Friday, October 7th - In Albuquerque I stayed at the Center for Action and Contemplation, an extraordinary place on the southwest side of town recommended by my sister Marigene. I arrived late, having driven that day from the Grand Canyon, over four hundred miles. Staff members Glenn and Carol greeted me warmly and offered a hot dinner – an expression of their hospitality, not a requirement under the terms of my reservation. Then Glenn showed me the Julian of Norwich Hermitage out 
behind the main building with walls constructed of straw bales covered in adobe, a floor of slate and ceiling of natural pine beams. I had planned to camp at CAC but Glenn and Carol thought better of that and offered this simple, peaceful place as my room for the night. I was thrilled.
There have been moments on this trip when through seemingly arbitrary moves I’ve ended up meeting just exactly the right person or found myself in the perfect place. There has been a guiding spirit beyond schedules, maps and anything I could have planned. Such was the case with CAC. My sister had only mentioned it in passing and given me contact information that might easily have been misplaced. But here I was.
On a table in my room was a CAC newsletter, an old edition of “Radical Grace” from 2003. Settling in, I picked it up and began reading. Several things jumped out. On page 14 there were federal budget pie graphs showing the disproportionate share of our income tax dollar that goes to the military at the expense of programs to meet human needs like education, health care and housing. For years this had been my focus with WAND. I’d written about it, taught it, lobbied on it. This was my stuff and, odd as it may sound, it was very exciting to find budget pie graphs in the “Radical Grace” newsletter. And I might add that this is exactly where such issues belong. Economic justice and caring for those in need is the heart of the Gospel.
The subject of this old issue of “Radical Grace” was the second half of life and one article especially drew my attention: “Letting Go: Spirituality and the Second Half of Life” by Ronald Rolheiser. The title reflects Rolheiser’s belief that “the spiritual task of the second-half of life, so different from the first, is to let go.” He describes letting go of wounds and anger through forgiveness. He speaks of letting go of possessions and achievement; learning to say goodbye to the earth and our loved ones; letting go of “sophistication so as to become simple ‘holy old fools’ whose only message is that God loves us.” And finally he describes the need to immerse ourselves in silence, the language of heaven.
These ideas, challenging and comforting at the same time, drew me in. Reading and rereading “Radical Grace,” it seemed that this newsletter had been waiting for me there in Albuquerque with words that would be essential in the years ahead, no less a roadmap than the American Map Road Atlas I’d come to rely on these thousands of miles across the United States and home again.
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