We are getting close to being in Santiago. Just passed Portomarin. I guess we will be starting all over again here soon.

Walking schedule:

Monday 0900-1000
Tuesday 1530-1630
Thursday 0900-1000
Sunday 1530-1630 (but we are not walking Christmas Day the 25th)

Hope to see you soon, Felip.x

My birthday today! My neighbor here at the Treatment Center getting chemo just said, “it’s unbelievable!” so I thought I would steal that to entitle this post. It is pretty unbelievable really all the birthday wishes I have gotten. There is a whole bunch on FB and I received a lot of cards snail mail. Padre Tomas sent three! Who sends three birthday cards?

All the folks here at the hospital are marvelous. Of course I dropped enough hints. And every other minute they are asking for my full name and birthday for ID purposes so that helps.

We are going to have a little low keyed get together this evening at the ranch.
Maybe next year we can have some kind of major blowout for my seventieth. Seventieth, yikes! Let’s talk about something else, right?

Oh, I need to get a post going to let you know what the walking schedule is these days. We are still walking and it is hit or miss on what the weather is doing any particular day. But we walk 99% of the time.

OK, have to go for now. Birthday loves, Felipe.

A wind storm going on outside, lights flickering. Running off to the hospital to get our scan. Have all my little tumors shined up like little choir boys, jackets and ties, hair slicked back.

Poor guys, it’s such a hard scrabble existence for them, maybe like being in the poorest school district in the poorest county of your state. They are barely surviving. I would like to talk them onto the bus and get them down the road to greener pastures so to speak.

OK, off to the shower, later, love always, Felipe always.

OK, time to make some moves on Christmas shopping. One week to go. OK, I can do this, I’ve been so bad, gotten 10 percent done. Hoping for a miracle of some flavor.

Last night My Rebecca and I cozied down and watched “Heaven is for Real”, a story about a little boy’s journey to heaven and back during an out of body experience. Very moving film. It’s filmed in Manitoba but is supposed to be Nebraska and looks pretty close to Pilgrim Farmer John’s Iowa. Check that out, it is probably at your local library.

I got news that one of the great folks that I met in Dubuque, Iowa at the festival there has just passed away. Prayers for Bob on his journey. And prayers for Cindy his wife also please.

Well I have to go as I have a carful, of walkers coming from Tacoma to walk here shortly. A little rainy outside to lend to the ambience. Good morning for seeing a UFO or a cougar or something. So, get out there and get you shopping finished up so you can relax and zero in on the important stuff. Love you, Felipe.

Christmas the biggest holiday in my world and along my Camino is coming up. We went to a big carol sing and Christmas party last evening. I’m starting to get in the mood. But haven’t heard the Chipmunks yet anywhere and is it really Christmas without the famous holiday rodents?

Last evening as we sang the old favorite Christmas songs I was struck by all the great lyrics. There are some beautiful lines in the old hymns. As a kid I always wanted to write a great hymn that folks would sing in years to come. A sort of immortality. I still like the idea but I don’t think that is where my talent lies.

Let’s see what else about Christmas is standing out right now? Several years ago I bought a water buffalo from the charity Heifer. If you are not familiar they have livestock for sale that they then give to people in poor areas of the world to improve their condition. Anyway for $250 I bought this beast for someone who could use it. Then eight people on my Christmas list got a share. Sometimes I think we got enough stuff and I want to do something different.

This year I am so bothered by the news and pics out of Allepo, Syria that I am going to do that again. Well, send some funds in to a charity that can help with that, not exactly a water buffalo. Just narrowing down the list of charities. I think my grandson needs some presents but the adults are going to get a “feel good” present this year.

Last night at the party there were people that I have known for a long time and others that I had seen before, so it wasn’t a bunch of strangers. But three people that were associated with that group weren’t there due to early cancer deaths over the last ten years. I was with the Mom of the latest one for half of the evening. She is stong in certain ways and fragile in others. I was so glad that somehow I was able to be of service to her at this time. My five year Camino through the world of cancer has give me the kind of insight and a certain confidence to do this. I am happy to bring some healing in to this situation.

Well, that is what is going on this AM in my world. We are all walking our own Caminos but there are commonalities in terms of our grief and happiness. Please buoy me up when I need it and I will try and do the same for you. Advent loves, Felipe.

What a tremendous morning. The barometer was off the charts high, the thermometer lower than usual and a glorious sunrise happened. Mount Rainer just a little south of where the sun was coming up. And the mountain had the lens shaped clouds encircling the peak, in other words it was making its own weather. Mist was coming up off the water in the harbor and a huge flock of ducks was in there forced south by the colder weather up north.

I was at my Bible Guys classs at a private home on the harbor. The sun streaming in was too much for us and we had to evacuate to a different location. Life’s a bitch, right? Too much sunshine, not complaining. We studied the 16th chapter of John’s Gospel. It’s all Jesus’s prayer asking his Father’s help for himself, the disciples and the future world. We got through it in an hour but could spend a year of classes on it equally.

Aleppo, Syria is in our prayers. Civilians caught in the space between two opposing forces is a hard one to not get moved by. Let’s please consider opening our wallets and helping out some relief outfit. This is a horrendous thing to happen at Christmas time, well, or anytime. But we are in the giving mood and what better thing to do.

Well I’m sorry sort that I don’t have a pic of all that glorious landscape/seascape this morning. But in my world everything can’t be documented. There are times we must stand in awe and dampen the urge to click a photo, we owe it to ourselves. It’s too precious to be distracted from the beauty that is one of the pathways to God.

Anon, love, Felipe.

Just ran out to take a pic of the moon setting and baby is it cold out there. Elk jammies saved me from freezing. Alright back on the red leather couch and blogging away with my bestests of friends.

I have to be outside working today so I guess I am stalling away here in the heat of the wood stove. Before I forget Nancy from Kansas City APOC showed Phil’s Camino at their last meeting, in the last few days and she said that it was a big hit. She also sent a “Follow the Yellow Brick Road” sign which I will find a place for on the trail, maybe out near our corn. The closest thing we got to Kansas. Thank you Nancy.

If you don’t mind I need to further my conversation along about my tumors, my gang. I was with them this morning again. And I’ll have to admit that I was kind of looking forward to it. You know, at first my meetings seemed weird but exciting, then they became more routine and now I look forward to them.

I came to a new realization that they are just exactly who they are, no more no less, and I appreciate that honesty. And they are not in the least concerned that I am trying to kill them. I’m concerned that they are trying to kill me but that’s me. Trying to hang out with them has given me some amazing insights and has cleared up my thinking. Maybe that is all I have for today. There is more but maybe I need to digest it some. Thank you for letting me share. It seems like the only thing to do. I am in close to the action and someone needs to know what that is like.

My birthday coming up next week on Wednesday. I will be at the hospital all day for treatment. I left enough hints there that I should get a cupcake with an electric candle maybe if I’m good. Ah, what fun.

I have to go and make it happen, yours always, love, Felipe of the elk jammies.

I am thinking that I am not going to get Christmas cards out this year. We are just too busy with things. Some years I made my own cards and all but right now just trying to lower the stress. And last evening we had an old friend call who had seen a newspaper article about Felipe in the Beachcomber and googled his name and got to the website and bought a couple of the DVDs. And she just finished watching one and called. Wow. Just thinking that maybe I would make calls this year instead of sending cards, sounds more fun.

Last evening Kelly and I showed up for a great Camino presentation at St. John Vianney’s done by a young lady that walked this fall. It was very well done and it brought back all sorts of memories, like the wine fountain for instance. She also went by herself to Spain and that we have to give a “way to go”!

Lastly, I had a meeting with the universe this small hours of the morning. As usual my tumors were there but were pretty low keyed which is good considering I have a scan in less than a week and it would be good if they were as meek and mild as could be for that. And I put in some thought on them as I usually try to do and this is what I came up with. I am thankful for the fact that they are so slow moving and come to me more like Marley’s Ghost than Attila the Hun. I am appreciative and have always considered them messengers, if dangerous ones.

Yes, a gray sky morning and lots on today’s dance card. Hope that you are keeping things under control and not getting stressed. We have a walk in a few minutes, who will show up? Miss you, love you, Felipe.

You know, once in a while I fall off the end of the spectrum of my own consciousness. I am having thoughts that are way bigger than I can really deal with. So, just hanging out with one at the moment and will try and explain.

Julian of Norwich had a vision one night, she called it a showing, and she spent twenty years trying to communicate it afterward. She was a Christian mystic of the 1300’s. Well, I can scale that back to 1% and go from there. Not trying to compare myself to J of N but in some realms we are all equal. But hanging out with the words of someone like her can definitely expand one’s boundaries, a lot.

So, back to my thought and I won’t go into how I got there but it was sort of a logical progression from one flat rock to the next as I crossed the river. In other words I didn’t think of it in it’s final form on my own but was led there step by step. And on having the thought, it felt so different, so unusual that at first it was hard to grasp.

Let me quit dinking around. The idea is that in our eternal life you and I are going to learn the story of everyone that ever lived. We will have the time and luxury to commune with everyone, as in everyone that ever was or will be. Anything less would really be unsatisfactory, incomplete, unfinished. There that’s it in a nutshell. What do you think? I know it’s terribly out there but hey who said we always had to dwell in the mundane, the little, the usual. With God all things are possible, I’m going with that this morning.

Yup, have to go be a carpenter and bend nails this morning. Then this PM have to go work on the plumbing at the rental house. How can I be so lucky. This is the kind of stuff our days are made of now here on this planet.

Time to go, Felipe.x

A Tuesday that is probably going to be lost in the major pre Christmas rush but we’ll see. My to-do list for today is totally full. I’ll be lucky to get two thirds of it done. But thought that I would bring you a few random pics and comments on them. Just sort of the flotsam and jetsam of my day so far.

Here is a pic of last year’s pilgrimage along California Highway 111 in Rancho Mirage. People celebrating the feast of the Virgin de Guadalupe.

Here a totally unrelated pic of chemotherapy on steroids. It’s the old story of just when you thought you have seen it all there is something more. I’ve never had such a confusion of chemo plumbing myself but here someone has.

OK, and finally another unrelated pic out our kitchen window of an Anna’s hummingbird at our feeder. It is funny how something as simple as this can bring such delight and joy as things way more complicated. One of these outside the window of suffering folks could be extremely helpful.

OK, have to get going on my to-do list. Happy Tuesday! Let’s make the most of it loves, Felipe.