We stop in Vernon for lunch at an Italian restaurant, which gave us our own dining room and had a good last meal together.  After lunch we gather in a saloon parking lot and continue our Eucharist on the Run, using Millie’s hood as our table.  We receive Christ anew in that place, reminding each of us that Christ can be found, truly, anywhere, and we wait for the final blessing and dismissal for our return at St. Anne.

Naturally, we face one last obstacle.  Our arrival on the edge of Ft. Worth coincides precisely with rush hour.  However, we are carried through that storm and roll into the Saint Anne parking lot, greeted by signs and banners and a band, of sorts.  The pilgrims pile out and greet their families, but are then brought to the labyrinth for one last leg of the journey.

In the middle ages, pilgrims who were intent on traveling to Jerusalem, were often unable to go because of war or other strife.  An alternative was to travel to one of the great medieval cathedrals.  In some of these places, the labyrinth was the last leg of the pilgrimage, winding through the path to the center, to know one had truly completed the journey.  And so, the sponsors began and walked in through our labyrinth, finding the center and pausing for prayer.  The pilgrims followed one by one.  The adults wound their way out, leaving the center to the pilgrims.  By their own choice and design, they took hands and offered prayers around that circle of ten.  Fr. Andrew offered the blessing and dismissal, adding “Your pilgrimage is ended; your journey goes ever on” and the pilgrims began their walk out of the labyrinth.  This walk they did linked one to another, hands on shoulders, so that none should be left behind, a symbol of the community formed on this journey.  As they exited the labyrinth, each was greeted with “Welcome home!”

The Loretto Chapel, strictly speaking ceased being a chapel in the early 1970s as the order of nuns who administered it had to close it and withdraw.  It now is a museum, really, and not a worship space at all.  However, it is here that there is a remarkable spiral staircase that an anonymous carpenter built without pay, so the story goes.  No nails either, apparently.  The staircase has puzzled observers and architects for many years for its simple design that has no obvious means of support – neither a central column nor external supports.  Additional elements have been added over the years (such as a bannister and a few external supports in recent years), but it stands as a remarkable piece of creative work, at the very least.

From Santa Fe, we drove on.  We passed through Tucumcari, NM, and said hello to Fr. George’s old church (one of them, anyway). 

Then, on to the Helium Capital of the World, Amarillo, TX and partook of local cuisine at the regional chain “Taco Villa.”  Our destination here was the Quarterman Ranch, the local Episcopal Church camp and Fr. Andrew’s once-upon-a-time spiritual homebase (where he went to camp and worked at camp from 1978-1994 or so).  We stayed at the Ranch House, which is the historic home when this property was originally a ranch.  Showers and air conditioning for all — yay!

We discussed here a theme of sacrifice – but looked at this term in its root form:  to make holy.  We also looked at the impulse of love which is at the heart of sacrifice in the Christian use of the word (God’s sacrifice for us; our sacrifices for one another) and spent time in prayer and reflection, alone and one with another.  We shared Eucharist in the Chapel (of all places) and then shared, very intentionally, with each other how we had come to love one another and what we appreciated in each other.  Though this was time-consuming and on into the night, it was worth that sacrifice.  We all need to hear that we are lovable and, as importantly, why we are lovable.  It was a powerful night.  The adults then collapsed into sleep and most of the pilgrims began a game of sardines.

The worship space is beautiful with contemporary lines and very effective air conditioning.  We stay up working on our sermon (yes, the pilgrims were invited to share their experiences as the sermon on Sunday) as well as designing the music for the service.  This congregation doesn’t have a musician, so they use a sort of digital juke-box to play recorded accompaniment for hymns.  We pull out the guitars, drum and persimmon shaker and plan the hymns for the next day.

Sunday morning comes with donuts, milk and OJ from the church and we get up to prepare for the 10 am service.  The pilgrims each have pieces of the story that they want to share and do a tremendous job.  Boom-boom doesn’t let the adults off the hook, though, so Kirk, Sarah, and Fr. Andrew also have to share a bit of their story.  The music goes very well, thanks to the leadership of Paul and Meg on guitar.  The congregation welcomes us as if we were their own youth group (which, by the way, has one member, named Adrian – nice guy) and eats lunch with us.  Off we go again!

Occasionally, we have to stop at grocery stores to restock.  These visits are always entertaining, especially in small town grocery stores – usually Safeway out there, it seems.  We move in like a small, tactical assault force, set up a command central near the checkstands and then deploy our 13 members throughout the store to gather the needed supplies.  It goes very quickly, but seems to startle the employees and regular customers.  At one stop, while checking out, the checker asked if we were going camping.  While Fr. Andrew began explaining that this was a church youth group, Rachel simply shouted out “That’s our Dad!”  It was simpler to leave the checker with the mystery that is the J2A Pilgrimage than explain further.

After shopping in Winslow, we drove through the Navajo reservation on into New Mexico.  We had hoped and planned to stop at the Sky Village of the Acoma tribe in northern NM and see their pueblo to do a sort of compare-and-contrast with our Hopi experience, but their village was closed for religious ceremonies.  Maybe it was their kachina home dance?  No way to know.  Kachina practices are part of all the pueblo tribes, though, Hopi, Acoma, Zuni, etc.

About sundown, we arrived at Camp Stoney, an Episcopal church camp outside of Santa Fe.  In an unusual twist, we reserved teepees for our lodging that night – which is sort of ironic since teepees are really plains tribes, and not southwest, but oh well – that would have been smashing except for the rain.  Oops.  The teepees dripped a bit and the ground was damp and, at 8000 feet elevation, it was a little chilly.  However, our pilgrims were amazingly adaptable and, with the help of Meg’s shower curtain, the girls made the best of their circumstances and toughed it out.  The guys shrugged and went to bed in the mud and wet without thinking too much about it.  Before bed, though, we met DOC (Fr. Daniel, the Director of Camp) who gave us a great and fun welcome.  We roasted hot dogs and veggies over a roaring fire and made s’mores.  A game of eXtreme Spoons ensued along with some fun singing and general goofing around.  We talked about how we use our creativity in all sorts of ways, including planning liturgies as well as sorting out teepee problems.  Off to bed in the dark and damp.

We left, together with Cathy Wright and Carrie Cate (Fr. Andrew’s sisters), to visit a local potter, Rainy.  Rainy does indigenous pottery, harvesting clay from nearby mesas, creating her own paint and paintbrushes from local materials and supports her family with this work.  Her pottery is white pottery, unlike the more common reddish-brown hopi pottery, and is all hand-built, coil work.  She gave us a demonstration, along with her daughter and grandson (who were in contemporary Hopi dress), and allowed each of us to try our hand at building, burnishing, and painting.  Her work is exceptionally fine and shows a great deal of respect for what the earth provides to her for her work.  Many of her patterns she has adapted from the broken shards of Awatovi, which is quite close to her childhood home.  Rainy is also an archaeologist by training and uses that field of knowledge as well when designing her pieces.

After Rainy’s house, we went to a small trading post and were able to find some gifts and keepsakes for the trip.  This is where the “Don’t Worry, Be Hopi” shirts come from.  From there, we went to the Hopi Cultural Center for lunch, where they serve some traditional Hopi food.  Numquavi is a hominy stew with lamb that was quite good and they served frybread as well.  Most of the pilgrims ate something traditional, though a few burgers were also in evidence at their table.  The food was all quite good.

After lunch, we made our way in the Wookiemobile (our large van) to the village of Hotevilla on Third Mesa.  Hotevilla was having their Kachina Home Dance that day and we were able to go for part of it.  This also allowed us to walk through one of the villages.  No photography, sketching or recording of any kind is allowed (in fact, we saw someone taken away by law enforcement for trying to record the dance).  We climbed up on a roof (along with many others) to be able to watch the dance.  The Home dance is the last dance of the season for the Kachinas.  Afterwards, they return home to the San Francisco Mountains in the west.  At this dance they give gifts to boys (bows and arrows) and girls (kachina dolls or baskets) attached to stalks of corn or cat-tails.  Other gifts of produce and piki bread are also given out.  They sing and dance for about 4 songs before returning to rest and then coming out for another ‘set.’  It was fascinating to see.  Primarily, the kachinas that danced that day in Hotevilla were Longhair Kachinas.  The picture here is simply of the representative doll of that kachina, to provide an idea.  There was also another sort of kachina, with a sort of checkerboard face and pointed nose, but we haven’t yet been able to identify it.

This day we also began to turn our face toward home and we discussed what ‘home’ was and where we find our spiritual home, as Jesus calls upon us to abide with him.

After the dance, we packed up the remainder of our belongings at St. Joseph’s Mission in Keams Canyon, said good bye to Cathy and Carrie, and drove to Winslow, AZ, where we had lodging arranged at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church.

After our Morning Prayer service, we drove to nearby Awatovi, with Fr. Clay Kilburn (the priest at our host church) as our guide.  Awatovi was, 300+ years ago, a village that converted to Catholicism.  For reasons that vary depending upon who tells the story, the village was attacked by other Hopi from other villages and was destroyed and the residents were murdered.  Now there are only ruins of the homes, the church, and the kivas.  Scattered all across the ground are pieces of pottery shards – thousands upon thousands of broken shards – reminding us that this once was a thriving, living place.  We returned for a simple lentil soup lunch and spent part of the afternoon reflecting on the morning and our own brokenness.

The fast ended with a celebration of Holy Eucharist at Cathy Wright’s home, just down the street.  We worshipped joyfully in her backyard and offered our brokenness to God, who restores and mends.  After the service we sat down to a chili dinner that even our resident chili champion, Kirk, had to admit was good.  A special guest for the meal and evening was Thomas, a traditional Hopi healer or medicine man.  After dinner, Thomas talked a bit about his work, about the history of the Hopi, about some cultural and religious practices and took our questions.  After we returned back to our cottage, we spent some time talking and processing what we had heard and wrestled with some of the difficulties of communicating across the lines of very different religious practices and beliefs.  This was an emotionally challenging and draining day.  Naturally, many of the pilgrims resolved that by holding a dance party until the wee hours of the morning.

Imagine that you were at Build-a-Bear workshop and Jesus walked into Build-a-Bear workshop and he took you to get filled up.  He fills you up with the fluffing of all your traditions and all that your family does and your daily lifestyle.  And he seals it with his everlasting thread.  Then he moves on to the clothes and since our generations have changed throughout the years there are different outfits for your family representing the history of family and then he takes you home with him and loves you and cares for you and brings you back every year for more stuffing and more clothes.

We stopped in Holbrook for groceries – temporarily taking over the Safeway there – and then drove onto the Navajo reservation and then the Hopi reservation.  The large rainstorm that had been with us all day preceded us onto Hopi, providing them much needed and desired rainfall.  Rain is rare and sacred here. 

Our final turn on the highway brought us a view of Keams Canyon – our destination.  Keams is a town situated in a small canyon – largely built by the federal government originally and, so, not a traditional village in any real sense.  We met up with Cathy Wright, our liaison and general host.  The pilgrims decided to scale the canyon wall, which they did for a time, and we then went up the road to St. Joseph’s Mission, the Roman Catholic church where we are staying.  Fr. Clay Kilburn showed us around and we got situated in the guest cottage.  This was a long day and a late one – we enjoyed supper and a Eucharist which included the Litany of the Saints and fell into bed.

There’s this struggle to get to the top of the mountain and this struggle to get up there, on the way up, kind of transforms you, but once you get there it’s perfect and you’re transformed.  Like Jesus was when his was glowing, the Transfiguration, and that’s when you meet God.  You can compare that to our journey.  We went on that terrible winding road, but once we got to the Lodge, it was beautiful and it was amazing and perfect and everything looked neat.  But without the struggle, nothing is as wonderful.  If we ridden in a plane and were just dropped off and landed just next to the Lodge, we would have been, like, “Man, this place has cracks, and a dog and a mean cat, and isn’t that clean and is old and so on.”  You come to a sanctuary because of struggle.  Just like there’s no joy without suffering, and you can’t know happiness without sadness.  Because of our struggle, we reach our mountaintop and find our sanctuary.

From the Guadalupe Mountains, we wound our way into SW New Mexico and the Gila National Forest.  First, however, we had to declare our citizenship, since the US Border Patrol had a checkpoint set up just inside NM.  That issue resolved, we made our way into the heart of Gila, which was a volcano 30 million years prior.  Hot springs are still abundant in the area as a result.  After driving through a beautiful, but very winding and somewhat startling narrow road, we finally arrived at our stop for the night: Wilderness Lodge at Gila Hot Springs.  This was a rustic old house set up now for groups and travelers.  The elevation was over 7000 feet.  We had the house to ourselves and very much enjoyed the cool air and the hot springs.  This stop was a great respite for everyone.  It also was  an opportunity to do some laundry! 

We shared Holy Eucharist together in a candlelit service around the dinner table.