I’m here on the red leather couch wrapped in my prayer shawl.  It’s early and a little chilly and it is keeping me warm.  This beautiful shawl came in from a lady in New Zealand who sent one for me and one for Terry Hershey after reading Terry’s latest book Sanctuary, where I was mentioned.  Thank you kind Kiwi woman.

Also a heavy package came in yesterday from Tom up in Minnesota with six beautiful wooden signs, all with Phil’s Camino themes.  Tom started sending these to us in March.  Then in April he drove all the way down to St Louis to the APOC Gathering to see our documentary and bring some more signs.  The guy’s on fire.  Thanks Tom.

Then yesterday I picked up an old friend, Ivette, from the airport.  Great that she will be here for a visit.  Thank you Ivette for making the effort.

Then yesterday Nancy from Oregon showed up to walk Phil’s Camino.  I don’t know exactly how she first heard about us but she contacted me and we worked out the details for her visit.  Very nice soulful visit and first class Caminohead, Nancy is.  Thank you.

Roan, Cynthia’s big Irish Setter will be with us for a few days.  He loves to walk Phil’s Camino.  It will be fun to work with him again.  Thanks Cynthia.

So yea, things are coming and going here at the ranch.  Everyday we are learning more and connecting better.  And everyday we have to remember to be thankful.  The best to you all, love, Felipe.x

Our Catherine and I walked Phil’s Camino yesterday morning.  We did our usual three laps engrossed in our usual great conversation.  Then we decided to say the rosary together as we walked another lap (.88 km) because  the layout of one lap is in fact a giant rosary.  We walk and say the prayer and know where we are by the six bird feeders which mark the six places that “Our Father’s” are said.   Although, sometimes I use the actual rosary as I walk,  increasingly I am just using the walk as a rosary which has a great feel as long as I don’t get distracted by too much along the way.

So, we said it out loud and I added a few explanations here and there so our timing didn’t always work out but we got it done just the same.  With a little more practice we will work though the prayer and there will be just the right amount of time and space to say it and that is with no frills, just the basics as I learned out of the Magnificat Rosary Companion.

This little beautiful book the “Companion” has reproductions of famous frescos (paintings done on wet plaster) mostly all by a man known to us as Fra Angelico.  They mark various important places in the prayer.  So my memory has captured these images and they appear to me at the right points “along the prayer”.  So, the trail, the six bird feeders and the mental images work together to give a beautiful new way to experience this age old prayer.  Works for me anyway.

My good email friend Kate Barush (Catalina B) will be up here at Phil’s Camino over this Memorial Day weekend to check this out first hand.  She is an Art Historian from one of the Catholic colleges in Berkley.  It will be fun to walk, pray and work with her on this.  Annie O’ Neil brought us together, thank you Annie.

So, I just wanted to bring you up on the current news on Fra Angelico (1387 – 1455), which needed doing.  We need to dust him off here at Caminoheads and put him back to work.   OK, got to get ready for my city trip and the rest of my day.  Dusty loves, Felipe.x

I had a special request to see more of our little animal friend Schnoz.  We are making that happen for you Erin.  Also a video from Lucia, my Italian Camino buddy, by the late Lucio Dalla,  national treasure.  We are sticking with the animal theme as this one is entitled “Attenti Al Lupo” ( my translation – Beware the Wolf).   Lucia turns me on to all kinds of great Italian music and culture.

I got a lot of comment on yesterday’s post “The Best Compliment Ever”.   It was a kind of Springtime breakthrough for me, casting off winter finally.  So happy to share it with you.

Also, people write in to Caminoheads, after seeing our YouTube stuff and get hung up in the Spam filter and don’t make it through to me.  I know you are out there, keep the faith, alperfect.

And ” Treatment Center – the Musical” has struck a cord with some of you.  Let’s keep thinking and meditating on it and bring it into focus.  I’m seeing it as a platform to talk issues and bring hope.  Alperfect again.

Off to to walk on this gorgeous morn, anon, musical loves, Felipe.

It’s my every other Wednesday treatment day at Swedish Cancer Institute.  It’s my 69th chemo treatment, gosh really?  And the last few months I have been in this rut of thinking my visits here were looking like the repeating day in the movie Groundhog Day.    Remember?  Yea, it was my own little pitiful movie, “Treatment Day”.

Anyway, walking through the parking lot this morning I decided that that had to go, go far away.  I needed to remember that this was treatment for me, for my benefit and the alternative of not having treatment would bring radical changes to my well being.  So, I made the old attitude adjustment, right there in the time that it took to walk across the lot, no muss no fuss.

Then inside shortly afterward a woman came up to me and asked, “How come you are so  happy?”.  Like here you are with cancer and you’re happy.  Aren’t you supposed to be glum?   I was lost for words at first but realized that it was an incredible compliment.  I was happy on the inside and it was spilling out.  Nice.  Thank you.

So, yea, life at the hospital, trying to make it fun.   How can that be?  Well, here for instance, I just absconded with an AARP mag from the waiting room and what does it say on the cover?  It says, “Best Sex Ever!  We Show You How  Page 52.”.   OK then, groovy, this could be better than the sixties.

And one nurse I just learned was an English Major so I am hitting her up for help with the blog, gramer and speeling stuff.  And she has a great singing voice and we decided that there needs to be a musical called Cancer Treatment Center.   Maybe the least likely place in the world, where you think that there would be a musical, bursts into song!  We need to work on this.  This could be the next big project after Phil’s Camino documentary.  We have a vision!

So, life goes happily on and love you, Felipe.

Just paid GoDaddy $33 and some cents to get Caminoheads.com for another two years! Now I have to last that long and have that much to say.  Hmm.  Can he do it?!   We’ll see I guess.  Who would have thought that I would have made it this far and had all these fabulous adventures.  Right?  So stay tuned.

What else is new?  Speaking of fabulous, a gorgeous blue sky up there this AM.  The exact kind of sky we dream about all winter here in Seattle.  Thank you.

Also, received a nice email back from Joyce Rupp, author of, Walking In A Relaxed Manner, the book that I have been raving about lately.  I just took a chance and wrote her letting her know about Phil’s Camino and the happenings in Dubuque.  She lives in the great state of Iowa.   What can I say but Caminoheads recognize each other.  Thank you.

I need some more coffee.   OK, there, alperfect.   So, yes, the topic of the next two years.  It reminds me of our wonderful neighbor Gladys that insisted on buying a new garden rototiller at age ninety three.   Never quit, right?   Well, there you go, kind of answered my own question there.  I guess how many days God gives me, I will try and fill with blogposts on how to keep the Camino Flame burning.   Because the Camino never ends, right?  Always new friends, new vistas, new ideas, new insights.  Really, I couldn’t have guessed at all the wonderful things that have happened in the last two years.  And couldn’t have guessed at all the wonderful people that I have met along the way also.   Thank you.

Yea, I have heard these words, “In non medical terms, God is keeping you alive so that you can complete your mission.”  That’s pretty heady.  I’m honored.  I will do my best.  Thank you.

Off to see Our Jennifer, will say hello for you.  Only the best blue skies for you today, love, Felipe.

It’s been a really cool morning and built a fire in the stove which is unusual for May.  It’s been overcast but just this minute spotted some blue up there.  It’s the usual back and forth of spring weather.  Was working on the corn yesterday and am ready to plant.   A couple of more days for the soil to warm some more would be good.  Farmer John in Iowa tells me that his corn is up there.   Well, we’ll catch up.

We have a morning walk here in a little over an hour.  Maybe I’ll have some company, feel like company today.   Yesterday I dedicated the walk to a friend of Catalina’s, Father Michael, who got a recent diagnosis.  Ah.  I did a rosary and put rocks on the pile for the dear man.

And yes, Catalina is coming up here over Memorial Day weekend to be with us.  She in in the art history department at one of the Catholic colleges in Berkley.  I get confused on this as there is more than one.  Anyway, she has been so interested in Phil’s Camino the trail for a long time now.  She has written a magazine article about it and now has plans for a book, pretty amazing.  And that’s why she is coming up, to walk the trail, meet the family and interview us for this project.  I’m honored.

Little did I know when I built the trail back is 2013 that it would have the impact that it has had.  Little did I know that there is historical precedent for the activity of building facsimiles of bigger things, far away things maybe.  People in the past have made things to remind them of something bigger or have made things to participate in to get an idea of a larger experience.  This is the reason for Phil’s Camino in the first place.  Sure it was to be an exercise program for my cancer rehabilitation but it was also a way for me to have an inspirational experience, simultaneously.   I needed something more than the “health club experience”.   I had done that for my last round of chemo and it was chore, been there done that.  That was satisfying for my inner gerbil and that was about it.

So, the freedom and downright joy of walking outside in Nature, with friends, with interesting conversation, with thoughts of St James and the Spanish trail, with prayers being said so astounding.  Annie O’Neil helped me a lot at this point with her visit and with her book, “Everyday Camino with Annie”.   It was a rich, heady mix of ingredients.  I found something valuable and it worked for me which was the important thing.

OK, glad you came.  Come walk sometime soon.  Love, Felipe.

Yea, well, I can wept at the drop of a hat these days but this really affected me this morning.  Our beloved Father Marc the priest at St. John Vianney Parish is leaving for a new assignment.  I guess it has been seven years that he has been here.  But he was my first priest.  I gave him a hug and told him I would miss him.

Well, it will be a new day for us at the church.  Luckily I don’t think that we have to share him with another parish or mission like so many places do.  I guess we are so isolated with the ferry and all they figure that one place is enough.  OK, yes of course I will welcome him.  We will learn something different from a new personality.

I think it was General deGaulle that said on his retirement that no one is indispensable.  That stands for us to of course.   What is the positive side of that?   Well we, ego animals that we are think that we have to do every darn thing all by ourselves.  But in reality we are N important  part of the Cloud of Believers, the Flow of Pilgrims and the Communion of Saints and we don’t have to do it all.   We are not supposed to do it all.  We are an indispensable part of but not indispensable.  I think that makes sense.

Yup, time to go.  Happy Mother’s to All the Mom’s!  indispensable love, Felipe.

Reading Joyce Rupp’s book is really a joy.  She must have done  some heavy journaling as she traveled.   The book has so many rememberances of all flavors and varieties.  And as you read each one of her remembrances it has some equalivantent in your experience.   But you probably forgot about it because you didn’t write it down the same day that it happened.   Pretty fun process for the forgetful.

It stirred up a memory of an awkward moment that happened recently on My Camino after Spain.  One that I haven’t talked about on the blog.  You know I forgot about it.  My Rebecca and I were at SeaTac Airport headed for security for the flight to Austin.  This was in March and we were going to The South by Southwest Film Festival for the world premier of Phil’s Camino.

I was ahead of Rebecca slightly and I was behind a lady who cut the corner to sharply around the first pylon of the security maze.  She had a rollie bag and it got caught and the resulting physics caused her to start to fall.  And not thinking, just reacting, I made a grab for her to stave off an injury.  And such improvisation didn’t lead me to touch  her in exactly the right places.   Talk about TSA!  My immediate thought was, “Oh boy, now what?”  But she was gracious and thankful but an awkward situation none the less.

But that ackwardness lead to laughter and a conversation as we worked our way forward.   And what a good sport she was and yes she has walked the Camino.   We can’t help ourselves, right?  So, a most memorable moment that I have forgotten about.

Yup, that’s how it goes for us Caminoheads, never a dull moment.  OK, Mother’s Day tomorrow, don’t forget that.  Trip and fall loves, Felipe.

It just struck me that where there is a JUST (yesterday’s post) there must be a JUST BECA– USE.   If we are walking along, for instance, for the sake of walking, let’s say.   That is such a low keyed activity on our part with little or no glamor.  It is just a JUST.   It is what it is in other words.  There is nothing to say or yell to anyone, this is cool, this is something to pay attention to, this is what we are all about.

So, the motivation on our part to keep walking, or whatever JUST we have going, must be based on something different.  It is a different animal.  We must be doing it in a manner that means something to us on a deeper level.  I am not trying to reinvent the wheel here as this has been thought about by a million people before but as far as I am concerned putting things into words always makes things clearer for me.

Gosh Felipe, what are you trying to say?  If the world that we mostly experience is a clamor of competing influences and we are to the point where this is too much for us, then what?  Here I am with this immense overstimulation from my surroundings and I am busy trying to block it out, how hard is it going to see things that JUST ARE.  If I am in this blocking mode how hard is it to see things that people are doing that are  so camouflaged in their  understatement, they JUST ARE.

Maybe getting on the right wavelength would open up new vistas for me.  Maybe paying attention would mean discovering things that aren’t readily apparent.  Am I rambling?  No, I think that I am getting somewhere.

Maybe this all was crystallized by a conversation that I had yesterday with a neighbor.  He has a problem that is serious, it’s not cancer but something else life  changing.  Anyway early on in the process of dealing with this disease he and a friend who also had the same or similar problem were biking and making jokes with each other about how many other bikers they were passing.  You know, like if those people only knew how screwed up we are and we are still passing them.  But  somewhere along the line they realized that perhaps there was more to it and maybe those people had problems too.  It is the realization like on the Camino when you get outside yourself and understand that everyone walking has a story.

The sun is out, the sky is blue and off I go, love again, Felipe.

I was JUST looking at the image that serves as the cover photo on Joyce Rupp’s book that we have been talking about lately.   It is a monochrome pic, in black and white.  Joyce is walking from right to left in the foreground with pack and walking stick.  There is a stone fence running along side her and in the distance stretch rolling hills covered in vegetation and a little misty.   It is an amazingly JUST cover for a book.  In other words so much could have  been done to make it exciting but wasn’t.

Got me thinking.    How often are we assaulted by the exciting.  Everyone and their brother trying to get our attention.   Life is like walking through a county fair with the barkers trying to convince you to come into their tent to see the tattooed lady or whatever.

But we came back from the Camino with  new way to look at things and a new way to live which in my words now, JUST IS.  It is simpler and more direct, happier and more open.  And JUST  more JUST IS, right?  It’s a lot like the cover of the book to the casual observer.

Is that a problem?  Well, maybe we are missing good things because one we are screening out too much because everything is constantly shouting at us.  Or maybe we are a little lazy or not is the practice of patiently observing and we miss much that JUST looks JUST.   JUST a thought.

Hey, have to go, my day is calling.  Thanks, love, Felipe.