There are times in life when we must take a journey to the depths of our own existence, when we feel the need to lay life on a balance, the other side of which is weighed by the pettiness and material lust that reduces life to mere existence. There are times when we are no longer sure whether anything we do can compensate for the good fortune that has rained upon us undeserved. It is then that we begin that journey, a journey to make our actions - the balance of our lives - worthy of being measured by the ultimate judge, our own soul, alone, at the end of the day, naked without pretense or artifice, and so we reach deep inside of us, demanding more of ourselves than has ever been demanded to pull the goodness and the gratitude from deep within us and make it count in the balance of the world itself.
Sometimes that journey takes place as a ten-thousand mile journey. Sometimes that journey and the intimate journey of the heart are one and the same. And sometimes that journey takes you home and closes a circle broken decades ago, in childhood. It doesn't happen easily, it takes courage, it takes realizing that it is not our role to merely follow the paths life has laid out for us, but to make new paths. Sometimes that path takes you right through the Road of Death.
Cecilia Miranda of Madison, Wisconsin had her heart in her throat as the saw her bus at the edge of a precipice along the world’s most dangerous road. She had left the comfort of a life in idyllic Madison to make that path, to close that circle, to return to her native Bolivia as part of an all-volunteer group of good souls from Solidarity Bridge, a faith-based non-profit, on a journey of their own to give of themselves, to share their compassion and their skills so that others may a life worthy of human dignity.
Along that road, was Miranda’s own moment of truth because it was the road to herself, to a time when life is blunt, and delicate, and sacrifice is real, as real as the possible fall off the precipice that could end a life. This is when one arrives to a place where the small no longer passes for the big, when doing big things means big risk, big surrender, and oh so big rewards that only count in the part of one’s soul no one ever sees, where the ephemeral becomes eternal. They did a lot of good that team, they arrived in the little town of Coroico, high in the foothills of the Andes. They saved lives to be sure, they saw lives come to an end. They saw life spouting and stamped out by disease, neglect, and poverty. And they made life happen as much for the people they served as for themselves. These souls each had their own journey. Miranda’s reports from the field showed the raw emotions of finding herself outside the limits of the person she was before the journey, riding high above her former self. Through her writings she allowed many the privilege of seeing a journey even more beautiful than planned, its meaning even more incontestable.
Ordinary experiences are soon forgotten but journeys such as these are a substantial emotional deposit both in the souls of those being helped as in those doing the helping, and they are defined by their lasting effects measured in lives that will be, and that lives that will be better, lives dignified by the experience.
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