…INSERT THE SINCERE…

Stage 5 / Friday May 1st / From Tournon-sur-Rhône to Champis / 21 km

 

The first slopes of the Massif Central that I’m going to climb today will uplift my interior pursuit. This first tough climb in my pilgrimage will also give me the opportunity to test my real physical condition: am I really up to this pilgrimage? Is my physical condition really good enough? I will not lie to myself any longer …

 

There is little David going to meet Goliath. I fear this giant hiding behind his helmet, his armor shining, his sword so sharp. And me, David bare-headed, in a simple tunic, with my ridiculous sling-shot! The truth will be revealed, not from the mouth of a child, but by the aggressive slope of a big old mountain!

 

Ah! Look truth in the face! How hard it is to approach the mirror! “Don’t look, and keep telling yourself that you are handsome. And if you get close and risk a glance, first get tanned in the sun and visit your barber!” Did I imagine myself stronger than I am? Is this male mask to protect me from myself, to avoid stains on my ego, helping me postpone the truth of my capabilities? In forging myself a convenient visor to hide my past powerlessness, have I put myself in a dishonest situation, breaking faith with my true self?

 

This dishonesty, this lie to myself, is it from a wholesome instinct of survival? “I have to believe myself better than I am, otherwise I won’t be able to come to terms with myself”! Or is it just the sad consequence of a fear, all the more a terror of knowing myself as I really am? “Living continually with myself, is it better to disguise a potentially unpleasant truth, or to display as truth an appealing falsehood!”

 

Honesty … Truth … No longer hide reality from myself … Can I truly be honest with myself? Can I make myself a naked slave before a master who is too demanding? And this master, can he get along without his slave? Which of the two will be freer, master or slave? Which of these two characters in me will be the one I choose to reveal, to myself, to others? And will it be profitable to admit that the King is naked? However that may be, this climb in the Ardèche is forcing me to make each step smaller and smaller. Shall I simply refuse to recognize it, raising my thoughts to something else in order to mentally blur my fatigue, being unable to eliminate it? Ah! Still hiding the truth …

 

OK, yesterday I chopped down the utopia of perfectionism, and here I am today tackling the challenge of another absolute: sincerity! “Some truths are better left unsaid!” But there is also the saying “the pitcher will go to the well once too often.” Am I an “iron pot” or “clay” one? Such antinomy and contradiction in me!

And if I add the implacable moral precepts that they tried to inculcate in me, I have other reasons to fear sincerity: “Am I truly capable of loving my neighbor as myself? Only if I start by loving myself!” I would like to be sincere, but the verdict of sincerity, often condemning me to devalue myself, brings me back to questioning the existence of the God of the Scriptures.

 

Almighty God, why have you made me so weak? All-loving God, why have you made me so unsure of myself? God of truth, truly, do you really exist? Sincerely? … Then, can I ask you to make me more sure of the certainty of your existence? How should I pray to you? The formula drummed into me by the catechism, will that do? One Our Father and five Hail Mary? It would be disappointing to think it so easy, you surely deserve better from me. Otherwise, I see myself coming back “empty-handed” to my starting point.

 

Come on, pilgrim, climb to Mt Sinai; you need to refine the most sincere vision you can have of God!