Burn baby, burn!

Burning Man: there's nothing like it on earth. If you haven't been, I would encourage you to consider it. With your "normal" social constructs obliterated at Burning Man, you have one of those rare opportunities to sink into who you really are without all your normal Default World baggage.  Cuz we all carry it. Picture above? My most recent Burn in 2015, just ridin' on the front of a bike driven by my firefighter-turned-circus-performer friend Leonard. After a solid six years in a row, I'm on year three of my "Burning Man break." Cuz it's only a break. I'll be back someday, baby, I'll be back. Seeing several friends head out to the desert has caused a serious case of FOMO. 

In the meantime, for the last few years, I've used that week and the associated resources (read: money and time) that I would have put towards the Burn in other ways. Last year I took my boy-child to southeast Asia. The year before that, I went down a super crazy rabbit hole with a new acquaintance. This year I head out on a solo excursion to France. My midwife moved there recently after retiring. She's delivered thousands of babies and is one of the most amazing (and challenging) people I know.  I worked for her for six (very long and phenomenal) years in my early twenties serving the midwives and laboring women alike. I even enticed her to come with me to Burning Man in 2014. At her going away party this past May she invited everyone to come visit her in France. I raised my hand (ok, I might have been a teeny bit tipsy) and promised I would. And then I promptly bought a round trip ticket a few weeks later. I have endless gratitude for my patient and devoted husband - this isn't the first time I've done such a thing. He always smiles and says "I knew this when I married you."

At first I thought I'd just hang out in Paris for the week with her. We did that together once actually, in 2007. It was just the two of us and we had a fantastic time together. And with a free place to stay this time around, it just made sense financially. But as I continued to view this trip as a pilgrimage (similar to how I view Burning Man), something in me clicked and I knew I needed to expand my French footprint. And while I'll definitely spend time with her in Paris (as well as her amazing wife Lisa), I also have booked a couple of other excursions: one to Lourdes and another to St. Baume and now the whole trip has accidentally turned into a "Mary pilgrimage" of sorts.

Lourdes is the place where a young girl named Bernadette experienced an apparition of what she knew to be Mother Mary. Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims have visited this place because it's now a revered and well known place of healing miracles, many of which are documented. Further, when I lived in Europe while I was in college (back in 1995), I had numerous friends make the trip to Lourdes and report back to me that it was pretty impactful. Now it's my turn, two decades later.

St. Baume, on the other hand, is allegedly the site of a series of caves that Mary Magdalene lived in for thirty-some-odd years after she fled the holy lands.  It's only accessible by foot and the journey there will be an adventure unto itself, guaranteed. I've had to rent a car (manual transmission, eek!) and everything. Nestled in a forest with 3,000 year old trees, it's been a pilgrimage site since the middle ages and sounds amazing from everything I've read - so obviously I'm all in for this one. And because I've booked a room at the friar-run hostel, I get access to the caves in a pretty cool way - it's located at the base of the trail. 

Who knows if either place is bullshit. I don't really care. The spirit and energy of these Mary's has held and I'm going to go exploring to experience it all for myself. And while there probably won't be a series of cathartic bonfires (let's hope not anyway) like at Burning Man, I do expect a ton of bullshit to burn off. It always does when I travel alone like this. It's humbling to not speak the language, to depend on my own radical self reliance and to be the stranger. And who knows, maybe my heart will open a little bit more to in turn pay kindness forward just a little bit more in the world. 

I'll be seein' ya on the other side. May it be so. 

And here's the not very sexy post scriptum to this Dispatch: my day job is pretty huge sometimes. And while I might not be curing cancer, it's the biggest (and most gratifying) thing I've ever worked on in my adult life. I'm currently spearheading a project that will take months if not years to complete. Here's the thing: I'm committed. It's the right thing for our community (and I do mean community-at-large) that I stick around and see this through. Adventures like this one to France (as well as Burning Man) have allowed me to unhinge just enough to fly free before I come back and get super grounded again.  It's actually the secret to my work-life balance. How I've been able to keep my marriage together for twenty years and raise two beautiful and compassionate children. How this body I'm in ticks. It's my natural rhythm, one could say. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't share the endless hours of spreadsheets and planning that I do on a daily basis. The meetings - meetings upon more meetings - about an incredibly diverse array of things that I share respnose-ability for.  My day-job sometimes requires a lot of patience and presence that I don't know how else I could experience and cultivate except through my-life-of-writing-and-sharing-as-Aurah.  You know? My left brain just isn't that exciting! SJ handles that day-job integration just fine.  She burned bright with all those projects she created back in the day. And they live on without her, praise goddess, so I can just keep focused on that day job. 

May all beings be happy and free. 
May all beings be happy and free. 
May all beings be happy and free. 
May it begin with me. 
With clarity, kindness and courage. 
​May it be so.