Rachel

An important part of my trip: Rachel smiles in that big, recognizable way in the 8th Day Faith Community of Church of the Saviour. I know her as this before she begins to come to Spiritual Support Group with Sarah and me. Rachel is headed for what she describes as her "Sabbath Year", which she'll start by stepping out into a Catholic Worker community in her home state of Connecticut, and she'll go from there.

I tell this story in this way: she is taking the time to dive into things, from faith to family, that all of us deal with but don't often take the time to deal with. It challenges me as I prepare for the trip in many ways: because I am a writer with no poems finished, a traveler who hasn't traveled to half the places I yearn to see, a lover of language who only speaks English.

Rachel encourages me a lot in this, and I get to encourage her a lot in her stepping out. Sarah gets busy for a few Thursdays nights in a row and Rachel and I wind up going to Julia's Empanadas after group by ourselves, instead of the three of us. One Sunday, after a Church of the Saviour picnic, my plans fall through, Rachel and I end up hanging out, and by the end of it - well, I'm not sure how it went down, but I tend to think we held hands, looked at each other, and thought: "Crap! We're dating, aren't we!"

Catholic Worker led to a silent retreat, and that to a friend in a monastery, and eventually to a 50-day, 1000-mile Pilgrimage for Peace all around New England, walking and inviting churches, schools, and passerby to join in the dialogue of how we can contribute to a more peaceful world, a world in which we act more like Jesus taught us to act toward one another. And after that, maybe take seminary classes in Nicaragua, and perhaps I'll be in Spain by then.