A couple of things happened over the weekend reinforcing my belief that Pilgrim Strong has a relevant message for the times.
Chasing the Great American Eclipse, Dana and I enjoyed some quality time with fellow pilgrims, in, and around, Kansas City, MO. During this time a few people asked about my book’s message.
Explaining it’s not the typical “camino” book, I shared with them my personal desire to understand not only WHAT I believed as core truth, but WHY I believed it.
Some people asked immediately, “Why is the WHAT not enough? Why can’t we just know WHAT we believe?”After an exhausting trip home through horrendous traffic and two days of flooding storms, Dana and I just wanted to relax Tuesday night, and we turned to a Netflix documentary I’d saved several weeks ago about self-help guru Tony Robbins. Interestingly, the documentary is titled, “I’m Not Your Guru.”
It’s a fascinating film featuring a behind-the-scenes look at Robbins’ week-long annual event called Date With Destiny. In it, Robbins gets up close and very personal with participants who pay $5,000 a head in hope of life-changing revelation.
Watching, I was reminded of these lines in the Pilgrim Strong afterword:
“It’s in the best interest of some of the world’s most prominent public figures that you buy into their truth.What in the world are we to do? As the apostle Peter begged … Lord, to whom shall we go?Without anchor points and a truth that has a fixed North Star quality, we’ll be as subject to alter our idea of the truth as often as the next convincing guru comes along. This much is true: whether you’re running for public office, or selling books, or preaching a sermon, or organizing and leading groups you may do it either of two ways—appeal to the worst in people, or speak to the best in them. Both methods work, but count the cost.For all the years leading up to my pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago, I knew what I believed. But the what was no longer enough. I needed the why in the equation.”
Let me just reinforce a quick line from that text: “Without anchor points and a truth that has a fixed North Star quality, we’ll be a subject to alter our idea of the truth as often as the next convincing guru comes along.”
Never has it been more important to understand deep, down inside ourselves WHY we believe WHAT we believe.
Amen. Amen. Amen. Now more than ever, we need to know the ‘Why’.