Earlier today I was interviewed for an hour on a Seattle radio show. The program’s host, Robert Dubiel, was conducting a series of dialogues to gather material for a book about the difference between traveling as a tourist and traveling as a spiritual pilgrim.  During the weeks that I was mentally preparing for this interview, I kept feeling like an impostor: What do I know about spiritual pilgrimage?

Robert and I have been friends for a few years and he knows my eccentricities–including a weekly ritual of sleeping in my hammock at the edge of the ocean under the stars.  When I am in my hammock, I am a kid again.  I love being held in the arms of the two trees that are holding up my hammock. I love being rocked from side to side by the wind. I slip into sleep to the shushing sounds of pebbles washing onto the beach and then back into the water.

Between periods of sleep, I pretend I am up in space, gazing down on our little planet. I notice that one side of our planet is lit by the sun, while her opposite side casts a shadow that’s shaped like a cone. (This makes our planet look like a ball of ice cream in a cone of darkness.) When I’m Earth-gazing like this, I can almost hear the folks on Earth’s sunny side saying, “it’s daytime”, while the folks on her shadowed side are saying, “it’s night time”.

When I awake at dawn my face is stretched wide by an enormous grin. As the sun’s rays begin warming my cheeks, I feel grateful that I understand what is happening:  My spinning planet is transporting me out of her shadow and into our sun’s light.

This morning I woke up at home in bed. Then I fed my cat, picked a papaya for breakfast, worked on my book manuscript and received a phone call from Robert. “It’s nearly time for our radio interview,” he prompted me. While he was explaining the radio station’s recording procedures, I was wondering for the umpteenth time if I’m actually qualified to talk about spiritual pilgrimage. Then Robert spontaneously mentioned that had bought a hammock. I got so excited by this news that my mouth opened and words tumbled out: “Sleeping under the stars is a pilgrimage through our planet’s shadow.”

Whether I’m spinning through our planet’s shadow or whether I’m spinning through our sun’s light, I’m always living on a blue-green planet that’s orbiting a golden star called the sun. The more times I orbit, the more grateful I am to astronomy for teaching me what our spiritual teachers have always said:  Life is a cosmic journey.

Harriet–Maui, Hawaii