And Every Time You Go on a pilgrimage, You Are on a search. Sometimes You don’t Know What You Are Searching for, but It Will develop. on Your walk, It Will Show up—the Answer for Your search, If You Keep going. --Petra Wolf<

     We settled down in Santa Fe after this journey to Jerusalem. And this seed of the inner journey was germinating in Santa Fe, which led, finally, to going for two-and-a-half years to India.
 

[What set me on the pilgrim path is] a really deep and personal story. It started very early and it’s all about healing. I believe that you choose your parents, where you were born, and you choose your development. That’s what is confronting you—what you’re choosing. I was born in 1964, and my father left when I was nine months old. He had a different person he wanted to be with, not my mother anymore. I know this set the seed [for me] to be a seeker, to search for home, to search for where we come from. So, we come from home, we have some lessons and we go back home. That’s our journey. I could never express my love for my father because there was no father there. As a child, you long for your father. You want to express your love.

     When I was 25 years old, I wanted to see my father. I was ready to stand in front of his door and say “It’s me. It’s your daughter.” This is also connected with Renate. It’s interesting, because she moved to Wuppertal in Germany and I helped her move. I knew my father lived close to Wuppertal and I said, “Wow. This is now the time that I’m going to do this.” I saw myself standing in front of the door saying, “It’s me. I want to talk with you. Why did you leave?” I wanted to get to know him.

     And then I was standing in front of the door. I rang the bell at the address and this young woman opened the door. I thought, “Okay. This could be my half-sister.” And I said, “I want to talk with my father.” It turned out this was not the same Wolf. But she said, “Perhaps you if you go to the Town Hall, they can tell you where your father is.” It was a Wednesday afternoon. All the Town Halls in Germany are closed on Wednesday afternoon. But I got in through the back door and saw a woman working at the computer. I told her my story and she said, “I really cannot tell you where your father moved.” But she was a woman and had a heart, so she checked her computer and told me, “Your father died in 1988.” This was 1992, so he was already four years dead. I was so shocked. I was expecting he was alive.

     I had the feeling I wanted to go to the German Alps and walk to heal from this shock. So, I went to the library to find a nice mountain path. I found a book that was telling a story about the Camino de Santiago and the Meseta, a spiritual path on a high plateau in Spain. I thought “spiritual path,” “high plateau,” “Meseta.” I didn’t know what “a spiritual path” was because I was not a spiritual person. That was not a theme in our family. I grew up Catholic, but it was not really spiritual. I made a copy of this description of the pilgrim’s path and put it away. Then I had a dream. This was in 1997, five years later. I was telling my father, “You never took care of me! You never did anything for me!” I was really angry and he was sitting there saying, “Petra, don’t worry about it. I prepared a big inheritance for you.”

     I thought, “My God!” I thought perhaps he left me some money. I thought, “Man, I have to get in contact with my half-sister!” So, I called her. That was the first real contact with her too. She said, “There is no money.” Then I wanted to go to the cemetery [where her father was buried]. I wanted to go to a material place, and I’d learned where his grave was. I had a business meeting in Cologne, and I thought, “This is the day.” But I couldn’t find the gravestone. Then I had another business meeting in Cologne and I went again to this place. My inner voice said, “The path goes through my half-sister.” So I contacted her again, and I asked, “What happened with the grave?” She said, “Something really strange happened." She told me her mother, who was psychologically sick had taken the gravestone off in the middle of the night and destroyed it. She even did something with the ashes.
    

In 2000, I was in a spiritual and ecological group in Switzerland. It was a two-year program, and we had one program in Cologne. I said, “I'm ready now to do a ritual where the grave was, and I will say ‘I trust you, Father, that you will have prepared a good inheritance for me, and I will take it on.’” That was the ritual in October of 2000 in witness of these other people. And in December 2000 I got this inner call: “Now is the time. Go on the path.” So, it took eight years, from when I wanted to meet my father and found out he was dead and then got the information about the Camino de Santiago. It took eight years until I was really prepared to go on the path. 

     So, the gift of my father is really my pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago. The gift of my father is also meeting Michael, changing my life, going to the United States and going to India. And now I'm sitting here, Richard. Michael has died. I'm now in a situation where I have to find a new way and purpose of living and work. This is another pilgrimage. What is the answer of this opening, the death of Michael? What is my next step? I'm still on the search. I haven’t found the answer yet. But I think what I received meeting with all of you, is the word “service.” I know now that my next step is that I want to be in service of humanity.

    There are many rivers flowing, and there’s one big river. So, my search goes on.