
Cris’s rock in Cruz de Ferro; Sep2014
I thought to take advantage of the cold weather here (right now is 41F) and write on behalf of The Boss who is under the heat wave as if he would be in the tropics. And I will write more about rocks and polishing rocks, and shaping our lives… It seems to me that we have been talking a lot about these topics in the last several days in a way or another. As I read the posts of these last days, an image a man called Ed wrote about the Camino de Santiago came to mind; this is it:
“…you put rocks of different shapes, sizes, colors, textures, some rough, some smoother into a barrel tumbler, turn it on so that the rocks all bump into and rub up against one another and after the process is complete and you take the rocks out each has been transformed into a new, smooth but different and unique thing of beauty.”
For Ed, “the tumble of Camino life” brought him — and all of the pilgrims — up against “joy, suffering, beauty, anger, frustration, depression, peace, chaos, pain, your past, your present, the unknowns of your future, your inevitable death. You just never knew.”
When I read this several years ago, I thought how true and accurate that image was: the Camino shaped us, but what shaped us was not only the walking, but also the time we walked with others “against who we rub up” and the time we walked alone or in silence, but the idea that we were in a pilgrimage with others also was present for us “to rub up against”. The whole experience shaped us, polished our rough edges, rekindled our colors and transformed us in something more beautiful for sure, although we don’t know exactly what and how that means, but what we do know is that once a pilgrim, you are forever a pilgrim, and that means too that the experience of the “barrel tumbler” continues. Ed wrote too:
“What the pilgrimage will be in the end, what it will hold, and what it will reveal to us,” they concluded, “remains a mystery as does so much in life.”
Sharon Salzberg, the very famous meditation teacher wrote:
“In a way, every day feels like a journey into the unknown, with the attendant possibilities of danger, defeat, and lost moorings. I try to remind myself, every day, that I can reframe this time as a time of pilgrimage, with attendant possibilities of profound companionship, unexpected strengths, and transformation.”
And I was thinking of the unknown music that Al, Phil, Wiley and Rebecca listened when looking at those rocks, and I thought also of the work that Al and Wiley will do into the “unknown-ness” of them, and I couldn’t help but thinking what those rocks “will reveal to us”. What I am sure is that this time continues to be “a time of pilgrimage, with attendant possibilities of profound companionship, unexpected strengths, and transformation.”
Rub Loves,
Cris