A quiet morning here after a crazy week of dramatic weather.   Have been hanging out in the shop pushing things forward there.  Have a little work to do this morning, picking out the right stain color for one.  Getting to the finishing stage of the project.  Then this afternoon am heading off to a weekend retreat.

I have been with a men’s bible study group for something like twelve years now,  that beginning seems lost in the mists of the past.  Anyway we meet once a week for study and fellowship.  There are a bunch of these classes all over Western Washington and these guys are getting together for this retreat over on Bainbridge Island.  I had coffee with Art the main guy on Friday a week ago.  He previewed our film and if we have the time I will be able to show them Phil’s Camino on one of the evenings.

This will be a good way for me to loosen up these guys.  Protestant guys tend to not get pilgrimage is my experience.  It seems their spiritual quest is more intellectual, more bookish.  Pilgrimage is mainly experiential in my thinking and, well, experience.  I talked with this group last year about my Camino and the response was luke warm.  This year I’ll let the movie do the talking.

One of the big pluses is that Art walked the Camino Frances the year after I did and maybe you remember that he took my walking sticks across Spain again.  So we are trying both him and I to introduce these guys to something new.  We here at Caminoheads all know the value of pilgrimage quite well.

Oh, that wind is picking up again, maybe this storm isn’t over.  Well whatever, we will march on.  I’ll take my iPad, somwill be blogging from Bainbridge.  Stay well, love you, Felipe.

I try not to read other blogs and posts before I get this blog written each day.  I find I get too influenced if I don’t come out of my own space.  But today I read my friend Steve Watkins’ NoteADay blog and it was about Rick Warren.  Steve we met at the Hot Springs Film Festival along with his wife Dana back a few months ago.  Steve has been featuring different people who have had an influence on him personally, one a day on his NoteADay blog.  Today he wrote about Rick the pastor of Saddleback Church and the author of “The Purpose Driven Life”.   I read this book when it came out fifteen years ago maybe.  Remarkable book and it was in the news for a long time.  I have my copy on the shelf here.

Anyway, Steve quoted Rick this morning and I want to bring that to you now.:

“Other people are going to find healing in your wounds. Your greatest life messages and your most effective ministry will come out of your deepest hurts.”
― Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?

As that relates to me, I do think that my bout with cancer has had this very effect.  The last five years of my life has been shaped by the aftermath of my diagnosis no doubt about it.  My own personal decision to share my experience has been a good one.  It is really the only way that we can learn from one another.   I’ m gob smacked by this quote.  Or maybe it is God smacked, as came up in conversation recently.

Thanks all of you for helping out with this project.   We continue to walk our Caminos.  And the trail calls me right now.  Out in the rain for me.  Alperfect, love, Felipe.

Rain gear, that’s what the weather lady advises for today.  I guess that’s better than aqualung, right?  Nasty here with rain on top of snow.  But no whining from Caminoheads.

I got roped into giving a little two minute sermonette at church.  It wouldn’t be but for a few weeks.  It’s theme goes along with the weekly reading which this one is the Transfiguration.  This is going to be a challenge.  I chose this one because I have so much trouble relating to it, thinking maybe I could learn something new by tackling it that would help me.  I will let you know how it goes.  Really,  I have become such a ham in my later life.

We are at number nine with the Pilgrim Beatitudes:

BLESSED ARE YOU PILGRIM IF ON THE WAY YOU MEET YOURSELF AND GIFT YOURSELF WITH TIME, WITHOUT RUSHING, SO AS NOT TO DISREGARD THE IMAGE IN YOUR HEART.

Yea, “without rushing”.  There is one most of us need help with.  With that I have to rush out of here, plenty to do today.  See?    Not in too much of a hurry to not love you, Felipe.

Power still out and the generator is droning along outside the back door.  Icy roads and I get to take My Rebecca to work this morning after talking with you.  Making oxtail soup to have tonight.  I want to get a couple of hours work in on my cabinet project today and have to clean up some of the storm debris.  That’s what it looks like around here.

I was thinking about the Treatment Center at the hospital and how today would be a nightmare with all the transportation woes.  Here I am worried about my nurses and schedulers, they will think that’s cute.  But really I do  think of them.

We haven’t done a Pilgrim Beatitude recently, so it’s time:

Blessed are you pilgrim, if you search for the truth and make of the “camino” a life and of your life a “way”, in search of the one who is the Way, the Truth and the Life.

I see that I left this one in the original configuration of capital and lower case letters.  Part of the message is in that.  Read that over a few times.

OK, I’m back on duty with the storm watch.  Hope that your day is a little more casual than this.   Look at that, the TV weather says that we will have a high of 52 degrees on Thursday.  OK!  Warm up loves, Felipe.

We got four inches of wet snow here at the ranch.  Finally daylight.  The power is out because of the weight of the snow breaking limbs and those falling on the power lines.  Just the kind of day that we delighted in as kids but now not quite as much.   We got the generator going and the gas stove is working.  The woodstove is cranked up and pumping out heat.  And there is wifi.  And look there is cable TV.

So, we are in good shape here at Raven Ranch and time to work on communicating with you.  I have half an hour before our Monday morning walk.  So, we made it through Super Bowl weekend pretty gracefully.  Time now to forge ahead through the last of the winter.   It won’t be that long before we feel the warmth of the sun starting to make a difference.

Ash Wednesday is March 1st this year which will be with us before we know it.  I wonder if we can rig up something special for the forty days of Lent.   If anyone has any brilliant ideas let me know.

Will be outside walking in the snow and will be looking for lion tracks.  It would be fun to show you some.   Cat tracks are round and the claws don’t show.   The tracks that I have seen up in the mountains were the size of a large orange.

There is such a strange parallel for me with this cat showing up here that we could meet any day and my cancer.   Both potentially deadly and here in place along my Camino.  Hmm.  Interesting living with this stuff .   Oh well, all in a day’s work.

Got to put on my boots and gloves and get out there.  The best to you.  Love, Felipe.

Super Bowl 2017 today.  We’re going to be there with Lady Gaga this afternoon.  A big day is unfolding.   But we are here to report where Felipe and his merry troupe is along Phil’s Camino.   We have left Arzúa and currently are within 38 km of the Cathedral at Santiago.  They are remarkably slow but remarkably happy,  they don’t seem to care that it is taking forever.  There is some talk of where to go next and it looks like they will walk out to the ocean and back.  So, come along when you get a chance.  Here is the current schedule:

Monday 0900-1000

Tuesday 1530-1630

Thursday 0900-1000

Sunday 1530-1630

Wear your rubber boots and have your raingear handy.   We travel in all sorts of weather and laughter seems to be rain resistant.  So come and join us.  Loved you yesterday and it should be the same today, Felipe.

Just got back from my Bible Guys class.  We had a special guest today, a friend of one of the guys who has been working as a bible translator for thirty years.  He has been in Nepal and is now in India.  Most interesting talk and we learned a lot.  One of those things is that there are 1700 languages in the world that still have no Bible translation available.  Amazing.

Also here is our next Pilgrim Beatitude, which I know you are all anxiously awaiting:

BLESSED ARE YOU PILGRIM, WHEN YOU DON’T HAVE WORDS TO GIVE THANKS FOR EVERYTHING THAT SURPRISES YOU AT EVERY TWIST AND TURN OF THE WAY.

Yes, been there, done that, got the t-shirt.  It is amazing how spot on these are.  I am looking at these in two ways.  One is looking backward and saying to myself yes this is true, that happened.  And two, when I received this and started reading it early on in my Camino I had a suggestion of something to look for.

Oop, noon, just fell asleep.   Oh well, probably needed it.  So, here we go ya’ll, another Super Bowl coming up.  And in case you forgot, it’s Frank’s Hot Sauce that you need to pick up at the store to make the real Buffalo Chicken Wings.  And most Buffalonians go margarine over butter on this.  You can’t hardly find this kind of inside scoop anywhere else and especially on this short notice.   We got it here at Caminoheads!  Go Falcons, love, Felipe.

Hey, end of the week, as in TGIF!  OK, I am good with that.  Super Bowl weekend here in the States.  The juggernaut New England Patriots vs the feisty Atlanta Falcons.   A once a year madness.  Folks watch it even if they don’t like football just for the commercials.  A big deal all around.

And us here on our little island will be tuned in.  It’s an end of the long winter diversion. It snowed a little tiny bit as I look out the window this morn.  Just a dusting as they say.  I am off to the hospital for my Friday treatment, have to get Pancho my sidekick back.  Having coffee with a friend Art while I am in town and then maybe a stop at Trader Joe’s for the best wine deals around.

A friend on FB had a quote yesterday and unfortunately my addled mind can’t quite come up with the author or the exact words but I can come up with the idea.  As close as I can remember it was,” people that hurt, hurt people and people that are healed heal people”.  How about that?  That is such a beacon for me.  I finally after all these years see that and really feel that.

In question and answer sessions at theaters where we have been with the film Phil’s Camino a common question is about my quote that I’ve learned the difference between being cured and being healed.  That at a certain point being cured becomes secondary.  That striving to be in tune with the big picture is beyond life and death.  I have to thank Dr Robert Barnes of Seattle for greatly helping me with that.  Not that I met him in person but read his book.

But back to the quote about “hurt people hurt people and people that are healed heal people”.  This is a big Camino right here that is free for the taking.  Can we heal each other as we walk home?  Can we do that despite all the glitchs, malfunctions, scares and temptations?  Can we keep this in mind?

OK, not that bad.  Getting back in the old blog saddle after the wild and crazy extended last weekend.   So, off to my day.   The best to you today, love underneath it all, Felipe.

There is some significant construction going on here at the Caminoheads blog.  The lovely Hanna is working away on it but glitchs show up.  Glitchs R Us I think just in general, nothing to do with Hanna.  Annie and I realized this over the weekend, that Glitchs R Us.

Well I am not going to invest a lot of time into this test.  I will try and publish this and see what happens.   Miss you, love you, let’s do it all again, Felipe.