Ah, the sun is breaking through our clouds, the so called marine layer.  Nice, let’s dry this place out a little.  I am looking at a full and fun day with some work and some play.  Camino visitors coming from out of town which is always exciting.

So, Lourdes, it sits in my mind like a door that I am still trying to get through.  Or a possibility still not connected to.  Or perhaps I am baffled by God and God’s goodness.  I know that we are all struggling in our own ways and in our own times.  I don’t mean to add to your confusion.  What I have to say will be helpful to you hopefully if I can just get it out plainly.

After mulling this situation over and over actually over the last month one thing becomes apparent.  That one thing is the importance of peace.  Our own very deep inner peace is the sort that I am talking about.  Of course that fits into peace at other levels but this is the basic first step so to speak.  This is peace of mind or peace of being or peace with God or some such foundational situation that is the first step.

That sort of healing, this connection, is available at Lourdes.  It is a thing way deeper and broader and more complex than the simple idea that a malade throws down his crutches and walks away.  If anyone goes to Lourdes and is disappointed because they didn’t have this throw down the crutches experience I am sorry.  If one felt that they were somehow lacking because they didn’t have enough faith to make that happen I am sorry.  And maybe their problem became greater because of carrying this new burden.  See that?

We need to be good to ourselves, we are beat up enough.  We have faith and we should feel good about that.  We don’t need more of a burden.  We need something possitive.  What is there at Lourdes that is available to everyone?  And  I think that this peace is there and waiting for us.  It may be something way more valuable than simply being cured.  Just the world according to Felipe.

Sunny morning loves, Felipe.

It’s Sunday and I am going to take a break from the Camino/ Lourdes Intersection for something completely different.  I was just out trying to make some progress on the weeds in the corn.  The corn could almost be a full time job if I let it.  But in the corn news is something else.  Our son Wiley unveiled his latest tattoo to me minutes ago.  And he said that it was in my honor.  So what could that be but a nice big ear of corn on his bicep!  It’s the Cornmino!  Well how about that?

I have the Sunday afternoon walk in moments.  The weather has been totally goofy the last few days.  Sun, wind, clouds, hail in didderent combinations.  Well, we will see who shows up.

I just received a new rosary crafted by my friends in the fourth grade class at St Joseph School in Upland, CA.  We had a fund raiser here at Phil’s Camino and raised a few dollars for  a class party for them.  I hear that they voted to do a three way split with the funds.  Some went to a charity, some went to materials for the rosaries and some went toward their festivities.  So a good time was had by all.

And I am off to California next weekend for a showing of Phil’s Camino – So Far So Good.  Will  try and remember to give you details in tomorrow’s post.  We need a full house.

Full house loves, Felipe.

Here I am back a month from our trip to Lourdes and still unpacking.  I think about my fellow malades and the knights, dames and others.  What an expedition it was.  How can I ever thank them for treating me to all that.  But oops, there an odd little detail comes up.  The Order has a general policy of not accepting thanks, just sort of ever.  I was always getting caught in this.   But believing that they were doing the will of God in all this that it is He that deserves the thanks.

Yes, I can see that but it really flys in the face of things modern or of modern thinking.  It is the first time that I can remember coming across this and maybe why it seems so unusual.  One tries to be appreciative and it doesn’t happen in the normal way.  I have to learn to incorporate this and try and play along when I am around this thinking.

Of course it is not like we overdue our thanking God for things.  We do on Thanksgiving and sort of when we think about it.  Well, that’s me and maybe not you but in general I think we sort of miss the point of all this.  I think that they have something with this practice.

Ah, here it is almost 11 PM and running late with this.  Been kind of a crazy day with crazy weather.  Have to settle down now for my pilgrimage to church tomorrow with Catherine.  Yes and be appreciative to God Felipe.

Good night loves, Felipe.

Remember the other day when “ I grabbed a Nelson” or Nelson showed up after I asked for help and got Caminoheads going again after it was stuck for three weeks.  Yea, he was so johnny on the spot for us.  I proposed that we treat him and his wife Char to a dinner for thanks or just for laughs.

So yes, they came over with their guide dog in training and had some steaks with us out on the deck.  It was nice if not a little chilly.  Summer is having a little setback here in June in Seattle.  So yea, but it was all together a good thing.

That was a good blogpost yesterday and hard to top.  But never the less we always give it a try.  So, yes let’s continue with the idea that Lourdes is a vertical experience.  And by that I mean it is a earth to heaven connection or an attempt at connection.  Mother Mary’s appearance there in 1858 is still sending out ripples.  Bernadette simple reception was a marvelous thing.  I search for Mary and have been serious about it since my diagnosis in 2011.  It is mostly comfort that I am after.

Is comfort another way of saying being at peace?  This idea of being at peace becomes more important everyday to me.  And personally it seems to have largely replaced the idea of being cured.  That’s pretty earth shaking when I think about it.

Earth shaking loves, Felipe.

Yesterday, just to review, we were talking about the horizontal nature of the Way of St James and the perhaps verticality of Lourdes.  I’m working with this presently.  It is just sort of a vague notion that perhaps we are at an important point spiritually.  It could be a junction, a nexus.

Just as I have heard the two separate timbers in Christ’s cross being joined there in his nexus.  He a heavenly being who chose to also embrace a life as an earthly being.  And this nexus is expressed in shorthand by the cross.  It is all a very dramatic and powerful story that is encapsulated for us in that junction of the cross.

I have a great friend who is Jewish and we not often enough sit and drink coffee and talk of things.  He sometimes challenges me with an out of the box question.  As often I hope I do for him.  But the last question that I am still working on and it has been months is why do you where that cross around your neck?  It is a symbol of torture and death.  Is it different from wearing an electric chair?  There is a question and a half.  But now a good way of looking at the cross appears and it is something that can be easily verbalized.

Well OK.  Did you see that link yesterday to a little video of me in Lourdes by the River Gave?  Padre Tomas and I had just been given the “hairy eyeball” by members of a tour group that was near us,  And that is what I was looking at as Father was filming me by the river and then I remembered him and looked toward him and he was capturing the moment.  Sometimes Padre and Felipe just were having too much fun.  But the river is important.  See what a moving mass of silted water it was.  A constant rush of the horizontal that is hardly recognized by the situation going on so intensely on either bank  of it.

Have to go, walking Phil’s Camino in ten minutes.

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It took the trip to Lourdes to put some perspective on my four year report on things Camino.  Yea, May “something” was our anniversary.  Remember that we have been working with the idea and the energy of “When you get to Santiago your Camino actually begins.”  The “what does that mean” has been propelling us along for a long time now.

I was so conditioned to thinking in a Camino way that it was a stretch for me to encompass the new ideas coming in from Lourdes.  I had to make room for them and more are coming in daily.  The best way that I have to explain the situation is to say that I have been reporting on roller derby so long now that switching over to consider opera has been a challenge!

Camino pilgrimage is maybe something very horizontal.  It stretches on for 500 miles or more and it is continuously in motion.  I see that and feel that in my bones.  There are regular times of rest but only for the purpose of recharging for the next stage.  It is immensely restless.  I remember thinking of it as a river when I was walking especially the last 100 km where it was so crowded and the river seemed to be overflowing it’s banks.

But by contrast the stay at Lourdes revolves around the Domain.  The Domain is the grounds or sacred territory of the city of Lourdes.  There is no commercial enterprise inside it’s gates.  All the hotels, restaurants and gift shops are outside.  The very center of the Domain is the Grotto where Mother’s Mary appeared to Bernadette.  So everything there is centered around activities inside those gates which is maybe a quarter square mile, that’s it.  So it is not horizontal by any measure.

So then is it vertical?  It sort of must be.  The river that runs through the Domain and right by the Grotto is a great foil to this.   It is the epitome of restlessness in it’s springtime rush to the sea.  I found myself greatly attracted to it while we were there.  Maybe I subconsciously related to it like that while I was puzzling over the rest of what was going on around me.

But I am worn out for now.  Let me see what comes forth overnight.  Ideas always seem to appear when we need them so we will have faith.  Thanks for stopping by today,  your presence is always appreciated.  Lourdes loves, Felipe.

This schedule should hold all summer, til day light savings ends.  Occasionally I am called away and can’t make it but I try to post that here on the blog.  This has been working pretty well so far.  OK, the trail can be dewy in the morning but other than that it is summer conditions.

We generally walk three laps every session which adds up to a little over a mile and a half.    But you may only feel like walking one or two laps, that’s OK.  This really isn’t an athletic event, it is a get together.  Come by!

Monday 0900-1000

Tuesday 1600-1700

Thursday 0900-1000

Sunday 1600-1700

Hope to see you soon, Felipe.

We have a few minutes before My Rebecca and I have to run for the ferry.  Off to the big city but perhaps we can talk.  Yesterday’s sermon went well.  It was good to get the topic off the ground so to speak.  And when I do a presentation I generally go without notes and sometimes interesting extras come out of my mouth a little unplanned.  We could call that the work of the Holy Spirit I suppose.

One notion that came out that way yesterday was the idea that perhaps a malady sprinkled into one’s life is a sort of a dash of a condiment.  It is an spice or an herb, sometimes a bitter herb.  This seems a strange way to think about things especially when we are so conditioned to shying away from malady or pain or complications.  We go, “Whoa not going near that one!” as we speed up to go around it.  But sometimes these things are thrust upon us or fall into our laps maybe.  But we have to concentrate on the notion at our malady is not us totally although it may help flavor the soup of our lives.

Maybe we talked about this before about St. Paul having a malady that is mentioned in the Bible but not spelled out.  We are not sure exactly what it was but he prayed about being relieved of it.  And was he?  Wouldn’t he been more effective without it?  Or was it part of his mojo?

Consider this quote that came in from Diego:  “You are exactly where God wants you to be right now.  Let that thought settle into your bones.”  St. Therese of Lisieux.

OK, yes, well.  Love, Felipe.

I can feel myself turning over my impressions of the Lourdes trip.  It is a process not dissimilar from working in the compost department of the ranch.  Components tend to need their own time to break down into something usable.  They need air and moisture and warmth helps to speed things up.

What I am getting at is that lessons learned from these pilgrimages aren’t just always obvious, vivid or earth shaking.  That doesn’t mean that they are not there or not significant but they may require some rumination as a riddle or parable does.  We have to gnaw on impressions a while to uncover their meaning for us.

I’m off to Burton Community Church in a minute to talk about Lourdes.  They don’t have a regular pastor there which means that they are sometimes looking for amateur acts like mine to fill in for the sermon.  I am going to give them ten to fifteen minutes of the Lourdes story according to Felipe.  This is the kickoff of my speaking engagements on this new topic.  They are a forgiving crowd.

Tomorrow I am off to the hospital for a small surgical procedure to work on my chemo port, out with the old and in with the new.  So pray for me and the doc please that we may get through that gracefully.

Sunday loves, Felipe.