Palm Sunday, 2025

Here I am at the Casa, a Catholic Retreat Center in Scottsdale, Arizona, to spend Holy Week, from Palm Sunday until Easter, in a Catholic spiritual center run by Franciscan priests. Here I am, a practitioner of over forty years in a Baul/Hindu guru tradition, attending daily Mass, receiving communion and speaking the words of a liturgy that has been in mind and heart since early childhood. I know well when to kneel, how to genuflect, when to bow my head. And I also know how to fall into the depths of silence in between the actions. I love the songs, simple and a bit romantic as they often are. I want to bow down, before a cross, before another person, before a breathtaking tree …

It is customary in Australia to acknowledge country before any public talk. We honour the Gundungurra and Dharug Aboriginal people of the Blue Mountains and the Yuin people of the NSW south Coast where Michael Menager lives. Their songlines, stories and spirits continue to animate the sacred landscape here.

It was a warm, late summer afternoon in southern France. The heat could have made me drowsy in the old stone house where we were gathered, but my spiritual teacher was answering questions with candor, and his presence sparked a kind of bright attention in the space that carried me along. A somber young man raised his hand.

Travels from Pushkar to Jaipur.

Travels from Udaipur to Jodhpur.

Travels from New Delhi to Udaipur.

Our human experience is an invitation to transformation through cycles of constant change. In moments of wonder and awe, in times of fulfillment and belonging as well as in times of disappointment, loss and grief, our journey unravels a unique path for each of us. Through it all there is an enduring magic and a golden thread to follow. The challenge is to keep looking for the golden thread—no matter what happens or how hard it gets.