Let Your Life Speak
by Parker J. Palmer
Chapter II
"Now I Become Myself"
Copyright ©2000 by Jossey-Bass Inc., Publishers
San Francisco, CA

tourism industry. It is more akin to the ancient tradition of
pilgrimage -- "a transformative journey to a sacred center" full
of hardships, darkness, and peril.4

In the tradition of pilgrimage, those hardships are seen not
as accidental but as integral to the journey itself. Treacherous
terrain, bad weather, taking a fall, getting lost -- challenges of
that sort, largely beyond our control, can strip the ego of the
illusion that it is in charge and make space for true self to
emerge. If that happens, the pilgrim has a better chance to
find the sacred center he or she seeks. Disabused of our illu-
sions by much travel and travail, we awaken one day to find
that the sacred center is here and now -- in every moment of
the journey, everywhere in the world around us, and deep
within our own hearts.

But before we come to that center, full of light, we must
travel in the dark. Darkness is not the whole of the story --
every pilgrimage has passages of loveliness and joy -- but it is
the part of the story most often left untold. When we finally
escape the darkness and stumble into the light, it is tempting
to tell others that our hope never flagged, to deny those long
nights we spent cowering in fear.

The experience of darkness has been essential to my com-
ing into selfhood, and telling the truth about that fact helps
me stay in the light. But I want to tell that truth for another
reason as well: many young people today journey in the dark,
as the young always have, and we elders do them a disservice
when we withhold the shadowy parts of our lives. When I was

LET YOUR LIFE SPEAK

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