Low on Wifis this morning. Now we have it working again. Ah, where was I? I have a big day planned of splitting firewood. Getting near the end of this chore. Next thing coming up is mowing. Things are started to jump out of the ground, quickly turning to jungle.
Along Phil’s Camino in the dewy morning.
This is my last day of freedom before treatment. Actually I will be glad to hit the old comfy chair at the hospital and get some rest. Life at the ranch can be exhausting.
I am quickly giving up hope of this blog post coming together. Maybe I’ll just go take some pics for you.
The tapas table.Madrona rounds waiting for me to split it. Madroño in Spanish.
Hoping that all is well with you there, north or south of the Equator. Signing off for now, much love, Felipe.
I was so proud of myself for getting that hot link in the post earlier this morning. Then must have fat fingered something and lost half of the post. So here I am back with you. And back to Cris and the Camino.
The hospitalero from the albergue in Rabanal said it: “the little we think we can do for the other may just be all the other needs”. We were so materially poor on the trail but we provided for each other what the Camino itself didn’t. We learned to help the other. Let’s see what do I have, four day old sausage, a liter of water, a bandaid and a head full of poetry. Will any of that help?
Sometimes we felt like the other. How can that be? How can I be the other? The lines blurred. We learned.
OK, out of time again. Bless you this day. Love, Felipe.
Well we survived the weekend. Here we are ready to take on the “real” world. But it is Holy Week and that calls for some special attention. Special attention for Sister Joyce as she is recovering from hip replacement surgery. Prayers for her would be much appreciated. And speaking of the Sister, she wrote a nice article about Phil’s Camino the trail in Salt magazine. Kathy from Dubuque came up with the link for that:
There! I’m so proud of myself when I accomplish something tricky. Yes, Felipe and computers, kind of like “Bambi meets Godzilla”.
Cris from Buenos Aires and William from Alberta, Canada have been very active communicating with us here at Caminoheads lately. Maybe we all feel isolated geographically from one another but that doesn’t mean we can’t feel community here. We are the “Flow of Pilgrims” still! Keeping the flame alive is most important.
Cris had a quote from one of her hospitaleros recently that I thought I could do something with.
(half my blog post disappeared. Have to fix it tomorrow. Felipe.)
It’s warming up and looking half way decent out there on the trail. Bring your rubber boots along still just in case. I am trying to be out of town on 4/7-4/11 so those walks will be cancelled but here is the regular schedule otherwise:
Father David put on a heck of a Mass this AM. Catherine and I were there for the Blue Collar Mass at 0800. This is Palm Sunday celebrating when Jesus entered Jerusalem and shot us ahead into the middle of the mystery of Holy Week.
So, we had our first Sunday tailgate party today in the parking lot of the supermarket. We wrote a card for Sister Joyce and talked with passerbys. This is one of the things that we do best. It was not exactly warm out but we made it happen.
We made this elaborate plan to pilgrimage to church on Good Friday. It sounds like the perfect day to do it but I forgot that I have to be in treatment that day. Maybe we could hike on Thursday instead. OK, off to plan B.
I just by mistake started playing the Camino Podcasts on my pad here. This particular one is an hour on El Cid and Roland two famous historic characters associated with the Camino. That sounds really interesting although I don’t have time to sit still for an hour. Annie and I did a podcast for Camino Podcasts back a few years ago. Think that it was something like number 2 or 3. Yea, check that out sometime. It is called Phil’s Camino maybe or something similar. I will try and listen to one of those on my next treatment day at the hospital when I am confined to the comfy chair.
Yea, Holy Week, happening right now. We will talk more about it as the days unfold. Once again thanks for being with us. Alperfect once again, love and stuff, Felipe.
We have been batting this topic of hospitality around for a few posts and dear neighbor and general coconspirator Catherine send this comment in yesterday. This was so lovely and well written that I am just stealing it whole cloth:
“So beautifully expressed, Felipe. One of my largest lessons on the Camino was how grateful I felt for the smallest acts of hospitality, from people along the route and fellow pilgrims. I remember one morning, it was early and pouring rain, we had taken a wrong turn and were a mile or so off the way. We found a little cafe where we could dry out and get some hot coffee before heading on. The owner of the cafe insisted on driving us down the road where we could rejoin the path. He roused his wife to mind the cafe and loaded us in his tiny car for the drive. An American woman had recently gone missing and he wanted to reassure us that the way was safe, that the Hospitaleros and cafe owners were concerned about us pilgrims and deeply respected our endeavor. It was nothing and it was everything because of the intention with which he offered. We never know when we will need hospitality and as a result feel honored to offer it when we can. It was and always is a pleasure to have you and Rebecca in our home, and as Dana said let’s do it again soon, before its too late for spring nettle risotto. Camino love Felipe.”
So, if or short term topic is hospitality and our long term topic is about how our Camino really starts in Santiago, let’s put them together maybe. So, if the Way has taught us to love God and our fellow man, to be trusting and open, to risk, to share, to be present to all situations and to be grateful for what we have. So, if we are grateful then we are likely to be relaxed enough to be generous. If we are present to all situations we will notice when someone needs something, food, drink, shelter, acknowledgement, encouragement. So maybe we will feel moved to share what we have in time and treasure. We will make ourselves vulnerable. We will risk because we have learned to see Christ in others.
This isn’t always easy but we are working on it. And we will need help and hospitality ourselves as we go down the trail. It’s all a two way street, the give and the take.
Geez, it all start so very innocently. I thought, OK I’ll do this one online banking move before I do the blog. It was probably clumsy me but managed to get locked out of my account and it took talking to two real people to get back to where I started. Life used to be so simple, now there is this extra layer that seems oh so vital, oh so can’t do without.
Before this all started I was admiring how the steam was rising off my hot coffee and thought maybe that would be a blog. I don’t know if you see steam off your coffee where you have central hearing. Here in the early morning when the wood fire is being nursed into existence it is still chilly and steam definitely rises off my coffee. Little did I know that the steam would be rising off of me after my friendly online banking worked me over.
But it is a trade off, at worst or at best. Yesterday FaceTimed with Cris from Buenos Aires for an hour. She described the weather changing to fall down there as I was sitting outside in the middle of glorious spring here. All that is a little strange to grasp. We are all striving to be less provincial I suppose and need to learn to encompass that.
This Sunday is the start of Holy Week, Palm Sunday. And Easter will be my Fourth anniversary of entering the Church. I am so happy with that. I am really floating along on their support. I am a patient in God’s Hotel and finding that a happy end in itself.
Yup, time to get out of my jammies and face the world. Time to tackle the firewood project. Two more trees to fell and split up. (madrona here or madrone in California, Arbutus menziesli, madroño in Spanish). It is an important task of the calendar as the wood has to dry for most of a year to be ready to burn well next winter. OK, you are my favorites, love, Felipe of the North.
Hospitality, here is Commando Bill with a plate of venison. A different dinner party though.
We had the pleasure of dining with Catherine and Dana last evening. Roast chicken, mashed potatoes, asparagus, kale and I made some cornbread. I love seeing a whole golden brown roast chicken, it has got to be a celebration. What a great occasion but at the same time a simple meal. So great eating over there, a form of sanctuary really. The hospitality is so thick and wide that it makes up for all the chaos and clutter of the day.
We need a constant reminder to hold that space for someone coming. Maybe we don’t know who that is but that doesn’t really matter. We offer hospitality because that is who we are or who we are trying to be. Maybe this blog is a form of hospitality. We organize the space to offer you a place to rest and recharge away from the chaos and clutter. Yea, I like it.
Short and sweet today. I start my day out by having a 9 o’clock walk and have to find my boots. We are back to the mud and the puddles after all the latest few rainy days. We are having a kind of herky jerky escape from winter.
Oysters at tapas yesterday. Fresh off the grill with lemon and hot sauce.
Rain coming down, looks familiar. Oh well, have a lot of indoor stuff to catch up on. Steve my buddy from Ashland OR is here in the neighborhood and meeting up with him at some point. And how are things with you?
Catherine and Dana showed up for the walk and tapas yesterday afternoon. The trail was nearly normal. Monday we had mallard ducks in the puddles and Tuesday I didn’t wear my rubber boots for the first time in months. A couple of days of sun can dry things up immensely. But now we are back to more rain.
I have been working on my stack of books that I received as gifts around Christmas time. Right now working on Richard Rohr’s “The Divine Dance”. He is so amazing at clarifying seemly complicated things for me. I read his daily blog also so I am up to speed with him as much as possible.
I wish I could boil his message down into a few paragraphs for us here on my short post. But maybe it is possible to say something. This book is about looking at the Trinity in a new way. That contemplating on The Trinity as a model or blueprint of relationship we can see the world and our lives in a different better way. Sort of changing our understanding can change our perceptions and that can change our being. It is more in line with the way God was thought about by the early Christians.
Yea, I lean on this stuff pretty heavily these days living with my cancer. It is reassuring to know there is more to life than my problems. That there is more to life than the daily human drama. That I am part of a big plan, that we are part of a big plan.
OK, I hear the Comcast gal is going to be here any minute to check out our dead landline. Better get out of my jammies and get things going. Alperfect for miles, love you, Felipe.
Sister Joyce and I tearing up the trail on the cover of Salt.
Just a pause to relax for a half hour to write the blog. My day is looking like it has a lot of moving parts so nice to sit down . Well, the Zags came up short last evening but we were with them the whole way. I don’t know a thing about basketball but I can get excited about it once in a while. Yea, that is a far as the team has ever gone and pretty darn good for someplace nobody ever heard of.
Last year at this time we were getting started on a whole string of film festivals for showing of Phil’s Camino. It has been quite a year. We were in Dubuque, Iowa in April after the Austin premiere in March. So, I met some great folks there and have kept in touch with them and things are happening with us. Later today I am meeting via FaceTime with Our Kathy from there to do a spiritual exercise. And of course Pilgrim Farmer John and Farmer Cathy we are in contrast contact with us. They should be just getting back from their cross country bike trip any second.
While I was in Dubuque I had a chance to visit the Mother House for Sister Joyce’s order, the Sister’s of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (the BVM). Recently she wrote a two page article for Salt magazine, the official worldwide publication for her order about us. That’s the pic on the cover of the spring issue above. That’s Sister Joyce and I on Phil’s Camino. She hasd such trouble walking with her bad hip so she always drove the riding mower around the half mile. Pretty cute pic, makes me chuckle. And let’s not forget prayers for the Sister as she just got that hip replaced a week ago. Thanks.
Well, off to my day, that’s all the pause I get. Make the most of it today! Love, Felipe.
