a surrender - 25
(Continuing "a surrender," chapter four, "the anawim")
It was a short ride the next day to my friend’s house, then after several days rest, I started south. It had been a month since I left the monastery, and my journey south would take two more months. My experiences with people continued much like the first month of the journey. Occasionally I went a day without food, but those times were almost always followed by enthusiastic welcomes by people that left me overwhelmed with gratitude and encouraged to go on. For several days, I stayed at the Dominican seminary where I had studied. Many of my friends were still there and they welcomed me gladly and kindly, eager to hear my stories. I continued to join Christians of all varieties, wherever I found them. Some embraced me with kindness and generosity and some ignored me or sent me away, but I began to clearly recognize the spirit of God, the spirit of love, where it appeared among them, the spirit that was the same no matter what language they used or what the sign said on the door. Police stopped me many times to ask questions and check my ID. Often they chased me off the place where I had sat down to rest. But sometimes they came up with ways to help me, once even inviting me to sleep in the waiting room of the police station, with a pillow and blanket from the jail. There were some longer and hotter days of walking in the South. Once I endured eighteen straight hours of rain when a tropical storm came inland. So I was tired when I finally arrived at my parents’ house, after an 1800 mile journey from the monastery. Tired, but also thrilled. It seemed impossible that I could have made it so far, since leaving the monastery with two peanut butter sandwiches and three apples.
I spent the next few months with my parents. This was partly to set their minds at rest, but also to clarify my own thoughts while the colder months passed. The next spring I was able to start walking earlier in the season, slowly working my way north with the warming weather. I traveled twice as far that year, crossing much of the country.
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