I returned to Massa today where I left the Via Francigena just over 13 months ago to meet the love of my life in Lucca for a week long visit to the Tuscan towns of San Gimignano, Sienna and Montalcino. This will be a different kind of trip through those same Tuscan hills. I return on foot as a pellegrino hoping expectantly that what began last summer as a simple prayer for a deeper understanding of myself and greater awareness and expression of emotions will continue to unfold in what Janet Hagberg and Robert Guelich refer to as The Critical Journey (https://www.amazon.com/Critical-Journey-Stages-Faith-Second/dp/1879215497).

Hagberg and Guelich introduce their book by describing an individual’s spiritual journey as deceptively simple and at the same time highly complex and then go on throughout the book to describe the “lived into” simple and complex paradox and the stages that make up our journeys as spiritual, meaning-making humans struggling to find meaning and wholeness in our lives and frequently experiencing a crisis of values and identity at mid-life (a “mid-life crisis”). These questions and pursuits could certainly describe where I found myself last summer after pausing a 30+ year career for a 90 day sabbatical (due to what I began describing as a “weariness in my soul”) and offered that simple prayer for deeper understanding and greater awareness and expression. The result has certainly been highly complex.

I possess a long-held curiosity to explore the intersection of psychology and spirituality and have engaged in many therapeutic modalities, many hours of counseling and consumed and explored my fair share of resources and practices on the subject of psychology, spirituality and faith. Despite my curiosity and years of engaging the topics, I found myself surprised and unprepared for the post-pilgrimage disruption (disintegration may be more descriptive) that resulted from my offering that simple prayer for personal and spiritual growth on an ancient, Middle Ages pilgrim’s trail through Europe, collecting pilgrims as it winds its way from Canterbury to Rome.

After returning from the Via Francigena late last summer, I experienced an involuntary, disruptive encounter with parts of myself shaped over the years by my development [or lack thereof/maladaptive response] as a human (early development, attachment style, unhealed trauma and other identity shaping maladies) resulting in significant emotional turbulence which, in turn, resulted in spiritual and psychological work (IFS, EBT, EMDR, etc.) in search of healing.

In the course of my search for healing, I was lead into a season Hagberg and Guelich refer to as The Wall or what St. John of the Cross (or Gerald May if you prefer, https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Night-Soul-Psychiatrist-Connection/dp/0060750553) would define as a “dark night of the soul,” or what I describe as the most challenging year I’ve experienced in the last 20 years of my life.

Moving through this season has been both challenging and rewarding as the process of healing and self-discovery compel me to surrender more and more perceived control on all fronts.

David Benner, in Spirituality and the Awakening Self, describes transformation in the context of human development through stages similar to Hagberg and Guelich and also notes that the catalyst for true transformation most often occurs outside of the subject of transformation which was the case for me. I didn’t know what was going on inside of me, nor did I initiate it beyond my simple prayer that I be made more alive as a human.

Benner: “Genuine transformation is not, therefore, simply the result of self-directed efforts at change. Nor is it simply the result of either maturation or life circumstances. We do, as we shall see, have a role in making it possible, but it is more a gift than an achievement. Genuine transformation is a change process that is not under our control. Unlike growth, transformation is impeded by effort, but it is facilitated by consent. If change is to come in the deep places of our self, it must come from some point beyond our self. Attempts to make transformation into a self-improvement project simply strengthen the false self.” (Spirituality and the Awakening Self)

Furthermore, Benner goes on to define spiritual transformation as an enduring change that expresses in four ways:

• increased awareness
• a broader, more inclusive identity
• a larger framework for meaning making (how we understand and make sense of our self, others, God, and the world)
• a reorganization of personality that results in a changed way of being in the world

As I embark on Chapter 2 of my Via Francigena adventure, I consent to the transformation that may be at work within me and offer another simple prayer: May I receive deep healing of wounds preventing me from being fully alive, fully human (as I was created to be), fully surrendered and fully available to experiencing (both giving and receiving) faith, hope and love.