Dear Caminoheads,

Today, I had another experience of Towers of Babel. Very different from yesterday’s though.

Today I finished work and I called my aunt who is in a nursing home 400 miles away from where I live (and in a situation which is very painful, but beyond the distance, there are other limitations for me to visit her). My aunt has severe Alzheimers disease; sometimes she knows who I am when I call her, most of the times, after a couple words, she doesn’t know anymore. Her voice is the same and the things she tells me are known to me, because are the same things she has told me along my life: for example, that she was in a hurry and she fell in the street and now her knee is in pain. I think, she has told me that before she had Alzheimers once a month; sometimes it happened, some other times, it was her way of starting a conversation, maybe to call my attention too. These days, in between these comments that might seem real, most of the sentences she tells me (which are a lot, she is quite chatty) have no sense, no coherence, she mixes her glasses with the refrigerator, and a pizza with my grandfather.

Yet, for the most part, I understand what she tells me, because it is not in the sentences she builds with the words she uses, but in what I can picture that is going in her mind, from the many years I have known her. And because the mind is a marvelous thing, and some of the things she builds sentences about have to do with something she lived, and I lived too (even by the stories she told me), so somehow, this lack of coherence have a sense to me.

After talking to my aunt, I went upstairs, to take a package I got in the mail for one of my neighbors who had a baby girl 40 days ago. The baby is tiny, was born with low weight and while has gained some, still is tiny. My neighbor has waited for this baby for many many years, and told me she feels a terrible mother because she doesn’t know what to do when her baby cries desperately because she doesn’t know what is wrong, uncomfortable, etc. with her.

I told her that maybe she didn’t need to know exactly what is wrong or uncomfortable, but maybe, find the way to transmit to her baby that she understands that something is uncomfortable to her and she is doing her best to make her feel better, even if what she is doing doesn’t stop the baby’s cry.

I realized it was not different from what I do with my aunt. And somehow it is not different when I walked with 3 French couples in the Camino and we had like an hour long conversation even when they only spoke French and my French is inexistent.

I think what matters is the intention to understand: to try to put in the other’s shoes and check if we can get a sense of what they may be going through and what they would like to share with us about their experience if they could. Like me here today, a native Spanish speaker, with English as a third language, trying to share some thoughts about communication!

Thanks for understanding Loves,

Cris

Dear Caminoheads,

This Monday post on a Tuesday was supposed to be out yesterday. A few days ago, I got an email from our Steve-O with a poem that he found interesting. I found it too! I thought to post it to share with all and yesterday by mid-morning, it was clear I had to post it yesterday. You see, on Mondays, I usually get to the city early. I work for a bit in a coffee shop in the corner where the coffee is nice and the waitress is a girl from Venezuela. I turned on my computer and right away got a chat from a work colleague from Portugal who lives in Germany. Before disconnecting, I emailed my “right hand”, who is an Italian girl who lives in Canada.

After coffee, I went to see my therapist. We talked about missing others, either because of loss or for being far away physically, mentally, or emotionally. He highlighted that probably we are all missing someone or something all the time. He also said that grief is a unique tool, because all of us have to face with grief sooner or later in life, and what is good about grief is that if we do “grief work” it will “open the gate of feelings” and our vision of the world and our loved ones will refresh. We talked about ways of grieving, some cultures dance to grieve, others dress in black, our -modern culture- hides grief and behaves as it doesn’t exist.

All he said was so right. The Venezuelan girl in the coffee place, my Portuguese colleague in Germany, my Italian right hand in Canada and me, we were all missing something and someone. And the poem talks about the ways each of us grieve. This is why this email should have gone out yesterday!!!

Praise be to God for confounding our tongues and scattering us into exile 
like chaff in a stray wind or the fig seeds dropped by a green iguacaon on a hogplum.
Confusion is sweetest chirimoya on a dry tongue. 
Hymns of disorder bring bountiful harvests in times of drought, 
And perhaps only cross-eyes can see in chaos serene mandalas. 
I shout from the top of my Babel’s tower sown as a kapok tree— 
Blessed are the dialects, the patois, the argots, and the pidgins; 
the half-breed word-hoards and the mongrel grammars; the geechees, 
the calós, and the ghost words; those hallowed languages gone dead 
or worse extinct because of genocide or conquest or just time’s erosion, 
yet how we must mourn each one in our bones, hearts, spleens; 
then join hands by the sea at dawn to chant their names in flames 
of gumbo-limbo, O so many to remember: Elmolo, Mawa, Ba-Shu, 
Koibal, Guanche, Calusa, Wichita, and the Taíno of my own island—
Kubanakán—whose words linger past the cyclones of our sadness
like flotsam chromosomes or castaway fossils of such beautiful amber 
as barbacoa, canoa, fotuto, hamaca, iguana, malanga, tabaco, yuca.  
With these words I make machines of memory in flesh and marrow. 
With these words I glide and cleave the tidal waves of history.  
With these words I take root in the quicksands of diaspora.  

‘Tower of Babel’ – The Gospel of Wildflowers & Weeds, by Orlando Ricardo Menes

Common loves,

Cris

Dear Caminoheads,

Some other day, I may share why this topic about closure means so much to me. In fact, it is related to the Camino, both when I first heard about it almost 30 years ago, and when I decided to walk it in 2011. But closure is a gift and a myth at the same time, wouldn’t you agree? One of the best things I was ever told is that grieving is an ongoing feeling, it doesn’t go away with time, but when we are go over the critical period mourning process, what happens is that we learn to live with the loss of those we love (or loved).

One of my fathers, the one who raised my brother and I and played the figure of our father was my uncle. He passed away in the Carnival day on 2013 after a short illness. He had a massive hemorrhagic stroke, kind of like recovered, and had a second bleeding 14 days after. My nephews loved their grandfather; and while my brother and sister in law explained to them what happened, as soon as we arrived to my uncle’s home after the funeral, my youngest nephew ran to my uncle’s bedroom where they used to take a nap together. Now, my youngest nephew is 12 and still if you ask him where my uncle is, he says “he is in my heart”.

On the other hand, despite my uncle always said he wanted his ashes to be scattered in the sea of the beach he adopted as his home, when the moment come, my aunt didn’t want us to do that. She wanted and needed a burial place, a place to go to talk to him. Probably that is why she or her generation and previous generations were educated… the lost ones “are resting in peace in a cemetery”.

I feel like it’s kind of mysterious how important it is for human beings  to have that moment of good bye even after the love one has passed. I read somewhere that the process of the funeral provides “control” and it seems we need some control when we lose someone we love. And it also has to do with attachment, like happened with my aunt, people want to come back to touch base with where this body is, or where the symbol of this body is. Either because it is how we were educated, or because it is part of our beliefs. It seems these burial places play a very great function in our psychological well-being.

I have thought already that I would like not to rip in a cemetery. I like more the idea of becoming a tree for example, but truly truly truly what I would truly love, is “to be in my love ones’s hearts”.

Gift loves,

Cris

Dear Caminoheads,

Today, I had a conversation with a woman who lost her mother to cancer this past Wednesday. There were other 3 women in this conversation too, and each of them spoke of their losses, sadly 3 of these losses were very recent, their parents or parents in law due to Covid-19, so all of their losses are still too fresh.

I told about them about Phil. And I told Phil in a few opportunities (and I shared this with several of you), how grateful I am to Phil for the opportunity of a good bye. Losing someone with whom we had the opportunity to share time, conversations, create memories, etc. all with the attention and the awareness that there are no do-overs, is a powerful experience. Obviously, none of us know when the last conversation with someone who is fairly healthy will be, yet, we live each conversation as if we would be able to pick it up again tomorrow. At some point, with Phil, it became more obvious that “tomorrow” may not be a possibility, so the exchanges I had with him, even if that meant reading his “news from the ranch”, were loaded with a ton of awareness.

This is a topic I have reflected upon quite a lot along my life, when I realized I do not have memories of my mother (or my life in general as a fact). Certainly, there is a physiological reason for that which is that my hippocampus,  the area of the brain that stores memories, was about to mature when she died, in addition to the defense layers created as a result. Likely for this reason, the film “Stepmother” with Susan Sarandon and Julia Roberts touched me deeply: Susan Sarandon was decided to make memories for her children to remember her.

Those are the best of the losses. Losses that are prepared, that are treated with care and awareness. Losses that are used as a tool for enlightening, for “incarnating” who we are to the fullest. Losses who are an opportunity for a gain: grain of memories, of forgiveness, or healing…

On the other end of these losses are the worst of the losses, those that are called “ambiguous loss”. Those are the losses when what we lost, has gone lost without any chance to understand a loss would occur and even less, the awareness it really happened. The term seems to have started with the missing in action from the Vietnam war, and overtime moved to any loss where someone leaves to never return, a plane that disappears and is never found (like the Malaysian Airlines), a Tsunami, even the loss to dementia.

In the middle, there are those sudden losses… losses we do not expect, and I would tend to think these are the vast majority we experience, right?

I have experience in the 3 types, and by far, the best was Phil’s loss. Given we will loss others and others will loss us, wouldn’t it be awesome if we leave with having done a great job at creating memories, obtaining and offering forgiveness and healing?

Just a thought loves,

Cris

I am taking the freedom to post the prologue of a book that touched my heart in a powerful way. This book allowed my heart to see other hearts that have experienced suffering, and were broken into tiny pieces, but became a wonder over time (and with a lot of inner work). The book I am referring to is called “Finding Mercy in this world – A memoir” and it is written by Catherine Johnson (our Catherine). 

Dear Caminoheads,

I just leave you here with the first page of Catherine’s book. If you haven’t read it yet, you are missing quite something… Surely you can get a sense by reading how it starts…

Take a deep breath…

Prologue

For 1500 years, people have been making this pilgrimage.

Our footsteps follow theirs, just as others will one day follow ours.

In the solitude I hear them, feel them moving all around me. It is as if I have entered an invisible, timeless, ever-flowing river of souls. There have been so many moments walking, when I was sure I heard someone coming up behind me, but when I turned to look, found no one there. 

Perhaps though, it is the eternal One who is everywhere, and all the seekers that ever were or will be, including me, are simply part of that great Mystery.

(Journal entry: April 17, 2015, Camino de Santiago, Spain)

A number of years ago during a faculty lunch, a colleague quipped, “There are two questions and one spark that ignite the fire of spiritual seeking. ‘Does God exist? And, does He know my name?'”

“And the spark?” I asked.

“Loss”, he said. Then, in a softer voice of one who has known its pain, “A loss big enough that it rends the fabric of your life, so that all you thought you knew is shredded by the tear.”

…

“Finding mercy in this world” by Catherine Johnson. 2018

https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Mercy-World-Catherine-Johnson/dp/099936460X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3NQ3CT36YMQ44&keywords=finding+mercy+in+this+world&qid=1636155426&sprefix=finding+mercy+in+this+world%2Caps%2C219&sr=8-1

“Our loss brought us here*” Loves,

Cris

(*this is how the poem Santiago by David Whyte starts)

Dear Caminoheads,

Michelle, Phil’s neighbor and friend (and also the one who baptized Phil and Jennifer “Guerrilla Gardeners”, a post a re-posted not long ago) shared with us in the comments some words that Phil recited. I thought to post them here as they indeed summarize how we arrived to Santiago…

keep moving, changing pace and approach,
but not direction
“every step an arrival”

Denise Levertov, Overland to the Islands

Related to this, there are some words that Tesia wrote in two comments that I would like to share with you all, in case you did not read them. Tesia was talking about this blog:

I think it must take a lot of effort, to tend attend to it, or to tend to it as you do, like a garden…a little every day.

Dad, you who tended the garden of the blog every day from the beginning, I have cherished every insight you have shared. It has been a huge gift to have this window into your lovely mind.

Phil and I talked about Tesia’s words in our last talk. We also talked about “modern times” which are characterized by a huge square an-aesthetic project done quick, compared with “Michelangelo times” where a project such as painting the ceiling of a church could take 4 years working 12 hours a day, and many days would be just looking and seeing where the painting would need a bit more of blue, or white. Phil laughed at my analogy that these days are “highway life”, and we are designed for “walking life”. Phil said he just loved Tesia’s analogy as life as a garden… a garden that in order to thrive, needs water, but not too much water, sun, but not all of if needs sun, cleaning with care, separating the trash from the green, etc…

In any case, we are talking about keeping the destination in mind. And we are all talking about being gentle, attentive to the needs of our journey, our pilgrimage, and feeding it with whatever it needs to be nicer for us and the ones who  come with us and will come later too.

Beautiful loves,

Cris

Dear Caminoheads,

One of the other paragraph of Tesia’s words last Saturday that remains in my brain~heart~soul are these below. For the most part, I am a “methodical” person; it was reinforced in my training at university, it is part of my current job where we guide ourselves by following protocols and doing things all the time as much as possible in the very exact same way. But I find myself so many times going down the path Tesia described… “Oh, it is raining… bla bla bla…”

“Well, in this real life fairy tale that we are in now, It occurs to me, God favors the Phil in a similar way. It’s not a direct comparison…but I think dad also had a fairly simple outlook. Dad had a simple idea. A couple of simple ideas. He would walk the camino in Spain, and in the meantime, that he would create his own. And if this is a fairy tale, there are many magical creatures and fairy godmothers who came in, and you know who you are. But anyway, my point is the simplicity of the camino idea. It is just a path! And he did not overthink it, in the sense that did not talk himself out of it. If it had been me, I would have said “well, that was really fun to have that cool idea. If I act on it, here’s what will happen: I’ll wake up on many mornings, and it will be raining. I won’t want to walk. I’ll have so many other things to do. Or, it won’t feel like God is walking with me. The idea will lose its magic…it won’t feel like the platonic ideal, it will be corrupted by all manner of things in reality. But in this tale, God rewards the Phil who has the simple idea, and with a simple outlook says, I have this idea, and so that is what I am going to do. I’ll do my part every day. God might intervene, my doctors might intervene, but I’ll do my simple part every day. “

What would happen if for one of those things we always have had in mind, we just decide to do it? As the commercial: “Just do it”. Not overthinking, not pondering all the “but”, forgetting about the to-do list for whatever time “this thing” takes… Anyway, it is late here and now, I have a ton to think about!

Anti bla bla bla… loves,

Cris

Dear Caminoheads,

Thinking on what to post today, I thought we could revisit together some of the wonderful touching words Tesia wrote for his dad… If you haven’t read yesterday’s post comments, there is one from Ronaldo that may ring the bell with these words below…

The spirit that settled in and took up residence in my parents home in the last few years was the spirit of hospitality. I am struck over and over again by the camaraderie, and the raucous laughter that fills that house, or that spills into the house from the back porch. It is remarkable and beautiful to me. 

I’ve tried to thank many of you for the “support” you provided to dad, and over and over again you mention his generosity of spirit, the enjoyment and deep companionship that you felt a part of. Dad was transformed by this spirit of hospitality that he found in Spain, as well as on his own camino, and home with him it traveled. 

Hospitality… what a word…

May we all be transformed by it loves,

Cris

Dear Caminoheads,

I am utterly and deeply touched by all that we have been living together lately, as neighbors from the Caminoheads neighborhood, as a community of pilgrims, as Phil’s friends, as loving fellows to Phil’s family… I am slow at processing things and I also think that time gives perspective and then, we can overlap the images we took from a closer view with the ones we get from the distance, and the picture (and story of our life) changes completely, it just fills up.

And I went back to the blog, taken by the image Wiley posted on facebook… that was 11 months before last Saturday. And then, I went to the blog from one year ago before last Saturday, and I found a post written by me (ha!) -actually almost a translation from a tale written by Mamerto Menapace, a wonderful Benedictine monk from my country. And I thought it was appropriate to reflect on what happened on Saturday…

I have been thinking on the things that Phil were given, wrapped in the handkerchief that he carried back and forth in his pilgrimage in life… and I wonder too what is that he gave to each of us “hidden” in the bandanas…

Here is the tale:

“Madera verde” (Green Wood) is one of Mamerto Menapace’s books and almost every adolescent who had a contact with the church in the last 40 years read it. A wonderful book for your pocket.

There, he tells the story of “Cancio”, a “guri” (“guri” is the word used in the rural areas by the “simple” people, to call a toddler). Cancio was called by his father who looked worried, and explained that he needed him to carry out an urgent mission. Without giving any explanations, he asked the boy to prepare a horse and told he would need to go to a relative’s house and take “a parte” (a sort of letter or announcement). Cancio was really young and small, his father had to helped him to get on the horse. Once he was sitting on the horse, his father pulled out a large handkerchief, wrapped something in it, and tied it to the waist of Cancio under his shirt. Cancio didn’t know what it was, it looked like a letter and something else, but he couldn’t tell. He was only focus on what his father told him: “Go to the uncle’s house, do not stop to talk to anyone, don’t stop to play with your friends. Go and come back to me with whatever he wraps in the handkerchief.”

And this is what Cancio did. The uncle was anxiously waiting for him. With no questions, helped Cancio off the horse, took the handkerchief, went to the house, and returned with the handkerchief with something wrapped into it again, and tied it back to the waist of Cancio and sent him off with a smile and a blessing.

Soon Cancio arrived back to his father. His father was waiting on a horse too in the entrance of their farm, anxious but also watchful for Cancio. When the boy arrived, helped him to get off the horse, untied the handkerchief, rubbed gently the head of the small boy, and allowed him to go back to play.

Cancio is one of Mamerto’s friends from his childhood; a man of more than 70 years when Mamerto wrote this tale. Cancio told Mamerto that he never knew what was wrapped in the handkerchief, but all he knew is that it was a message to carry, and that both men, his father and uncle, were aware that a message would arrive to them and it was important.

This tale that I read when I was 17 for the first time, calls me to read it again every time I wonder “what is in my possession”, what is “this” that was given to me, and I have to share? Like Cancio, I feel I was given something wrapped in a handkerchief that I don’t know its content, but I know is something for the others. Like Mamerto says, I am sure you know what it is, so I am just here bringing it to you.

Wrapped loves,

Cris

Link to the video  (Eulogy start at about 1:19:56)

The spirit that settled in and took up residence in my parents home in the last few years was the spirit of hospitality. I am struck over and over again by the camaraderie, and the raucous laughter that fills that house, or that spills into the house from the back porch. It is remarkable and beautiful to me. 

In my memory, in his earlier years dad was a more withdrawn person. I think many of us remember those times when his heart was not out on his sleeve…it is worth mentioning because it is evidence of a great transformation. I’ve tried to thank many of you for the “support” you provided to dad, and over and over again you mention his generosity of spirit, the enjoyment and deep companionship that you felt a part of. Dad was transformed by this spirit of hospitality that he found in Spain, as well as on his own camino, and home with him it traveled. 

In my home, with my children, Osian and Freya, we read a lot of fairy tales. Our favorite ones have the moral, God favors the fool. The fool of course ends up a hero, and he is a person with a simple outlook. He leaves home with some idea like he is going to build a flying ship and go marry the Tzar’s daughter. He doesn’t overthink it, he doesn’t talk himself out of it because it is impractical, he just simply leaves home and sets out on his way. Of course he meets a magical old man who tells him, “here’s what you do. You take this axe, you go up to an old oak tree. You take one huge swing at the tree, and then fall back on the ground, and fall asleep. When you wake up, you will have the flying ship. The fool/hero doesn’t overthink this improbable idea, he just says “okay! I’ll do it, that sounds great!” He follows the directions exactly, and he is indeed rewarded with the flying ship.  

Well, in this real life fairy tale that we are in now, It occurs to me, God favors the Phil in a similar way. It’s not a direct comparison…but I think dad also had a fairly simple outlook. Dad had a simple idea. A couple of simple ideas. He would walk the camino in Spain, and in the meantime, that he would create his own. And if this is a fairy tale, there are many magical creatures and fairy godmothers who came in, and you know who you are. But anyway, my point is the simplicity of the camino idea. It is just a path! And he did not overthink it, in the sense that did not talk himself out of it. If it had been me, I would have said “well, that was really fun to have that cool idea. If I act on it, here’s what will happen: I’ll wake up on many mornings, and it will be raining. I won’t want to walk. I’ll have so many other things to do. Or, it won’t feel like God is walking with me. The idea will lose its magic…it won’t feel like the platonic ideal, it will be corrupted by all manner of things in reality. But in this tale, God rewards the Phil who has the simple idea, and with a simple outlook says, I have this idea, and so that is what I am going to do. I’ll do my part every day. God might intervene, my doctors might intervene, but I’ll do my simple part every day. 

And then, I think also in this tale, God favors the Phil who constructs a method, which he always did. It’s not overthinking exactly…but it is a thoughtful structure, a process by which to proceed. He never did anything without a method. 

Every day was organized with a set of instructions on a single three by five card. I am also reminded of the “corn-o-matic,” a sort of jig that dad built to help him plant the corn last year. And here’s another example: when I was 16, dad bought me a $50 car and once it was generally in working order, he came up with a monthly maintenance plan that we would do and it would teach me about how to maintain a car. 

So here’s where I here’s where we get to do an interactive activity. I want you to think: if you had to come up with a list of all the car maintenance activities one should do on a monthly basis…yes, monthly car maintenance activities…I’ll give you part of a minute…Okay tally up the number, turn to the person next to you, and tell them how many you have on your list. 

Okay…so dad came up with a list that was a whole page long…I want to say there were 18 items. It included such things as checking the battery fluid. Yes, there is fluid in the battery. It was more exhaustive than a yearly inspection… But I’ll tell you, that car did live for another 15 years. So God favors the Phil who has his method and sticks to it with fidelity, day after day, month after month. 

As you all know, dad certainly had a method for his camino… the calculation of the mileage, the mapping out of all of the landmarks and towns…The journal to record exactly who walked…the predictable schedule of his walking times. People knew where and when to find him. Every day, or according to the schedule, he did his part. It was simple, and methodical at the same time…it was a structure that could be built upon and that people could join in with. And you did. He was a carpenter afterall, and he knew how to build a sound structure. 

It occurs to me, as much as it was completely unpredictable that my dad became a catholic pilgrim. It makes perfect sense, in retrospect, knowing him, knowing those inner traits…the stamina…fidelity, his simple delight in a plodding kind of progress. Each step was as important as the last step. He never expected any destination to be near at hand…He always expected gratification to be delayed…but he did learn to pop open a bottle of wine with you and enjoy the journey immensely. 

(Ad Libbed line, after the part about the camino method: By the way, when he walked and no one was there waking with him, he would write in the journal “not alone.”)