we are living.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Look, things change. It happens. The University we are celebrating started out as a log chapel. And then it grew. And when I was a student there more than twenty-five years ago, I thought it was pretty perfect. But it has changed and grown some more.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Today was sneaky challenging. We only walked – no biking – and the temperature wasn’t that bad. But the early morning rain dropped the temperature and a lot of people soaked by rain did not then realize that they were also soaked by sweat. A lot of us seem to have allowed ourselves to get a couple quarts low on oil and people are frankly wiped, me included. I need to get some sleep.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">I just want to point out that you can run from change or you can embrace it, but you cannot stop it. It can be scary. It can be uncertain. And when everything is up in the air and unfamiliar, it can be nice to sit with the window open and listen to the crickets to remind yourself of the familiarity of what used to be.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">But telling yourself things are just as they always were is untrue. They are not. Things change. We live a story. Every single thought is a new sentence in that story and with each new sentence the story changes. New characters are introduced and the story gains complexity and layers and depth.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">The walk, this pilgrimage, changed today and that’s an exciting thing. Alums, administration, and a surprising number of parents have grown our numbers. We are a different pilgrimage today from the one we were when we began, just as we are a different University now from what we were 175 years ago.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">We don’t run from that. We embrace it. We celebrate.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">We are ND.</p>Timothy Deenihantag:trail.nd.edu,2005:News/789362017-08-22T10:00:00-04:002018-11-29T13:13:52-05:00Reflections from Day 8<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Do you remember being a kid in school – a young kid, fifth or sixth grade – and those times when the teacher would momentarily leave the room for whatever reason, and would warn you that your…</p><p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Do you remember being a kid in school – a young kid, fifth or sixth grade – and those times when the teacher would momentarily leave the room for whatever reason, and would warn you that your class had better remain quiet and just focus on whatever busywork was on your desks, and while she was gone someone would whisper something, a question or a teasing comment, and someone would whisper something in response, and the <em>shhsh-</em>ing would start? One kid would <em>shh</em> one kid, and some other kid would <em>shh</em> them both. And then usually the first kid who’d done the whispering to begin with would wind everyone up by <em>shh</em>-ing them all back. It would build until the good kid, the really smart and good kid who was seated at the back of the class because the teacher knew she didn’t need to keep an eye on this one, that kid would <em>SHHHH!</em> the whole room in exasperation and to the delight of the kids seated at the front of the room who the teacher <em>always</em> needed to keep her eye on. And <em>those</em> kids would <em>SHHHHHH!</em> back so that the room was filled with a cacophony of ten-year-olds telling each other to be quiet.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">I’m listening to that right now.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">It’s two-thirty in the morning and a storm is rolling in outside. I have the window open so that I can hear the wind in front of the storm, and the spits of rain it carries, rushing through the leaves in waves, hushing them in ever louder <em>shhsh-</em>es like naughty kids delighting in pretending to be good.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">We’re staying in a retreat center about sixty miles from South Bend, perhaps a little more. If I wrote early on how much preparing for this pilgrimage felt like preparing for freshman year, moving our team into these dormitories for the next few nights only reinforces the feeling.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Thunder rolls, doubly hidden above the clouds and in the dark, from somewhere very far away – the deep, gruff grumble of a giant whose voice would split the air if angered, but which in this instance sounds more like distant suspicion.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"><strong>Tom Gustafson (’71)</strong> is not that giant, but he does grumble a fair bit. He’s outspoken and abrasive. I’ve said as much to him directly as we have sat together at dinner but it’s nothing he doesn’t already know himself and, frankly, I’ve come to love him for it. That abrasiveness comes from a deep passion and concern about the state of the world around him – particularly the environment – and his dedication to be a part of what solutions we might find.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">He knows he’s a bit of a codger – in truth, I think he rather relishes the role – but we caught a glimpse of a different man this evening as his daughter, <strong>Rachel</strong>, stands beside him in the back of the chapel during the first Mass where the core pilgrims have been joined by the newbies. Just as the service begins, she puts her arm around him and squeezes him close to her and he does the same, and I, a father of daughters, can’t help but smile and feel my heart swell as I watch a father and a daughter and their bond.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">My father-in-law and his daughter are currently together on a pilgrimage of their own, driving across the country to get her, my wife, to our new home in Seattle. He is a retired rocket scientist (No, seriously, he is. “What are you, a <em>rocket scientist</em>?” “Yes.”) and they were eager to take a southernly swoop to the drive to ensure they were in the path of totality for yesterday’s eclipse.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"><strong>Micki Kidder<em> </em></strong>is the Associate Vice President & Executive Director of Development at the University and part of the core team. As we walked, we talked of Christmas traditions, and of how a few years ago her father, <strong>Clay Ewing</strong>, another pilgrim joining us for last five days, had been hospitalized just as the family was returning home for the holiday. He was released from the hospital on Christmas Eve and no one had the energy or inclination to cook when there were other things to worry about, and so a new Christmas tradition of ordering pizza and just relaxing together was born.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">The story bounces around in between us comparing notes on how we, she and I and our respective families, build the holiday as parents of our own kids. What traditions we instill. What beliefs we engender. Her kids believe in Santa Claus but not the Tooth Fairy or the Easter Bunny, she tells me, and I say that we choose our beliefs, and we keep walking – a father of daughters and the daughter of a father.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">The day is filled with these echoes of the stories we tell and the stories we believe – not necessarily the same thing – and of the love shared between and among generations.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">I think of <strong>Tim Huddle (’76) </strong>– a man of science, a newly-retired surgeon, a film buff, a kind and softly spoken soul, a gentleman and a gentle man with a wandering curiosity for all things – who prays for his brother as he battles pancreatic cancer. I think of <a href="https://trail.nd.edu/news/14-day-pilgrim-bill-borders-nd-76/"><strong>Bill</strong></a>, whose<strong> </strong>brother is also fighting cancer, though in his case of the lungs. For some reason, my head connects them to the eclipse and Christmas and a daughter putting her arm around her father in a church pew.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">I think of my mother wisely addressing my Catholic school concern that I was not praying enough by reassuring me that wonder is a form of prayer. “Every time you see something that makes you stop and go ‘Wow,’” she said, “God hears that as a prayer.”</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">I’ve lived my life with that idea in my heart ever since.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">It’s natural for us to want our kids to know it will be alright, but, personally speaking, I don’t think it will be. I don’t think it <em>should </em>be. I think it will be <em>mostly</em> right, and I’m alright with that because I think mostly right is as right as it’s supposed to be. The sun is supposed to go dark sometimes. There is supposed to be thunder. We are supposed to love and, hard as it is, we are <em>supposed</em> to lose, sometimes.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">And that’s the wonder that moves me. All of it, all of those improbabilities, the ones we call faith and the ones we call magic, the ones we want to know and the ones we’d rather not, all of them – the living, the loving, the losing, the wonder – they stop me, take my breath away, and make me go <em>wow.</em></p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Thank God I know God knows I’m saying thanks. </p>Timothy Deenihantag:trail.nd.edu,2005:News/789142017-08-21T09:00:00-04:002018-11-29T13:13:52-05:00Reflections from Day 7<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">I have ankles like a 70-year-old Hungarian grandmother. It’s a bit disconcerting.</p> <p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> …</p><p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">I have ankles like a 70-year-old Hungarian grandmother. It’s a bit disconcerting.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">I’ve been very fortunate to stay ahead of any injury thus far. I don’t wait to see if something is going to turn into a blister or not. The moment I find myself noticing my toes or the soles of my feet (I mean, seriously, how often do you <em>notice</em> that you can feel your toes?) is the moment I start a mental clock. If my feet are still getting my attention in the next mile or two, I have my shoes off and apply moleskin to protect the hot spot. So far, so good – a couple hundred miles and I remain blister free.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">My ankles, however, look like I make a mean pirozhki.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">I commented early on that I couldn’t possibly tell you everything there is to tell you about the days on this Trail. And every day since only further underscores that statement.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">What can I tell you about today? Would you like to hear about Chairman John Warren of the Pokagon band of the Potawatomi Tribe meeting us just after sunrise on the land of his ancestors to speak to the Creator on our behalf and to pray for the blessing of safe travel? Shall I tell you about the smoke ceremony or him blowing the eagle bone whistle once in each of the four cardinal directions to alert the Creator that something special was going on?</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">It was beautiful – especially so because it was sincere. No pretense, nothing to attract attention. Whatever picture of ‘Indians’ it is that you colored when you were in grade school, this was different.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">This was a man who loves life and respects the souls and life of everyone he meets, sharing that respect and love with us, travelers across a land which is more than land to him.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Bill Borders and I were walking near each other after the ceremony, discussing the similarities between the Native American traditions of honoring that which is holy and the Catholic traditions doing the same. The smoldering fragrances, somehow turning the tangible into the intangible. The whistle, like church bells chiming in time of prayer.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Before we left on our way, Chairman Warren wished us all <em>Bama-mine-kowabmen, </em>that deeper sort of farewell that wishes safe travel until we meet again, wherever or whenever that may be, in this lifetime or the next.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">That gets us to just after sunrise. Then there’s the rest of the day...</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">I could mention the fact that over the last seven days and entirely under our own power we have either walked or biked 219 miles up and across Indiana. I feel that’s worthy of note.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Shall I pause and observe that this is the last night our journey consists of only the core group? Tomorrow evening we will welcome about a hundred new pilgrims to this Trail. We’ll share dinner and then head to bed perhaps much earlier than they might have expected. Hopefully they’ll be smart enough to do the same and get what rest they can when they can.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">How about the fact that we are closer in every way to the ending of this experience than we are to its beginning? That’s a shocker to everyone I talk to. We really don’t know what day of the week it is, so to realize that we’ve crossed the halfway point in terms of time and the two-thirds point in terms of distance was a bit of a knock to the solar plexus.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">It seems worth noting that the freshman class has arrived on campus over this past weekend. The kids we once were, excited to start something larger than themselves, starting something much larger than they can imagine.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">How about if I talk about the experience of having so many questions and still waiting for an answer, wondering if you’ll happen upon one alongside the road somewhere?</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Movies and television are how we learn about everything now, and so I know that when you go on a significant journey, when you face a challenge, you receive some signs along the way; pearls of wisdom which, individually, may be interesting, and then you string them together somewhere in act three and they become a thing of beauty. They become enlightenment.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">I’m not feeling much enlightenment.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">I did get a sign today. Literally. I took a picture of it.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">It was early. We had walked down a long hill and crossed a river on a high bridge then walked up a fairly long and fairly steep hill on the other side, directly towards the low sun. As we approached the crest of the hill, there was a sign silhouetted by the sun rendering it all but unreadable and thus something of a mystery. Only when we finally got right up to it could we see it was one of those signs, familiar to any driver, warning of a t-junction and the need make a turn: a simple black-on-yellow directional sign with no vertical line forward, only a horizontal bar with arrows on either end simultaneously pointing both left and right.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">To add to the confusion, there was no indication of what either path held over the horizon. No list of nearby towns with distances and additional arrows – Suchandsuch two miles to the left, Whatsitville 9 miles to the right – just a visual klaxon and a challenge: <em>The road you were on ends here. Now make a decision.</em></p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Sometimes you ask for a sign. Sometimes what you get is a single arrow pointing two directions at once.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">The Trail, of course, answered the question for me (left, as it happens). The Trail is a specific journey, predetermined for us by Father Sorin and the indefatigable <strong>Katherine Lane (SMC ’92) </strong>whose task it has been over the past year-plus to put all this together. So, in the moment of the walk, the Trail relieves me of needing to decide – but only for the moment and only on the walk.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">The larger questions remain. And no matter how much I would appreciate a blinding and unmissable bolt of light to tell me what to do, I doubt it will happen. And, begrudgingly, I have to believe that’s a good thing.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Our choices are our own to make, which is what ultimately gives them meaning. We don’t get to take credit for the choices others make for us, just as, vice versa, we don’t get to shift responsibility and still claim the crown.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">The things we think when we have nothing to do but think...</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Things are changing quickly. Soon our numbers grow. And soon after, they grow some more. And soon after that, our journey is done.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">And soon after that, we’ll be off the Trail and need to make a choice – left or right – ready for whatever adventures lie ahead, whichever way ‘ahead’ may be.</p>Timothy Deenihantag:trail.nd.edu,2005:News/789012017-08-20T10:00:00-04:002018-11-29T13:13:52-05:00Reflections from Day 6<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Today was an absolutely beautiful day.</p> <p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p> <p class="Body" style="border:none;">…</p><p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Today was an absolutely beautiful day.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">For a start, today is the only day on the trail, apart from the very beginning and the very end, that we can be certain we are walking in Sorin’s footsteps. We know he came through Lafayette along the Wabash and so did we.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">The path we took was in large part single-file through the woods, unpaved. There would have been a footpath for travelers through the woods that they were following, similarly unpaved.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Of course, we are doing this in August with blue skies and a warm summer breeze. They did it in November and were fighting frostbite. I suppose I can crank the AC in the hotel room if I want to feel a little closer to Sorin and the brothers, but that seems a bit excessive, so today was – what? – as close as we’re going to get to what would have been his best day.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">So, yes, 15 miles on foot over uneven, unpaved, muddy, tree-fallen, tick-ridden terrain and I am very eager to celebrate today’s theme of Joy. And here’s why: no bikes.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">I love cycling, but after yesterday, I may be happy to never see my bike again.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Yesterday, we started out before dawn as we do and walked thirteen miles to a 10 a.m. lunch. Then we saddled up and set out to ride 28 miles, uphill (yes, it would seem there <em>are</em> hills in Indiana) into a headwind with gust of, I am told, up to 30 miles an hour.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Good thing yesterday’s theme was Humility. It was humbling.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">It did do one thing, however, which was quite wonderful, I must admit. It made everything else not matter. The leisurely rides of previous days had involved friendly banter and conversation as we ticked off the miles. Not yesterday.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Yesterday was turn your eyes forward, lean down to get under the wind, and pedal. Read the road in front of you (one of our medics was charged by a dog while riding), judge the hills, choose your line, hush the voice telling you that getting your butt-cheeks waxed would have been a quicker way to accomplish the same effect, and ride.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">I’ve heard people say “It’s not the destination, it’s the journey,” (coincidentally, there just came in a message from one of the other pilgrims as I write this to that same effect, so I must be picking up on a vibe here) but sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference. Sometimes, like yesterday on those bikes, the journey is an elastic band connected to the destination, so that you are oddly present in both while at the same time entirely unaware of how or where. I love those moments, though perhaps not while I’m in them, because of the way they make – they <em>force</em> – everything else to fall away. The journey becomes your singular purpose and destinations and other distractions are gone.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Anyway, we completed yesterday and rested and recovered. Even managed a little happy hour. And we noticed something. Apart from some acute injuries – rolled ankles, a sprained wrist, shin splints and blisters gone awry – there’s a lot less aching than there was at the start. As far as general condition and fatigue, the people are looking pretty good. It’s great to see.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">I’ll say people even seem to be clearer of mind. Like when you go on vacation and it takes a week to stop thinking about work and the world and all the reasons you needed the vacation in the first place. The long pilgrimage takes time to settle into, but I can see people getting there. I can hear the conversations changing. No need anymore to superficially name jobs and memorize spouses and ask about numbers of kids. It’s not that those things don’t really matter, it’s that slowly you’re getting to learn a little more of why they matter.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">In some ways that change is not so different from what I’m used to as an actor. As an actor, you’re regularly meeting a team of people you’ve never met and with whom you will be spending a short, but intense, period of time. That kind of trust and openness happens as a matter of course in the arts world, but less so elsewhere. It’s nice to recognize it happening here.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">So today, walking 15 miles along the Wabash after having walked and ridden 41 miles yesterday, was a decent challenge. One which would have been a lot harder just six days ago, but one which today we managed with something like ease.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">We finished the day with an added bonus – many of us got to see family and friends, if they were able to be in the area. My own wife has finally begun her drive – the final stage of our family’s move west – and so she and her father stopped in to Lafayette to have dinner with us last night and meet these amazing people doing this amazing thing. “They’re a really nice bunch of people,” she told me.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">“Yeah,” I said. “They are. Just don’t walk downwind of them at the end of the day...”</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">There’s a lot of love in this group.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">So that’s where we are. I won’t speak for anyone else’s spirituality, but as we move we all are finding our own ways to listen to a voice, call it what you will, which can be hard to hear in the pace of the rest of the world. Physically we are undeniably getting stronger, mentally getting clearer. It’s taken five or six days of walking – after five or six months of training – for us to get here, but I feel like our hearts, minds, and bodies are finally about ready to reach for the good stuff.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Bring it, I say.</p>Timothy Deenihantag:trail.nd.edu,2005:News/788992017-08-19T15:50:00-04:002018-11-29T13:13:52-05:00Reflections from Day 5<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">My brother thinks I’m an idiot. He’s never said as much to me, but I know it to be true.</p> <p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> …</p><p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">My brother thinks I’m an idiot. He’s never said as much to me, but I know it to be true.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">He’s a terrific businessman. Very smart. Very successful. As such, he sort of sees the world like a spreadsheet. There are the numbers that go into different columns, some red, some black, and you work to make the black numbers bigger than the red ones. If there’s too much red in an area, you don’t go there. It’s obvious.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">To him.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">I’ll tell you up front, I’m terrible with money. I don’t value it, a character trait of mine which creates all sorts of problems. Even when I know what you’re supposed to do – spend less than you have, for example – I have a hard time determining how exactly to do that. I won’t get into the nitty-gritty of family finances, but it will suffice to say an artist’s income is rarely adequate to the needs of the day.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">And my brother, quite rightly, looks at my life perplexed. I’m obviously smart <em>enough – </em>I went to Notre Dame. I’m evidently talented <em>enough</em> – I trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. The only conclusion he can make for why I struggle as I do is that I’m an idiot.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">It’s a matter of perspective.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">I have the same issues when I read bad writing or watch a performance that I don’t believe. I taught at a university in Connecticut for a while and would cringe as the first round of papers of any semester would come in. And the papers would go back appropriately graded and my students would ask to speak with me because they had never received such a mark on a paper before and I’d sit with them and look at the paper with them and I’d ask, “In this first sentence here, can you point to the verb?”</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Facebook can be a physically painful experience for me...</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">I was talking with <strong>Mark Counselman (’98)</strong> last evening. Yesterday was a long day. You know that part of your leg, just above the ankle and just below your shin, which is essentially just skin and bone? Did you know there’s muscle there, too? I didn’t. I do now.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Counselman is sort of the quintessential good guy. He was a history major back in the day and now works in insurance. He’s specified for me twice already exactly what he does in insurance, but every time all I hear is “spreadsheets” and my brain grinds to a halt in understanding.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">He’s the neighborhood tree guy, he tells me. He plants trees on various properties around his town to help with the upkeep of the neighborhood. This will be important to my point in a sec.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">While walking today, we passed a house which was quite dilapidated. What Mark noticed was the youthfulness of the couple in the driveway, waving to us and cheering us on as we passed. He’s worked to help with a number of run-down homes and they’re usually owned by elderly or infirm couples incapable of taking care of the place, not obviously able-bodied twentysomethings who seemed to be allowing their abode to fall to ruin.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Others had made similar observations, noting the quality and cost of toys in the yard while the house was falling down around them.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">But of course, none of us know <em>why</em> the house was in the condition it was in. The storyteller in me can offer up a host of reasons for its condition. The couple had only just bought the place and renovations were yet to begin. The family’s finances have taken a downturn and the toys are in lieu of any vacation the family has taken for years. The daughter is in gymnastics and the trampoline is an investment in her future if not their own. Or, sure, maybe they’re just bad with money. Or maybe they’re bad with money, and they know it, but money is to them what sentence structure is to all those people who tell me how they wish they could write.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">The point is, we don’t know. We don’t know how other people live. We don’t know the reasons for their choices. Not until we get to know them.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">And I share these thoughts without judging my colleagues at all, by the way. (Look, I’m frankly nervous about sharing this post. The last thing I want is for my colleagues to feel I’m admonishing or – yes, irony abounds – <em>judging </em>them in any way.) Empathy may be my job, but I only exercise it <em>as part of my job</em>. Otherwise, I’m as quick to criticize as is anyone. It’s a universal human trait.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Anyway, I offered these thoughts to Mark.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">In return, he offered me a quick story. As was his mission, he had been planting trees in front of one particularly neglected house with knee-high grass and, let’s just say, zero curb-appeal. An hispanic woman was walking past, saw him in front of the run down property, and began berating him for having allowed the place to go to ruin. It took him no time at all to recall being on the wrong side of misunderstanding and uninformed judgement, a similarly universal experience, the <em>yang</em> to judgement’s <em>yin.</em></p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Humility breaks the cycle. Humility is more than just the negative of <em>not being proud</em>. Humility is the curiosity that recognizes the very things we are best at may be the very things we’re worst at. That our expertise has the potential to be our blind spot. That our assumptions are only ever based what we know, and the tricky thing about what we don’t know is that we don’t know it.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">The greatest joy for me writing these posts and the profiles of my colleagues has been being reminded how the lives we see are such a small – tiny – <em>infinitesimal</em> – part of the lives that actually are. What we see is not the tip of the iceberg. It’s the <em>snowflake</em> on the tip of the iceberg. </p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">That’s not to celebrate the snowflake. That’s to celebrate the iceberg we never knew was there until we got humble enough to see what we were looking at all this time.</p>Timothy Deenihantag:trail.nd.edu,2005:News/788702017-08-18T05:00:00-04:002018-11-29T13:13:52-05:00Reflections from Day 4<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">It can be a challenge to be introspective when you’re on something of a forced march.</p> <p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> …</p><p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">It can be a challenge to be introspective when you’re on something of a forced march.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">That’s not a complaint, by the way. I have to say, and say emphatically and clearly, how impressed I am with the University for how they have managed to pull this off. Let me take a moment to explain.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">We have 32 pilgrims walking and cycling from Vincennes, Indiana, through miles of corn fields, gravel roads, small towns, covered bridges, and highway intersections, to South Bend. It’s 317 miles and we’re on a schedule which, by the end, is down to the minute.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">It has to be. This is meant to culminate with thousands of people joining us for the final few miles from downtown South Bend to campus. The scale at that end of the endeavor alone is huge and requires planning, and <em>that</em> means that everything leading up to it requires planning as well.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Plus, everyone here has something else to do, some other life on hold while this walk happens. This can’t just “take as long as it takes.”</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">We’re covering roughly 35 miles or so each day, under our own power. That takes time. There’s no way around it. Even walking fast, and I mean really leaning in to your stride, usually means you’re moving just <em>under</em> 4 miles an hour. Do the math and that means there’s about 5 hours of walking, give or take, which doesn’t account for any rest and is before you then have another hour or two on the bikes.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Nevermind the physical challenge. Look at the logistical one.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">If you’re spending that many hours walking through one cornfield after another, you’re...well...you’re going to need to <em>go.</em> You’re also going to need to eat and drink. There are no highway rest stops in the middle of a dirt road through corn. Those need to be brought in, built up, broken down, and taken out. Repeatedly.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">There needs to be medical support. It may sound silly to anyone who has never attempted to walk the distances that we’re walking day after consecutive day. But the simplest, tiniest little bubble of a blister can very quickly become debilitating. The risks go up from there.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">There’s managing safety. The Notre Dame Trail is not a trail – it’s open road. We’re sharing the same space as cars, trucks, tractors, farm vehicles and even, today while cycling, eighteen-wheelers. And dogs. A lot of dogs. To make that happen, we’ve an escort from the Indiana State Police (which, frankly, has me spoiled to ever travel without a motorcade escort ever again).</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">And all of that’s just for the 32 of us who are walking the whole route. In a few days, we’ll be joined by about a hundred people who are walking the last five days with us and all that complexity grows. A couple days after that we’ll add a couple hundred more for the last three days. And then that last day, as I said, we’re talking <em>thousands</em>.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">So, if you’re idea of the Notre Dame Trail is a pilgrimage across Indiana at a gentle meandering pace, walking in blissful solitude, contemplating the universe and your role in it, let me tell you: it ain’t that.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">That’s not a bad thing.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">We’re all part of something larger. We know that. We feel it. We <em>want </em>it.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">This walk is currently proving it.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">We walk fast, we rest quickly, we return to the path almost as soon as we can. Indy 500 pit crews would be proud.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">And yet.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">It’s not just about the pace. It is, after all, a pilgrimage. We are meant – in some way – to be mindful of that.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Sometimes you can manage to get your own space. I walked alone much of the day today. Often just slightly in front of the crowd or, for a stretch, way behind it. In either case, walking purposefully with no one to talk to but my own thoughts.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Rain was forecast since last night, but we didn’t need the weather report to tell us so. We were in a dusk light from the moment of dawn, heavy clouds obscuring east or west and a steely grey hue over everything. At one stretch we were spread out on a road cutting through and slightly above corn fields to our left and soy to the right. With the bulk of our team about 20 yards ahead of me, I found myself thinking what a terrific lightning rod my six feet would make as I wandered alone above most everything else there was.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Rain was in the breeze, too, even when it wasn’t raining. That swirl of air that turns the whites of the leaves up in anticipation of the storm.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">When the rain finally came, we were in the woods and I had still managed to keep myself to myself. Absent of conversation, I got to hear the rain approach through the trees, the quietly growing hush of water falling in a million drips from nothing onto something.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">I love the rain. Which, I suppose, is a good thing since I live in Seattle.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">I love the rain. I love weather in general and its disregard for our plans. I love the humbling nature of the elements. I love being put in my place by the currents I’ll never control.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">These are the thoughts I think, walking through the rain on this Trail.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Patience was the theme today. Reconciliation was the message at the Mass last night. You can’t have the latter without the former, I found myself thinking today.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Reconciliation is not forgiveness, though they are often mistaken for being synonymous. Forgiveness is part of reconciliation, to be sure, but while being forgiven is being understood and respected, being reconciled is being rejoined.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">That may take time.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Patience takes the time. Patience doesn’t give in to impulse. It doesn’t give in to rage or fear or desperation. Patience is true.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">And, it should be noted, it doesn’t guarantee a thing. But isn’t that the point of so much of what I’ve written this far? That nothing is guaranteed?</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Patience gives a chance, though. It is active, not passive, and it perseveres. It is not the calm before the storm, it is the calm <em>in</em> the storm. It is the traveler unwavered by the tempest.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">The moments to be alone on this pilgrimage are understandably and very forgivably rare.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">But I was able to seize such a moment today and hold onto it for a while. Through the wind. And through the rain. Until the sun.</p>Timothy Deenihantag:trail.nd.edu,2005:News/788282017-08-17T05:00:00-04:002018-11-29T13:13:52-05:00Reflections from Day 3<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">I believe I mentioned that the days on the Trail are all themed. So far, we’ve had Faith, Compassion, and Gratitude. Today is Stewardship, a topic which is important to me and which I’m going…</p><p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">I believe I mentioned that the days on the Trail are all themed. So far, we’ve had Faith, Compassion, and Gratitude. Today is Stewardship, a topic which is important to me and which I’m going to totally ignore. If I had any Patience (that’s tomorrow) I’d save what I’m about to write for Saturday, which is Joy. But I’ve never been one for Patience and I’ve always been one for Joy, regardless of when it shows up.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">So throwing the schedule out the window, let me tell you about walking with <a href="https://trail.nd.edu/news/pilgrim-profile-brother-larry-stewart-csc-6061/">Brother Larry</a> today, the 80-year-old who has twice bicycled across the country and is celebrating his 60th jubilee with the Congregation of the Holy Cross by walking this Trail.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">First off, whataguy. Even better in person than on the phone. Such a gent.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">So we’re walking and he asks me, pretty much out of the blue, “I ever tell you any of my Cajun jokes?” Now, One, I know Larry has what he calls his “adopted family” down in Louisiana, a Cajun family who teasingly invite him down to go gator hunting when they say they are short on “Yankee bait.” And, Two, I <em>love </em>telling jokes. So I’m all ears.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">But before I dive in to the joke he tells me with relish, you need to enjoy the setting.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Today was a light day. Yesterday was a long day, as I think I mentioned. Everyone was wiped. To help everyone bounce back a bit, today’s schedule was adjusted so that we started on bikes and knocked off a chunk of mileage before walking the last bit to our stopping point for the night.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">So at this point, we’ve ridden about 24 miles beside a rising sun. Motorcycle escorts through cornfields and across highways in the fog. A gloriously, humbling generous reception not long after sunrise at a church smaller than some living rooms you might have been in.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">We parked our bikes and splashed cold water onto our faces and into our hats and set out on foot among the corn, talking as you do – or not, as you do – and drifting in and out of various conversations, picking up where you left off with one person as another stops to take a picture of a sign announcing a bean festival.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">And Larry asks me if I’ve heard any of his Cajun jokes. And I haven’t.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">And so the Clevelander slips into his best Louisiana Cajun accent, and begins...</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:40px; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"><em>So Mrs. Guidry takes herself to the doctor</em><em>’s office on account of she can’t get any sleep. “Doctor,” she says, “I need some help. I’m gettin’ no sleep at all...”</em></p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:40px; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:40px; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"><em>“</em><em>Well,” says the doctor, “Mrs Guidry, what seems to be the problem?”</em></p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:40px; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:40px; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"><em>“</em><em>It’s the Old Tom,” she says. “That cat jus’ lets hisself into the room ev’ry night and he jus’ curls up and goes to sleep and snores loud enough so’s I can’t catch a wink.”</em></p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:40px; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:40px; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"><em>“</em><em>Have you tried closing the door, Mrs Guidry?” the doc asks.</em></p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:40px; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:40px; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"><em>“</em><em>I have,” she answers, “but doctor, don’t you know, he’s a clever enough cat he jus’ opens the door anyway. He even knows how to open the windows. I’m so desperate for a good night’s sleep, I jus’ don’t know what to do!”</em></p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:40px; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:40px; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"><em>“</em><em>Well,” says the doc, “I’m goin’ to send you down to the vet and you see if he can’t help you.”</em></p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:40px; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:40px; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"><em>So the next thing, Mrs. Guidry has herself in front of the vet explaining her plight.</em></p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:40px; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:40px; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"><em>And the vet listens, and he thinks, and finally he asks, </em><em>“Mrs. Guidry, have you got a sewing basket?”</em></p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:40px; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:40px; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"><em>“</em><em>Of course,” Mrs Guidry says.</em></p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:40px; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:40px; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"><em>“</em><em>And in that sewing basket, have you got any ribbon?”</em></p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:40px; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:40px; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"><em>“</em><em>Why, of course I do,” she tells him.</em></p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:40px; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:40px; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"><em>“</em><em>So the thing you do is this: when that Old Tom of yours comes into the room and nestles down to sleep and starts snoring so loud, I want you, as quiet as you can, to go get a long piece of ribbon, and then you lift up his back legs and you tie that ribbon around his hangy-down bits and that will stop his snoring. You’ll see. If it doesn’t work, you come back and let me know.”</em></p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:40px; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:40px; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"><em>And sure enough it works. The cat comes in, Mrs. Guidry ties up his hangy-down bits in blue ribbon, and the snoring stops.</em></p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:40px; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:40px; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"><em>However, not long after, </em>Mister <em>Guidry comes in from a night of drinking and flops down onto the bed, falls straight to sleep and sets to snoring so that the rafters are shaking.</em></p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:40px; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:40px; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"><em>“</em><em>Well, it worked for Old Tom,” Mrs Guidry thinks to herself, and so she gets up quietly and goes back to the sewing basket and finds another piece of ribbon, this time red, and she tiptoes back to the bedroom and, just as with the cat, she takes the ribbon and ties up Mr Guidry’s hangy-down bits and, wouldn’t you know it, the snoring stops.</em></p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:40px; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:40px; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"><em>The night passes peacefully and the morning comes and it’s Mr Guidry who wakes first – feeling rather like the morning after the night before. So he makes his way to the bathroom for to relieve hisself and, standing there, he looks down at his hangy-down bits and he sees the red ribbon. Perplexed, he looks back out to the bedroom, and when he does he notices the Old Tom with the blue ribbon around his own hangy-downs.</em></p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:40px; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:40px; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"><em>Mr Guidry can</em><em>’t make sense of it, however much he rubs his head. “Well, Tom,” he says finally, “I don’t know what we got up to last night, but we took first and second place!”</em></p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">I’m giggling my head off every time Brother Larry says “hangy-down bits” and I laugh out loud and hard at the punchline, and so does he, and so do we.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">I’ve long worried that the most underreported casualty of our technological age is the practice of telling a joke. We still share humor, but that’s just the problem: we <em>share </em>it. We click ‘like’ and ‘share’ and that’s the end of our involvement.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">But telling a joke is so much more than making a person laugh. It’s drawing them in. It’s hooking them into an experience. It’s talking to them with the twinkle in your eye and stringing them along with the promise that the punchline will be worth it.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">And it’s <em>communal</em>. When you share a meme online, you need to keep checking back to see if anyone got it. Sure, your retweeted tweet might make someone laugh, somewhere out there, but when you tell a joke you get to laugh <em>together. </em></p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">And I hear people make the excuse all the time, “But I can’t tell a joke.” And I wonder, <em>When was the last time you tried?</em> I mean, seriously. You couldn’t drive a car without practice, but that didn’t stop you.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Look<em>, </em>I’m a big fan of Stewardship – that aspect of <em>looking after</em> someone or something – and now, even though I said I was going to give the subject a miss in this post, I sort of see that it’s really what I’ve been talking about all along. Because we can’t look after one another from afar. We have to be close. Which means we have to be <em>willing</em> to be close. We have to be willing to share, and not just a meme with a click or a post. Stewardship requires sharing ourselves.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">How better to start than with laughter?</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:40px; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"><em>Knock knock.</em></p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:40px; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"><em>Who</em><em>’s there?</em></p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:40px; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"><em>Yoda lady.</em></p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:40px; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"><em>Yoda lady who...</em></p>Timothy Deenihantag:trail.nd.edu,2005:News/787962017-08-16T06:00:00-04:002018-11-29T13:13:52-05:00Reflections from Day 2<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">When my wife confirmed that our suspicions were correct and that we were, in fact, expecting our second child, I knew that my first reaction was supposed to be one of joy.</p> <p class="Body">…</p><p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">When my wife confirmed that our suspicions were correct and that we were, in fact, expecting our second child, I knew that my first reaction was supposed to be one of joy.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">It wasn’t.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">The first thought to go through my mind, hearing that we were expecting again when our first daughter was only eighteen months old, was “I don’t know that I want to be that tired again.”</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">I’m kind of back to that place at the moment.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">It will be short lived, I realize. This walk will end in another ten days or so. Parenting is the rest of your life.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">But let me tell you, I am exhausted. Wiped out. Shot. The rest of the crew looks the same. Walking around the hotel in Terre Haute, Indiana, looks a bit like everyone got interrupted halfway through getting their makeup done to appear as zombie extras on <em>The Walking Dead.</em></p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">So, shattered as I am, this one is likely to be a bit shorter than the rest.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Every day has a theme – something to guide reflection as we walk. It’s not prescriptive. We can think about whatever we want to through the course of the day, conversations with any and every other pilgrim or simple meanderings through our own thoughts. But if nothing else comes to mind, we at least have this sort of daily devotion to ponder.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Today was <em>gratitude</em>.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">There is an inclination on my part to take the topic and dive deep. It’s what I do. I’ve already written several paragraphs here which, with the stroke of my thumb and touch of a button, I’ve deleted. Deep isn’t where I want to go with this today.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Today, I actually want to keep right on the surface. I want to roll with the obvious. I want to remind you how good it is to count your blessings.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">It can be hard. The good can be hard to find for some. For some the pain, or the darkness, can be all too present. The trials of work, or the struggle of the simple cost of living. The pain of loss. And the fear that it will not end.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Look for the good. It’s there. In the strangest of places.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Last evening, in the warm Indiana evening, I found myself by a fountain and was struck by that smell of the humidity, that scent in the air of the mist and burbling water mixed with the low golden sun. And I was glad to have noticed it.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">We were awoken early this morning, rolling out before dawn and on the road as the sun rose to cast a light across soybean fields low in a blanked of fog. On any other day, I’d have stopped to take it in. We didn’t. We’re marching to a schedule. But still we saw it. It was <em>noticed</em>. And it was good. And I was glad.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Even the pain can be cause for gratitude. One of our numbers, <strong>Suzanna Carney</strong>, is one of those people with absolutely bulletproof joy. She’s got an eternal song in her heart which bubbles to the surface more often than not. We’re on day two of thirteen with only tens of miles behind us and hundreds of miles to go and she’s got a blister. “I’ve never got a blister from walking!” she says with a smile. “That’s a first!”</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Joy is infectious. Gratitude is sharable.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">For me, it’s a joy to be on this walk, but I am grateful for the opportunity to listen and learn. Every story I hear from the people I walk with reminds me how much our differences show us to be all the same.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Good night. Sweet dreams. God bless.</p>Timothy Deenihantag:trail.nd.edu,2005:News/787562017-08-15T06:00:00-04:002018-11-29T13:13:52-05:00Reflections from Day 1<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">I spent the day walking, wondering what I should write. Wondering what I <em>could</em> write.</p> <p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in;">…</p><p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">I spent the day walking, wondering what I should write. Wondering what I <em>could</em> write.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Whereas in the weeks leading up to this pilgrimage my assignments were laid out for me, contacts and introductions and interviews in a structured (if not formal) manner, today was just the road. It was conversations and eavesdropping. It was chatting. It was silence and solitude. It was time to reflect on not knowing what to think about. And it certainly didn’t feel like I had anything worth saying.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Then, this evening.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Let me tell you something about how to write a story, especially an episode of television. You want <em>resonances</em>. You want the episode to gradually move forward on the various characters’ storylines until, nearing the climax, you realize that they are all facing their own versions of the same struggle.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">It’s a great dramatic mechanism. At the 47-minute mark of an hour-long drama, the little girl gets a puppy, just as the couple decides to try for a baby, just as the dreamy-eyed hero walks out of his shift in the emergency room and watches the sun rise, and you realize <em>Oh! This is all about beginnings...</em></p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Life is rarely so convenient. Or, perhaps, we are simply usually locked in our own lives and don’t hear the echoes around us. The little girl with the puppy has no idea about the couple or the dreamy-eyed hero. She has no idea she is an echo. She is simply the hero of her own story.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">I’m in a uniquely blessed position on this Trail. I get to listen. I’m expected to think – about myself as a pilgrim, yes, but also about, and for, and in relation to the lives happening around me.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">At the end of a day which involved a 19.1 mile walk through more corn and soybeans than really any one person should face, after swimming and showering and sleeping to clear my head and refresh my body, I was struck by echoes. Echoes of stories not related, and yet not entirely <em>un-</em>related, either.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">When my wife and I were married twenty-four years ago, we were given a honeymoon vacation to get away for a week to Cancun. It was terrific. Returning, we came through Miami on our way to Philadelphia. When we landed, we were stood in our row waiting to leave the plane when the woman behind us asked if we were newlyweds.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Evidently, we glowed, because this was a question we had heard several times in the previous week. We smiled and said that we were and the woman smiled and said “Look after each other.” Then, in the next breath, she explained in a single sentence that she was returning from Florida where she and her husband had gone to find a place following his retirement when, lying on the beach, he had suddenly and unexpectedly passed away. We were struck. My wife, better in just about every situation than am I, offered condolences while I was stunned silent. “So,” the woman said again, dry-eyed but plainly in the speechless dizziness of grief, “look after each other.”</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">I’ve been thinking about my wife a lot on this walk. If you’ve been following, you know that we’ve lived on separate coasts for a year as we go through the process of an extended move from Connecticut to Seattle. By the time the walk is over and I return home, she will finally be there – one week shy of a year since we parted.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">It’s been a long year.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">It’s been a long year for some other pilgrims, too.</p>
<hr>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"><strong>Deb McGraw-Block (’77)</strong> met her husband, Rennie Block, in the fall of her first year in grad school. For 39 years, she tried to get him to visit Notre Dame. Somehow, he always managed to dodge the trip.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Last October he finally joined her. Micki Kidder, who is Executive Director of Development in addition to being another pilgrim on this Trail, remembers Rennie turning to her at one point in the weekend and saying, “Now I get it. It’s the people.”</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Deb and Rennie returned home to San Diego and three days later, suddenly and unexpectedly, he collapsed at his gym and passed away.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">“I needed something to do,” Deb tells me, of this walk. “Something to look forward to. Some time to be quiet. To figure out what’s supposed to be next.”</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">It echoes. It’s not the same, not by any means. But it resonates. It echoes.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Now, because it’s a Notre Dame sponsored event, there is of course Catholic Mass every day. No one is going to mistake me for the most devout Catholic in the bunch, but I do know when to stand and when to kneel and, usually, I even know what to say. And, being a Notre Dame Mass, the sermons tend to be a bit more <em>thinky</em> than your garden-variety parish Mass, and I’m totally down with that.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">But before we get to the sermon this evening, before we’ve even really begun, the priest explains that today is the feast of Saint Maximillian Kolbe, a Polish Jesuit who, when he learned that a married man had been selected to be starved to death in Auschwitz, asked the guards to allow him to die in the married man’s place. His request was granted. Though his death took some two weeks to arrive, it was on this day 76 years ago that he finally succumbed, having martyred himself to preserve a family.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Another echo which I cannot define, but which feels significant. Even more so when I learn later in the evening that Kolbe is not only the patron saint of families, but of storytellers, too.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">The echoes resonating want to coalesce into a story, but before they can, I learn of yet another pilgrim who lost the love of his life.</p>
<hr>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"><strong>Terry Tulisiak (’74)</strong> is a doctor, a cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic, built tall with the strength of a bull and the heart of a golden retriever. His wife, Marita (SMC ’74) died in 2014 after a long bout with breast cancer. He grieves. His life is full. He’s a wonderful, strong and independent man. But his full life and her full life once made their full life, and in that absence, he grieves, however much time may have passed, however strong he may be in himself.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">I want to sum this up. I want to put a button on it like an episode of your favorite TV show where all the echoes resonate and finally make sense.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">But we’re not watching a story. We’re <em>living</em> one. We are the characters in it. I want resolution, I want explanation, even as I know I won’t get it. The credits aren’t about to roll. Only the sunset before tomorrow’s dawn and we do it again.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">It’s just – I don’t know – maybe it’s just that every now and then we hear the echoes, we feel the resonance, and we get a little glimpse of how many stories there are around us.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">And it feels important to notice them so that we know we’re not alone.</p>Timothy Deenihantag:trail.nd.edu,2005:News/787242017-08-14T06:00:00-04:002018-11-29T13:13:52-05:00Launch<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">I’ll tell you right now I’m not going to tell you everything I want to tell you. No way. No can do.</p> <p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in;">…</p><p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">I’ll tell you right now I’m not going to tell you everything I want to tell you. No way. No can do.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Day one – <em>hour</em> one – and I’m seated between the guy who gave up his spot to dress for the ’75 Georgia Tech game to Dan “Rudy” Ruettiger on my right and a fresh faced 2017 Chinese and Pre-Health grad whose actual name is JesusisLord on my left.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Hour. One.</p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"> </p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">The day ends with dinner and drinks along the shores of the Wabash at sunset and I find myself thinking, <em>If this is pilgrimaging, why haven’t I allowed myself to suffer like this all along?</em></p>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">In between I walk and talk, and I listen and I think...</p>
<hr>
<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"><strong>JesusisLord Nwadiuko (’17)</strong> is his real name, but it’s not the name he was given at birth. At birth, and for 14 years thereafter, he was Jeremy, short for Jeremiah. His parents are missionaries who came to the US from Nigeria almost 30 years ago. When they as a family would be called upon to tell their story – to bear witness – young Jeremy noticed how the gathered would sigh adoringly when his little sister, named Rejoice, would introduce herself.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">He was eleven and he was jealous and he let it be known: he wanted a showstopper of a name, too. One day, his father sat him down. “I’ve been praying,” he said, “for a long time. And I believe we should change your name. To ‘JesusisLord.’ What do you think?”</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">He didn’t think much of it. In fact, what he remembers thinking was, “I don’t think you can do that. For a start,” he said, “it’s a sentence.”</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">When he realized his father was serious, then-Jeremy was horrified. He cried in fear until, as he remembers it, the crying stopped in an instant and was replaced by a single simple prayer. “Grant me the strength to carry this name.”</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">I love that.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">And before I go on and before you formulate any ideas about JL (as he is sometimes called for short) let me tell you he is one of the happiest, hippest, smartest young men you’ll meet. In the fall he begins working towards a masters degree in International Studies, International Economics, and China Studies from Johns Hopkins University in Nanjing, China. He’s soft spoken and big hearted with an athlete’s grace and an easy, open laugh that effortlessly brings you along.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">It took three years and four tries to convince the courts to allow him and his parents to legally change his name, which he reckons was a good length of time to reflect on the responsibility of wearing such a mantel – “I better know who I’m repping,” he says.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Hearing him talk about his love for languages as a means of empathy, the joy in someone’s eyes when they realize you respect them enough to have learned <em>their </em>language, <em>their</em> words, <em>their</em> culture, I have to say I believe he reps the name well.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">JesusisLord is the youngest of the pilgrims walking with us, an alum as of only a handful of seconds ago, or so it feels to the rest of us. Yet already he senses he’s part of something larger that he didn’t know existed before graduation. He’s aware that there’s family out there – he says this – and I laugh and tell him, “J...” This is his other nickname when even ‘JL’ is too long. “J,” I tell him, “you have no idea.”</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in"><strong>Pat Sarb (’76/’78)</strong>, on the other hand, has an excellent idea. Pat Sarb <em>knows</em>. If someone tells me that their family bleeds blue-and-gold I will tell them I can top that. Notre Dame may be part of the fabric of your family, but Pat Sarb is (I think <em>literally </em>‘literally’) part of the fabric of Notre Dame’s.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">Pat’s great-great-grandfather was a carpenter commissioned by none other than the University’s founder, Father Sorin himself, to help with the early construction of the campus. His grandfather not only built some 42 projects on campus (including the “God - Country - Notre Dame” doorway to the Basilica of the Sacred Heart) but was neighbor, friend, and ultimately godfather to legendary coach Knute Rockne. His mother’s cousin was a Holy Cross priest who served in Rome under two popes and who, in the days before the US entered the Second World War, was spiritual advisor to a young seminarian named Ted Hesburgh. His father was a Domer after the War. And, yes, in 1975 when Notre Dame faced Georgia Tech, it was Pat Sarb who gave up his position on the squad so that Rudy could finally play.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">All of that, however, could be written off as happy accident. All of it could be dismissed as either before his time or part of the camaraderie of a football team. When I tell you that Pat knows what it means to be part of the Notre Dame family, I mean that when I ask him what inspired him to walk the Trail, he first mentions the legacy he is a part of, and then he pauses. And he swallows though, his throat I can tell is getting thicker, and we both wait until he feels he can speak. “My grandson...” he says and stops and that’s okay. I know the rest of the story.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">His grandson has a rare genetic disease called nonketotic hyperglycinemia (NKH) which severely inhibits the metabolization of glycine, leading to very severe developmental issues and often taking the child’s life before they make it out of toddlerhood. In 2013, Pat approached the Boler-Parseghian Center for Rare and Neglected Diseases (CRND), founded by Ara Parseghian, Pat’s former coach, and asked for help. “Of course we’ll take the case,” he was told. “You’re one of ours.”</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">There is still no cure for the disease. But there are treatments, some being pioneered by a center founded by the man who gave Pat the opportunity to play for the Irish and attend the University on scholarship.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">So he is walking the Trail, in tribute to the legacy he is and in support of the legacy that follows. It’s simply another piece of that extended family that is Notre Dame, another example of the way in which <em>We are ND</em> is so much more than a rally cry – it’s a testament to the responsibility every member of this family feels toward each other.</p>
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<p class="Body" style="border:none; margin-bottom:0.0001pt; margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-top:0in">**To join Pat in supporting the CRND’s research efforts, go to <<a href="http://supporting.nd.edu/NKHResearchFund">http://supporting.nd.edu/NKHResearchFund</a>>. One-hundred percent of donations will go toward CRND’s NKH research.</p>Timothy Deenihantag:trail.nd.edu,2005:News/787232017-08-13T22:00:00-04:002018-11-29T13:13:52-05:00Opening Mass Homily<p><strong>St. Francis Xavier Cathedral<br> Vincennes, Indiana</strong></p> <p>We begin today our pilgrimage, following the steps of Fr. Sorin and his companions from Vincennes—in 1842 the largest city in the state—to a plot of land some 250 miles north, near the south bend of the St. Joseph River. I…</p><p><strong>St. Francis Xavier Cathedral<br>
Vincennes, Indiana</strong></p>
<p>We begin today our pilgrimage, following the steps of Fr. Sorin and his companions from Vincennes—in 1842 the largest city in the state—to a plot of land some 250 miles north, near the south bend of the St. Joseph River. I thank you and admire you brave souls who are making this trek. You are worthy successors to an intrepid French priest who was determined to found a school dedicated to Our Lady.</p>
<p>A pilgrimage is a physical journey that is at the same time a spiritual journey. The Bible is full of such journeys. </p>
<p>Most celebrated, of course, is the journey of the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt, wandering through the desert for 40 years before coming to the Promised Land. They traveled not simply from Egypt to Israel, but from slavery to freedom as God’s people. </p>
<p>While Mary was pregnant with Jesus, she and Joseph traveled by foot to Bethlehem for the census, but it was a trip to the birthplace of King David for the birth of a new King.</p>
<p>Jesus walked with the disciples to Jerusalem, but it was a trip to the Royal City to reveal what true kingship is in his suffering, death and resurrection.</p>
<p>The beautiful first reading today about Elijah offers us the story of another physical journey of spiritual significance. Elijah had been in a dispute with the prophets of Ba’al, and had slain them. Now the queen of Israel, Jezebel, who favored these prophets, was pursuing Elijah to slay him. He fled and, after just a day’s journey, sat down under a tree and prayed to God to take his life. After some of our over-20 mile hikes, there may be some of us praying the same prayer to God!</p>
<p>We should take a lesson from Elijah. He sleeps and, when he awakes, an angel of God brings him food. Elijah eats and drinks and finds the strength to walk 40 days and nights to Mount Horeb, the mountain of God. Elijah climbs the mountain, and there was a tremendously powerful wind that shattered rocks and split mountains, but God was not in the wind. Then there was an earthquake, shaking the earth, but God was not in the earthquake. Then there was a fire, consuming all, but God was not in the fire. Then there was the sound of “sheer silence." It was from that silence that God spoke to Elijah. Elijah traveled through exhaustion and despair, through the wind, earthquake and fire, to encounter God in the silence.</p>
<p>We live at a time when that sheer silence is often hard to come by. The activities, email messages, and pressures of our lives steal it away. This walk, this pilgrimage, can give us some of that silence we need. Away from the routines of life and our offices, we can find those quiet moments for prayer and reflection when God can speak to our hearts a message of encouragement, of comfort, of challenge, of hope, or anything else we need. All we have to do is to open our hearts to listen. As we go on with Mass, let us pray that each of us receives the grace to hear what God has to say.</p>
<p>In our moments of prayerful reflection on the journey before us, let us remember the journey some 175 years ago that Fr. Sorin took with Brothers Vincent, Joachim, Lawrence, Francis Zavier, Anselm and Gatian. After a frustrating year in Vincennes, he learned he had land and permission to start a university, and Sorin did not hesitate. He gathered his group, packed all their belongings in an ox-drawn cart, and began the long trip—at a quick pace—north.</p>
<p>Like the journey of the Israelites to the Promised Land, of Elijah to Mount Horeb and Jesus to Jerusalem, this physical journey was part of a larger spiritual journey. It was a long journey to found a university dedicated to Our Lady that would be a great force for good in this new land. As with Elijah, there would be times of discouragement bordering on despair. As with Jesus, there would be times when Sorin and those who came after him would have to carry the cross and taste the desolation of Good Friday. Yet they would persevere. Despite the trials, they would find the strength to continue walking, and even stride, to realize the dream. </p>
<p>We begin today retracing the steps of the physical journey of Fr. Sorin and his companions. Yet the true journey is the spiritual one of continuing the work of Notre Dame, to build a truly Catholic, truly great university for our time. Let those of us who walk, and the many members of the Notre Dame family who are with us in spirit, use this time to renew and deepen our commitment to this spiritual journey, and to listen to God.</p>
<p>Let us take courage in a presence that was always with Fr. Sorin as an inspiration and a guide, both on the journey to South Bend and in building the University: Mary, Our Lady, Notre Dame. She was the strong, faithful woman who walked to Bethlehem, fled to Egypt and returned, walked with Jesus as he carried his cross, and walked with the disciples as they received the spirit and laid the foundations of the Church. She walked with Sorin. She walks with us today. Her image is atop the Golden Dome on campus because, as Sorin would have insisted, it is <em>her</em> university.</p>
<p>So let us pray, as we continue with Mass: Mary, our Life, our Sweetness and our Hope, walk with us, pray with us, give us strength in moments of discouragement, hope in times of darkness, and guide our steps on this journey and every day.</p>
<p> </p>Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C.tag:trail.nd.edu,2005:News/786552017-08-10T11:00:00-04:002018-11-29T13:13:52-05:00Faith, Life, and Other Uncertainties<p>As we’re all grown-ups here, can we begin by acknowledging that faith – <em>by definition</em> – is unprovable? Faith is not science. Faith is, in fact, quite the opposite of science. That’s not to diminish faith – not at all – but only to embrace faith’s inherent uncertainty. Science is what one…</p><p>As we’re all grown-ups here, can we begin by acknowledging that faith – <em>by definition</em> – is unprovable? Faith is not science. Faith is, in fact, quite the opposite of science. That’s not to diminish faith – not at all – but only to embrace faith’s inherent uncertainty. Science is what one comes to know through proof. Faith is what one believes in the absence of proof. <em>Not knowing</em> is exactly faith’s point.</p>
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<p>Perhaps <em>trying to know</em> is life’s.</p>
<p>Millennia ago there was a teacher who had seriously upset the establishment. A man of great faith, he asked questions which were then considered impious. His teachings challenged the norms and standards of the day and he was tried and ultimately sentenced to death – a death he freely accepted as the better alternative to denying his own teachings, his own reason for being.</p>
<p>I’m speaking of Socrates, who, in that trial, famously dismissed the threat of capital punishment by saying “The unexamined life is not worth living.” To him, humanity’s capacity to think was also its highest responsibility. A life which did not fully consider itself was not fully a life.</p>
<p>Jesus’ teachings, though not exactly the same, were strikingly similar. Their consequences for the teacher himself, almost identical.</p>
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<p>Before we continue, a word on words.</p>
<p>Faith and religion are two different things. Faith, as noted above, is what one believes. Religion, I would argue, is what one is told to believe. They are not mutually exclusive, I hasten to add; but neither should they be confused, either for the other.</p>
<p>It’s always seemed to me that Jesus had little time for religion. (Saying this, here, may ruffle a few feathers, I realize. <a href="http://medium.com/@tinangel/lean-in-fc199dd09194">But I’ve ruffled feathers before</a>. Jesus ruffled a few feathers in his day. So did Socrates. I’m alright with them for company.) At the very least, he had issue with religion as a means of absolving one from considering the hard questions of how to live – religion as a set of rules outlining expectations.</p>
<p>Jesus taught faith as a means of detonating expectations. When religion would ironically separate us from a fearsome and vengeful God, faith challenges us to seek him out and know him as our own father. When religion would stone the woman in the square, faith asks who among us is better than human. Faith gives unto Caesar what is Caesar’s because faith is not distracted by these worldly things. Faith offers another cheek. Faith walks on water. Faith moves mountains.</p>
<p>It’s not that in faith all things are possible. It’s that faith is a matter of uncertainty. And when nothing is certain, then nothing is certainly impossible.</p>
<p>But we abhor uncertainty. We want the magic, not the miracle. We want the trick performed by someone who can do what we cannot because that absolves us from doing it ourselves. Faith – real faith – is terrifying in its responsibility. Life – truly living – likewise. Jesus knew this better than anyone else. And I believe he calls us to nothing less.</p>
<p>I don’t know what this pilgrimage will mean to me in the end. I know it already means more than it did when I first committed to it, and it hasn’t even begun. When I signed up for the Notre Dame Trail it was a physical challenge and an opportunity to be a part of something special, a landmark event for the place I call home. It would be meaningful in an amorphous, <em>love thee, Notre Dame</em> sort of way.</p>
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<p>It’s way more than that now.</p>
<p>I cannot speak for the other pilgrims, but I can tell you that, for me, the timing of this walk has uncanny significance. It comes at the end of a full year of our family being separated by a continent as my wife and I accepted differing responsibilities in moving our family west – me establishing a new home in Seattle while she held down the fort in Connecticut until it was finally time to let the fort go. </p>
<p>It comes as I am nearing full recuperation from an injury to my spine, eager to begin developing the strength I know is in me.</p>
<p>It comes not long after I finished writing my first novel, a process which has taken some eight years, and just as I am pushing forward into the next stage of finding the right avenue to share that work.</p>
<p>It comes at a time when I worry most about our nation’s and our world’s ability to deal with uncertainty, addicted as we have become to the reassuring echo of our own ideas.</p>
<p>It comes not long after I received news which shook some of my most fundamental beliefs – that Hard Day perhaps long overdue – proving to me my own lessons on uncertainty and that ‘fair’ is only ever a matter of perspective.</p>
<p>It comes almost exactly concurrent with a new offer and an opportunity, an avenue forward just as a road I was on was turning to gravel and grass and overgrown forest.</p>
<p>It comes, with uncanny serendipity, at a time when so many endings are ending and so many beginnings are beginning. I could not have anticipated it. I could not possibly have planned it this way. But this way is how it is. For me.</p>
<p>Jesus spent 40 days in the desert. I’ll be spending 14 in Indiana. As hard times go, I’ve got it pretty good, it must be said.</p>
<p>But there’s something else going on here: a moment we rarely take to search within ourselves, to examine what we feel we know, to challenge what we know we feel, to strip off the shiny armor of certainty that weighs us down and find where we can go when uncertainty is no longer the thing we fear but instead becomes the very thing which gives us the strength to continue.</p>Timothy Deenihantag:trail.nd.edu,2005:News/785412017-08-02T22:00:00-04:002018-11-29T13:13:52-05:00Unauthorized Pilgrim Profile: Terry Wilkin ('92)<p>My former roommate is proof that you should always think of your physician as the responsible, professional medic they are now – and not the college kid they were when, for example, Terry Wilkin (’92) showed up to Moriarty’s Pub dressed as an exceptionally well-endowed Lady Di. It was the London Program Hallowe’en party, sure, but honestly, the photographs I have in my possession should guarantee me free healthcare for life.</p><p>My former roommate is proof that you should always think of your physician as the responsible, professional medic they are now – and not the college kid they were when, for example, <strong>Terry Wilkin (’92)</strong> showed up to Moriarty’s Pub dressed as an exceptionally well-endowed Lady Di. It was the London Program Hallowe’en party, sure, but honestly, the photographs I have in my possession should guarantee me free healthcare for life.</p>
<p>Terry’s now an interventional radiologist at Saint Joseph Medical Center and married to a kind, understanding, and exceptionally patient woman whose intelligence is only questioned by her choice of husband. So you can understand why he might be nervous about me writing an ‘<em>Unauthorized’</em> Pilgrim Profile on him.</p>
<p>Terry was never lackluster in his studies, I hasten to point out. He’s a work-hard-play-hard kind of guy, which is actually how we met. We both lived in Zahm but I didn’t really know him until the day after Saint Patrick’s our freshman year. We had both managed to completely fail at celebrating Saint Pat’s there on the campus of the Fighting Irish. Terry had spent the whole night studying for a test which, if I remember, got postponed. My reasons were less noble. St Pat’s is my birthday and my girlfriend and I had been celebrating ‘away from the crowd’. I met Terry as he was standing in my room complaining to my freshman roommate about this travesty in his college experience and we both decided to celebrate The Day After Saint Patrick’s by drinking up for lost time.</p>
<p>A lifelong friendship was born – and has since been forever secured by each’s knowledge of the other’s capacity for blackmail.</p>
<p>Terry’s always had my back. Sophomore year, after I found myself stood up for a formal, Wilkin donned his coat and, in the spirit of George Bailey, ran the length and breadth of campus calling <em>Merry Christmas!</em> to every building until arriving at Walsh, where this young lady resided. He then spent at least a full minute wishing Merry Christmas to everyone in the hall, <em>except </em>her – who he called out by name and proceeded to berate with impressive creativity on my behalf. If you lived in Walsh in the fall semester of ’89 and remember two loud boys screaming Merry Christmas at your dorm from the snow on South Quad, that was Wilkin and me. Apologies.</p>
<p>Bacardi may have been involved.</p>
<p>I’ve done my best to be a solid best friend in return. The last day of sophomore year (<em>Christ, how did we make it out of sophomore year?</em>) there was revelry in the War Memorial which evidently included a shard of glass hidden beneath the surface of the cold water. Terry gashed his foot but didn’t realize it until he was standing in our room in a literal pool of blood. At something like the very next instant there was a pounding at the door and King – that’s <em>Father</em> King, then rector of Zahm – was bellowing from the hall “THERE’S A TRAIL OF BLOOD THROUGH THIS DORM AND IT LEADS HERE!! WHAT HAPPENED?!”</p>
<p>“It’s all good, Father,” I reassured him, opening the door crosseyed, which, upon reflection, probably wasn’t very reassuring. “I got it. Totally under control.”</p>
<p>Bacardi likely had a hand in that one, too.</p>
<p>Then there was the time he and a friend went off campus to get haircuts and I called the salon pretending to be a doctor from Saint Joseph’s Medical Center Psychiatric Ward. I described Terry and Rick, our friend, and explained they were escaped patients. “You don’t need to worry,” I remember saying in my best <em>trust-me-I’m-a-doctor</em> voice, “if they were any threat at all, they’d’ve been in a higher security ward. It’s just that one of them,” I went on to say, channeling Fraser Crane, “has what is called a ‘Samson Complex’ and fully believes that all his strength comes from the hair on the <em>front-right part of his scalp</em>. It is imperative that your stylist <em>absolutely not touch</em> this part of his head.”</p>
<p>Yeah. I said that.</p>
<p>It’s worth noting at this point that Terry grew up in town. Thus, when the two of them left the salon and the worried stylists called the police to help retrieve the wayward patients, it took very little time for South Bend’s Finest to show up at Mrs Wilkin’s door.</p>
<p>Terry was not amused. And Bacardi, for once, was completely absent.</p>
<p>There was the time we got locked in to the pub in Cork, the time we locked ourselves in to the pub in the basement of the hotel in London, and The Story Of The Pheasant (indeed, threatening to release the pheasant photos was the only way to coerce him into sending me a current and usable photograph for this profile...). We also studied sometimes. We also played a lot of pool.</p>
<p>Terry was my best man and I was his. He and his bride met in med school, and I remember speaking with him on the phone, hearing about the girl in his Gross Anatomy group. When she was first mentioned, it wasn’t in any romantic sense – which should tell you something about how very special she was from the start. I’m terrible with names, but I remembered the name of someone I’d never met just on account of the way my friend talked about her.</p>
<p>We’ve always kept on each other’s radar over the years, as roommates do, even if we’ve great distances of time and geography between us. He was healing the sick in Africa while I was on a tv series in Liverpool. That he’s now a doc at the very hospital I claimed he had escaped from all those years ago is ironic in a way he seems finally able to enjoy. He and his much better half have a young son who runs rings around my teenage daughters every time we’re back for a game.</p>
<p>Terry Wilkin is frankly one of the finest people I know, but please never tell him I said so. He’s got that rub-dirt-in-it-and-take-a-lap callousness on the surface that shelters limitless empathy when called for. He’s a romantic mush who loves Christmas and <em>When Harry Met Sally</em> and seems to have dialed back on the Bacardi and shifted his palate to red wine since our days on campus. He called me in the supermarket to let me know he’s walking the three-day leg of the Trail, and can’t wait to introduce him to all my new friends as we make our way back to campus.</p>
<p>I might even share a photograph or two.</p>
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<h2>About The ND Trail Blogger</h2>
<p>Tim Deenihan ('92) is a writer, an actor, an impatient philosopher, and the only man in a house of four women. If you're ever in Seattle, look him up - he makes a wicked margarita and a mean manhattan. If you can't get to Seattle, you can find him on twitter as <a href="https://twitter.com/tinangel">@tinangel</a>. Walk with Tim in August. <a href="https://trail.nd.edu/join-us/">Join Us</a>.</p>Timothy Deenihantag:trail.nd.edu,2005:News/783612017-07-27T14:00:00-04:002018-11-29T13:13:52-05:00Retrace Father Sorin’s steps on the Notre Dame Trail: Registration now open<p class="image-right"><img alt="Notre Dame Trail" src="http://news.nd.edu/assets/213100/nd_trail_200x.jpg2.jpg" title="Notre Dame Trail" /></p>
<p>Packages include a five-day (Aug. 22-26), 70-mile option; a three-day (Aug. 24-26), 40-mile choice; and a one-day (Aug. 26), eight-mile route.</p><p class="image-right"><img alt="Notre Dame Trail" src="http://news.nd.edu/assets/213099/nd_trail_300x.jpg2.jpg" title="Notre Dame Trail"></p>
<p>Registration is now open for the <a href="http://trail.nd.edu/">Notre Dame Trail</a>, a 300-mile pilgrimage on foot from Vincennes, Indiana, to South Bend that recreates the November 1842 journey of University of Notre Dame founder Rev. Edward F. Sorin, C.S.C., and seven <a href="http://www.holycrossusa.org/">Congregation of Holy Cross</a> brothers.</p>
<p>The Congregation of Holy Cross had received a gift of land in Indiana for the purpose of founding a school near the banks of the St. Joseph River. Father Sorin and his companions set out on their journey, determined to establish a school dedicated to Mary, the mother of Jesus, which would, in Father Sorin’s prophetic words, “become a powerful means for good.”</p>
<p>From Aug. 13 to Aug. 26, 2017, as part of the University’s 175th anniversary celebration, the Notre Dame Trail will commemorate Father Sorin’s journey. Three package options allow participants to select a distance that meets their physical abilities. Packages include a five-day (Aug. 22-26), 70-mile option; a three-day (Aug. 24-26), 40-mile choice; and a one-day (Aug. 26), eight-mile route. For those who are not able to make the journey in person, there will be a number of ways to participate virtually.</p>
<p>The Notre Dame Trail will conclude on Aug. 26 (Saturday) with a celebratory Mass on South Quad.</p>
<p>For complete information about how to register for the Notre Dame Trail, visit <a href="http://trail.nd.edu/">trail.nd.edu</a>.</p>
<p class="attribution">Originally published by <span class="rel-author">Sue Lister</span> at <span class="rel-source"><a href="http://news.nd.edu/news/retrace-father-sorins-steps-on-the-notre-dame-trail-registration-now-open/">news.nd.edu</a></span> on <span class="rel-pubdate">October 25, 2016</span>.</p>Sue Ryantag:trail.nd.edu,2005:News/783472017-07-27T09:00:00-04:002018-11-29T13:13:52-05:00Notre Dame Trail to culminate in Mass and picnic on free final day of pilgrimage<p class="image-right"><img alt="Notre Dame Trail" src="http://news.nd.edu/assets/213100/nd_trail_200x.jpg2.jpg" title="Notre Dame Trail" /></p>
<p>In addition to the free final day, five-day and three-day pilgrimages are offered.</p><p class="image-right"><img alt="Notre Dame Trail" src="http://news.nd.edu/assets/213099/nd_trail_300x.jpg2.jpg" title="Notre Dame Trail"></p>
<p>On Aug. 26 (Saturday), the University of Notre Dame will celebrate the completion of the Notre Dame Trail, which will commemorate Notre Dame’s 175th anniversary.</p>
<p>The events on Aug. 26 will be free of charge for all who register. Activities will include walking the final three miles of the Notre Dame Trail, participation in the 175th Anniversary Mass and a celebratory picnic with entertainment on South Quad.</p>
<p>All are welcome to participate in these free activities, and families are welcome. Note that registration is required at <a href="https://trail.nd.edu">trail.nd.edu</a>.</p>
<p>“In addition to being a physical trek, the Notre Dame Trail will be a journey of the soul. We want to ensure that nothing precludes participation in this special event celebrating the University’s 175th anniversary,” said <a href="https://www.nd.edu/about/leadership/council/louis-nanni/">Lou Nanni</a>, vice president for university relations.</p>
<p>The Notre Dame Trail is a 300-mile journey following a path similar to the one Notre Dame founder Rev. Edward F. Sorin, C.S.C., and the Holy Cross Brothers traversed from Vincennes, Indiana, to South Bend in November 1842.</p>
<p>In addition to the free final day, five-day and three-day pilgrimages are offered.To learn more, visit <a href="https://trail.nd.edu">trail.nd.edu</a>.</p>
<p><em><strong>Contact</strong>: Katherine Lane, 574.631.9785, <a href="mailto:katherine.lane@nd.edu">katherine.lane@nd.edu</a></em></p>
<p class="attribution">Originally published by <span class="rel-author">Notre Dame News</span> at <span class="rel-source"><a href="http://news.nd.edu/news/notre-dame-trail-to-culminate-in-mass-and-picnic-on-free-final-day-of-pilgrimage/">news.nd.edu</a></span> on <span class="rel-pubdate">March 16, 2017</span>.</p>Notre Dame News