A Pilgrim’s Prayer

I stand at the edge of departure, suitcase open, heart ajar.

In a few days, I will cross ocean and time zones to walk the stone bones of the Eternal City. A place where eyes and hearts have been turned toward these last weeks. Rome—the city of saints and martyrs, of synods and shadows. The city where Peter’s bones rest, and where the dust has not yet settled from the death of Pope Francis. Or is it that the dust is sacred now, like the white smoke, held in the folds of mourning cloaks and papal vestments, waiting for breath to lift it into blessing?

I had hoped to meet him—Francis—our papa poverello. The man who dared to lean into mercy with both hands. Who I imagined smelled like the sheep.

“Peter, do you love me?”

“Yes, Lord I love you”.

“Feed my sheep”.

Three times asked, and three times affirmed. Mystically undoing the previous denial.

Pope Francis, the Shepherd who wore old shoes and wept at Lampedusa. The Pontiff who finally apologized, on this sacred land, to our First Nations. The pastor who gestured toward the margins and said, “There. There is Christ.” Now I go not to see him but to grieve him. Not to hear his voice in the flesh, but to carry his echo in my chest.

And yet, the story does not end. It begins again. As it always does.

There is a new pope—Leo XIV. A lion by name, though what kind of lion, we do not yet know. Is he desert-roaring and lamb-guarding? Will he close the windows Francis cracked open—or find new ones to unlatch, letting in the fresh wind of the Spirit? It is Spring in Rome, let it also be so in our hearts.

Pilgrimage is not a tour. It is an act of holy risk. Of walking barefoot into the threshold moment, “take off your shoes, this is holy ground.” Pilgrimage is carrying more questions than answers. I go not merely to ‘visit’ Rome but to ‘become’ something in Rome. To weep where Peter wept. To kneel where saints knelt. To listen, as best I can, to what this turning of the age requires of me.

But before I go, I must pause and feel into what I am leaving behind.

There are beloved faces I will miss—my soulmate, my dogs’s eyes, my community up the road at my little stone church. I will miss the stillness of our forest, the hum of my own dishwasher after a great meal, the taste of coffee in the morning made for me by my love. The purr of my cats, the chorus of spring peepers. And, there is the book I have finally finished—Baba Yaga’s Wisdom—its first full draft now quietly resting on my desk, like dough rising under a clean cloth. This manuscript, born of my dreams, my tears, and the fierce love of the old stories, now waits for its blessing. I so wanted to finish this opus before I took this pilgrimage, and with discipline, and grit, and grace, it now has a beginning, a middle and an end.

And so I go, not just as pilgrim, but as midwife, seeking the sacred anointing of this labour of love. I go to lay it, symbolically, upon the high altar—not for approval, but for consecration. May the saints and mystics, the grandmothers and holy fools, whisper through the Roman air and speak a word of courage into its pages. A word of courage into its writer’ heart. May I return with embers to tend the fire, and revise to publication, not just for myself, but for those who may one day read what I have written.

These are things I will carry—my rosary, my journal, my longing. And there are things I must leave behind—my need to control the outcome, the ache for validation, the weight of old griefs that cannot cross the sea this time.

I will carry your prayers with me—folded into the pages of my missal, etched into my bones. I will leave them at altars, in fountains, in chapels glowing with vigil light. I will stand beneath the dome of St. Peter’s, in the vast hush of Catholic memory, and ask: “What now?”

Perhaps Pope Leo will answer. Or perhaps the Spirit will move, as She always does, in the silence between footsteps, at the threshold where endings and beginnings touch.

Pray for me. I go with sandals dusty, heart burning, manuscript newly born, and eyes wide open.

A Pilgrim’s Blessing for my Opus

O Ancient One, you who dwell in the hush between stories,

you who stir the pot and blow the winds eastward,

bless this newly born book I now lay at your feet.

May the words I have written—

drawn from the deep well of dream and bone,

from the dark hut and the glowing hearthless flame—

find their way into the hearts that need them.

May the stories, like breadcrumbs in the forest,

guide others through bewilderment toward wonder.

May the wisdom of Baba Yaga—sharp-toothed, wide-eyed,

loving in her ferocity—make a home in this world of lost children

and weary seekers.

Bless this labour of love,

not for success, but for soul.

Not for acclaim, but for alignment.

Not for noise, but for nourishment.

May this book one day walk without me,

on its own gnarled legs, into libraries and living rooms,

into book groups and starlit bedrooms,

wherever it is needed.

I leave behind the grasping, the proving, the needing-to-know.

I take with me only trust.

And I ask—humbly and fiercely—

for a sign, a whisper, a shimmer of Yes.

So be it.

And so it begins.

Amen.