Nobody said it would be easy, following our soul's path. Nobody said that the road would be smooth or that the world would thank us for turning our own way. But that's what makes it such a true adventure. We may stumble, but we'll get up again. We may lose our friends and even our family, but we'll meet new companions along the way. And it'll all be worth it. Because our soul's path leads us to our distinctive place in the universe, and to that unique person we were created to be.
I was sitting in a church service the first time my Inner Voice spoke to me, inviting me on the journey that has become my new life. How many times had it tried to get my attention before then, and I hadn't been able to hear it? But now, as I sat with my clergy colleagues, all of us dressed up in our vestments that hid the individuality of our petsonalities, blending us into one amorphous mass of accommodation, I heard it loud and clear: When you go, you'll be done. And with that, my life changed.
Three years later, I left the church, just as the Oracle had predicted. I was done. Though in truth, I had been leaving the church for years. Perhaps I'd never really joined. But I so identified with its lofty vision, creating communities of faith and hope, reaching out to a hurting world with the healing hands of love, that I mistook that for my soul's home. I tried to hold in check my criticisms of the church, and even more those meddlesome inclinations that made me more interested in what was going on beyond the church doors than what was going on within. There was some other life I was supposed to be living.
When the time came, I said my goodbyes, gave thanks for all the blessings I had received through my ministry, walked out the door, and began to survey the new landscape. But I still needed to process why, after all those years, I needed to walk away in the first place. I wrote a memoir (recording it as an audio book for my podcast), I wrote a novel (which is still in search of a publisher), and I began writing personal essays about the new path that was opening up where the old path was receding. I was now on some new leg of my journey, meeting new people, learning new ways, and feeling new life surging through my veins. There would be no going back.
Does that trash my life and work in the church? By no means! My childhood experiences in a churchgoing family, my almost forty years as a parish priest, these were rich and necessary parts of my journey. When I die, I've told my wife, I want a proper church funeral, it's been such a deep and meaningful part of my life. It just isn't the whole story.
Apparently, Soul, that Guiding Light that knows who we are and what we're supposed to be doing with our lives, can use everything. Nothing is lost. But it doesn't seem to have much investment in the decisions and commitments we've made along the way. So, careers, marriages, values even, these become secondary considerations as Soul begins to have its way with us, which often happens in midlife. Those prior loyalties are tested, as to whether or not they can be made to serve the larger, deeper callings of our heart. This is why the journey can become so messy. It's why people do in fact leave jobs and relationships and established ways of life, to pursue this singular path that will not take No for an answer.
We begin this new season of The Mystic Cave with one such story. In the summer of 2023 I signed on to a Vision Quest run by the Animas Valley Institute, set in the mountains of Southwestern Colorado. It seemed a fitting way to enter my seventies, revisiting my life's purpose. One of the guides I already knew from another Animas program, Rebecca Wildbear, a wilderness guide and river rafter (whose story I've explored on another podcast episode). Our second guide was Bruce Howatt who, according to his picture and bio, was a rough and rugged climber and mountain guide.
As the Quest approached, without explanation, Bruce disappeared from the emails, replaced by someone called Jules, but with the same last name. I wasn't sure what that meant. When we all gathered for a gear check the evening before we were to head out, Jules was present, looking a lot like Bruce in the picture, but also, not. There was something shy about Jules, who kept to the edges of our little group. The next day, when we hiked up to our base camp in the mountains and began to make our introductions, the mystery was resolved. Bruce was beginning his Transition to Jules, for Julianna, who, while we could use any labels we wanted, would be "over the moon" if we would refer to her in the feminine.
I was drawn to Jules for her wicked sense of humour and her self-effacing humility. But I was also struck by the intensity of her journey, and the courage it would take to make it, especially given the hyper-masculine world from which she was emerging. Her new path was unfolding before our eyes, mysteriously, compellingly, as if Soul couldn't care less about the labels with which we and others identify ourselves in the world. Hers was a true homecoming, and it inspired my own.
I stayed in touch with Jules when the program ended, visiting her in her home in the Columbia Mountains south of Revelstoke, British Columbia. She was an excellent guide and I felt well supported by her in my own unfolding journey. Then, this past June, I had the opportunity of working with her again at another Animas program, this one in Vermont. A year after we'd first met, it was clear that Julianna had now shown up where once Bruce had been. Fully, confidentally, even radiantly. That does not mean the path has been easy. Anything but, as you'll hear. But she's on that path now, living the only life she has ever been called to live.
Jules was pleased to speak with me for The Mystic Cave, to tell her story--she's telling it to a documentary filmmaker, so why not to a podcaster?! But she felt self-conscious about her facility with words, believing she's not a very verbal person. So we kept our conversation brief and focussed, which is no less moving and inspirationsal for that. To listen in, press the Play button below. Follow the "More Info" link to the show notes for more information about Jules.
And with that, welcome back ... to our new season!
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