Are you ready for this, there is a trail that goes from Canterbury, England to Rome, as in Rome, Rome! OK, find your boots and pack! Who would have thought?

My good Camino buddy, Lucia, is going to do some of it in Italy in the next few days. So, she is educating me. There is an excellent Wikipedia.

But, I am going to give you the short, according to Felipe, version, just because it is so much fun for me to think about. So, this was the way to visit the Holy See and the tombs of Peter and Paul in the olden days . It goes though England, France, Switzerland and Italy. The most notable pilgrim was, ready for this, Sigeric the Serious, a serious pilgrim for sure.

“Circa 990 AD, Archbishop Sigeric journeyed from Canterbury to Rome and then back again but only documented his itinerary on the return journey.[6] Sigeric’s return journey consisted of 80 stages averaging about 20 km (12 mi) a day, for a total of some 1,700 km (1,100 mi).[7]” (from Wikipedia)

From my reading I see that the trail is not as organized as the Camino in Spain. But they are working on it with Italy leading the way. So, check it out in Wikipedia and make history come alive, as they say.

OK, I have to go and tidy up. We are having company today. The Rev Bonnie Barnard is going to be here to visit. She is a friend of Annie’s and soon to be a friend of mine. She has a website that you could check out, bonniebarnard.com .

So until we met again, lovin your stuff, Felipe.

Hi. I had a couple of things to talk about and maybe I could conveniently wrap them in the embrace of our guardian angels. I was off grocery shopping yesterday and saw a candle that I had to have for tapa time. It is a 100 hour guardian angel model with a beautiful pic of the angel sheparding two children away from the edge of the cliff. Sort of pluperfect.

One of my new friends is off to chemo treatment today and I am praying for her. It is new for her and it is a frightening time, I can remember and relate. Things are unfamiliar on the outside and strange things are happening to mind and body on the inside. Normal starts to escape. But, I am trying to make a difference for her. Yea.

And today for me started rather strangely. I could relate facts to you but would rather say how it felt. I’m not sure that I have been in this space before and I am not sure that it is over. But I am OK, not to worry. But it was a place where one too many quirky things were happening. Or a place where things in my surroundings were talking to me a little too much. Things felt sort of a click off from “normal”.

Interesting, now that I am writing this, how my experience dovetails with how I think that my friend is feeling. Interesting. I think that I will turn the whole matter over to our guardian angels and move on. How’s that? I can do that nowadays.

There is blue sky and little puffy clouds blowing from the Southwest. I got a lot of things on my list today so I will leave you now and get going. Think about guardian angels some, Felipe.

http://wapo.st/1E7REqS

A good friend sent me this info and I am passing it on to you. On washingtonpost.com is a story called “Before I Go”. It is about the young Stanford Neurosurgeon, Dr Paul Kalanithi, who left this writing and a short video for us before he passed away. Just thoughts about things that you might want to check out.

But also, the guy uses the word “pluperfect”. Of course, here at Caminoheads we deal with the perfect all the time as in alperfect. But this was a new one and had to get to the big fat dictionary for help and it comes to: beyond perfect. Whoa! We have been working on beyond normal and now we have beyond perfect. OK, need time to digest, Felipe.

Who would have thought that Dylan would grace the cover of the consummate senior citizen magazine. “Don’t trust anyone over thirty.”, what happened to that? This is about as incongruous as the U.S. Janis Joplin postage stamp that came out recently. What? “burning the candle at both ends” Janis, that we know and love, on a “Forever Stamp”. What the heck is a forever stamp anyway?

Just the same I am trying to make sense of being on the cover of a magazine myself. Pretty heady really but what to make of it after that. And I wonder what my dear departed Catholic mother is thinking. Incongruous is the word again.

Ah, I look out the window and see the sun breaking through the morning fog. Just when you think that the world is all fog or that fog will be here forever the sun decides to pay a visit. Hmmm, maybe that fits right in with what we are talking about this morning.

Good, just got another cup of coffee to get me through these thoughts. Yes, what to make of Phil aka Felipe aka Red Hat aka Red Hot, on the cover of Northwest Catholic Magazine? I’m the guy that is sixty seven years old and still doesn’t know what I want to be when I grow up. Well Felipe, maybe this is it hey? Maybe being the guy that gets the stage four cancer and manages to scratch out a few more years to have the time and finds the energy somehow gets to inspire others to keep going.

Maybe, this is the battle that the Marine Corps trained me for as a youth and I never fought. Maybe I’m that crazy guy that advances when things look impossible and laughing while I’m at it. Am I that guy? Are the bullets cracking all around us? Are my comrades moving forward on my left and right to cover my flanks? Can we take that high ground ahead? Why not! Godspeed!

I put it in guy terms there, hope you can translate. Self discovery apparently is a long term project. OK then, time to get the day moving, thanks for being with me, love, Felipe.

I just got an email this morning from my dear Camino friend and flan guru, talking flan yes, amoungst updates on her life. So, I take it that I have her blessing to experiment with the basic recipe. Which is a good thing as I have already gone down that road. My big triumph in this area is creating orange flan which I am making again soon for the company coming. So, Alida liked the orange idea and said that she has a coffee variation that sounds interesting to me.

Where am I going with this? There is a point though, and that is that in this cooking endeavor I have to employ variation to bring surprise to a menu. Just as surprise on the Camino was such an important part of the magic there having suprise in a menu seems equally vital. If I am spending the time and effort to bring love to my tapa friends or dinner friends though cooking for them I need to have ways to keep things interesting over time. Sort of food as a journey is what I am seeing. Then I should should create an interesting journey is the thought.

I had a nice surprise yesterday in meeting an acquaintance of Annie’s named Kate that teaches classes in art history and pilgrimage. She is interested in ways that people have set up there own local facsimiles of larger things that give them a sense of that larger thing. As in labyrinths are miniture facsimiles of full scale journeys. Well, that sounds familiar. So we FaceTimed for an hour on the topic.

OK, off to work. Buen Camino one again, love, Felipe.

Another walk in Spain which you can check out if you dare:

http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/13/travel/spain-caminito-del-rey/

Just curled up on the couch with a cup of Irish tea, warming up. Walked this morning in the rain and had to change clothes and throw all my wet gear in the dryer. But here I am ready to blog. Already had an email from Steve saying, where’s today’s post? OK, OK, I’m coming.

I did 1/303th of a Camino Frances this morning. My first lap around I just walked and grumbled. Splash, splash, splash. My second lap I took some video and grumbled. Splash, splash, splash. Then on my last time around I got in my rosary and prayed for the rock pile. Splash, splash, splash.

I went to Reconciliation this morning after Mass. That is the new word for Confession. I try to go fairly often, like every two months. That’s pretty often by today standards. It went well and as a lifelong Protestant it is challenging to make happen. But I always feel better afterward, lighter. Also, that is good to do that as part of Lent.

Gee, that was scary! Just nodded off and mistakenly fingered this post into the trash by mistake. But I found it and revived it. Man, I can make the weirdest mistakes and fat fingerisms.

I’ve got some important phone calls to get done today and need to get the house organized for Annie and the film crew coming on Friday. A good day for all that. I can look out the window and think about how we really need this rain and not actually have to be out in it.

People,have been checking in saying how they enjoy this blog. That is really satisfying. Then a friend from my bible class let me know that he prayed for me twice a day as he past the ranch on his way to and back from work each weekday. Nice things. Thanks you all, love, Felipe.

Just got out of my weekly bible class. It is one of the highlights of my week and after something like ten years of attending is one of those things that has become irreplaceable. If I miss it for some reason than things are thrown off kilter. It is a blend of study and fellowship, roughly fifty – fifty.

It’s been a very stabilizing force in my life and I am sure that things would have taken a different course without it. I bet that the other members would say something similar. Myself and people and the world in general provide more than enough drama to life. Where can I find that rock to hold on to in the surging waters? What is the point of all this motion? How do I find that something that I am supposed to do?

It all gets talked about. We look to the bible for wisdom that has stood the test of time. Right now we are studying the book of Daniel from the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible. Chapter three today which is the story of God saving Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego from King Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery furnace. Pretty exciting stuff.

A rainy day today and the sort of day for introspection. Cancer patients should get paid overtime for this as it seems like we put in a lot of time on it. OK, nothing overly exciting or glitzy from me, just rainy day thoughts. Thanks for your prayers, Felipe.

This is the link to the radio interview that I did with Northwest Catholic Radio in Feburary 2015. It has been running from March 1st to the 15th on 1050 AM in Seattle.

https://soundcloud.com/northwest-catholic/walking-the-camino-de-santiago?in=northwest-catholic/sets/northwest-catholic-magazine

IMG_0568

Just 11 seconds of waking with me on Camino de Santiago Vashon.

.88 kilometers is a little over a half a mile and the distance around one lap here on my backyard Camino. The footing is irregular mostly and it takes us about fifteen minutes to go around. It’s about 60% walking on pasture and the rest is woods trail. A nice blend of differences.

One thing that has been a great coincidence, if there are such things anymore in my life, it is that it is the perfect distance for saying one round of the rosary. There is not a lot of extra time to do anything fancy, just the basics. Yea, and I try to do that once a day to pray for the rock pile that pilgrims have left with their cares embodied.

And if I am off to the hospital in Seattle which occurs twice every other week I get the rosary in on one trip across Puget Sound on the ferry which takes about fifteen minutes, give or take a few ships or few gulls. Another perfect little niche of time.

Well, that’s what it looks like from here. Alperfect once again, loves, Felipe.