Next Session Shifting + Pilgrimage Week
Rachel's Monument Unveiling on the 29th Bumps Our Next Session to July 6. Plus Walking the Ways Pilgrimage Prompts.
Solstice Greetings, Shining Tribe!
Zoe finally has got June 29th confirmed for the unveiling of Rachel’s monument on her grave in Rhinebeck, NY. Everyone is invited (Zoe’s note is below).
I am going. It is not a direct time conflict with our session but I need to travel to be there and maybe you do, too, so the next Exploratorium session will be on July 6th at our usual time. I will send all the usual reminders.
This shift gives us another week to be cultivating the wisdom of the Lovers and making our pilgrimage out from the Solstice. As you will see below, an aspect of a journey that makes it a pilgrimage is having a center, i.e. a special destination. I am making the trip to Rachel’s grave the center of my pilgrimage this Solstice Season as I seek an answer to the question: How to answer the call to weave beings together in Love?
What questions are you carrying out of the Solstice to seek an answer to?
Here is Zoe’s note from FB:
Re: The Unveiling of Rachel Pollack's Monument.
I heard from the rabbi this morning. Rachel and I are pleased to announce that the unveiling of Rachel's monument is scheduled for Sunday, 29 June 2025. You are all invited. Please don't worry about an RSVP. I am so very busy. It would be difficult for me to acknowledge your kind responses and well wishes. But comment here is very welcome and invited.
It has been such a saga to bring about the unveiling. Rachel passed on April 7, 2023. The stress has been real over the past 2 years. Customarily, the unveiling takes place one year after the death. But it is different all over the world, according to Rabbi Jonathan. It was good news to me that I could relax a bit and take the attitude that we would have the unveiling when we have the unveiling.
If you are joining, here are the details:
3 p.m., Sunday, June 29, 2025
Town of Rhinebeck, New York "Grasmere" Cemetery
*ROUTE 9 north or South
*Take MILL ROAD off of Route 9. It's a LEFT coming from the south and RIGHT coming from the north. There is a white chapel-esque building at the corner of Mill and Route 9 which is now the office of the cemetery.
LEFT into the cemetery - it's a ways down the road (It's not the older cemetery on the right.)
I'm sure you will see cars parked and people standing at the grave site. Park anywhere.
The ceremony itself is brief. I will be reading some words from Rachel, and from me. If people want to say something, they are welcome.
Walking the Ways of the Summer Light: Pilgrimage Week
An offering from Soul Path Sanctuary to the Shining Tribe that you can participate in each week as we go toward the Solstice—or not. Details on this offering are here.
Pilgrimage is an imaginary road with real stones in it.
Phil Cousineau
Basic Flow
I worked with a wonderful group facilitator, Guadalupe Guajardo, who had a planning philosophy I took to heart: Maximum structure with maximum flexibility. A pilgrimage is a journey that is undertaken with planning, purpose, focus, and a specific destination. The structure supports the depth of work we seek to undertake. But once we begin the journey, we must be open to what is presented to us, not what we planned to see, hear, or feel. Our travels may be more or less than we imagined. Our destination may not be the culmination. The unanticipated might have us altering our plans. But we can flow with this uncertainty knowing we’ve done the best we can to prepare and trusting that what we most need know will flow to us.
With this preface as caution, the pilgrimage journey could be said to have this flow:
Preparation: Our Wisdom Walks provide four weeks of preparation and practice for stepping out of our everyday life, awakening the senses, and finding the focus of a central question. If you are traveling, you’ll, of course, have to make logistical arrangements and might want to tend to these tasks with a soulful approach and make them a part of – rather than apart from – the pilgrimage process.
At the Threshold: The time for departure arrives. To mark this moment as sacred and set the desired tone for the journey, you might:
Make sure that you have all you need to take care of your body: the right shoes, medicines, appropriate clothes. Thank your body for making this journey and pledge to listen to the messages it gives you. It may be doing a lot of hard work!
Say good-bye in a ritual way to the place and/or people you are leaving behind.
Write your central question out on a slip of paper, put it in a pocket close to your heart, and then forget about it.
Open yourself to returning changed. Perhaps this comes through a simple statement of intention or a prayer.
Ask a guide(s) to travel with you and support you. This could be your Tarot or oracle deck, a Deity with you have or want to cultivate a relationship with, and/or wisdom source such a book of poetry, nature guide, or scripture.
Journey: You move toward a destination, but journey is the pilgrimage’s heart. Let your Wisdom Wander practice of moving slowly, attending to what calls your attention, creating as you go, and tuning into your sense in new ways help you embrace the journey.
At the Center: This is the place where we encounter with the Awesome, the Divine, Mystery. It can’t really be anticipated. We just travel open to Its appearance. We plan for it to happen at the destination of our journey, but we can’t know where and when the Center will open for us.
Return: We do go home. The outer pilgrimage is bounded by time and place. But when we return home, we return changed. The inner pilgrimage continues as we walk once again into our roles and responsibilities, and bring to them the lessons, gifts, and heighted senses from the pilgrimage time. Pilgrim Phil Cousineau describes the return: The challenge is to learn how to carry over the quality of the journey into our everyday life. The art of pilgrimage is the craft of taking time seriously, elegantly. What every traveler confronts sooner or later is that the way we spend each day of our travel is the way we spend our lives.
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Below is the Overview Booklet and Link to Our Intention Setting Session with The Lovers for Paid Subscribers