When you find out about the Camino, it’s because it found you, you did not find it. When you happen across the movie, “The Way” and you watch it and it is not just another good movie, rather, a call to action for your soul, that was the Camino pulling you in towards it. It found you, you did not find it.
When you are on the bus towards the airport, it’s the Camino pulling you. When you are on the plane headed towards Paris to then find the train to Bayonne and then Biarritz, and end up in St. Jean, the Camino pulled you there. Come “Hell or High Water” you were going to end up there. That’s just what the plan was. When you were born, the Camino knew it, and then it waited for the perfect time to show you the Way and then it pulled you. When you cast your stone on top of Cruz de Ferro for something or someone that mattered to you, it was the Camino that brought you there.
Now, for whatever reason, and I truly don’t know why, the Camino does not pull everyone towards it. It gravitates to those whom it wants to pull. Those around the people being pulled cannot in most cases understand why. I don’t understand why, but when I was on the plane, the train, to St. Jean Pied de Port the day before my 40th birthday, I was assured in my soul that something greater than me was pulling me towards it. When it was finally my turn to answer where I was from while sitting at the communal dinner table at Orrison Albergue my first day of my 40th birthday and people from around the world sang me happy birthday, I knew then, that the Camino brought me to them, not them to me.
You do not find the Camino, the Camino pulls you. It was you it wanted.
Cheers:)
Ryck
Ryck,
Thank you SO much for sending this post and sharing how is that you ended in the Camino and your Day 1. I cannot agree more with you. To me, there are pilgrims and there are hikers; there are people who end in the Camino for the reasons you describe in your post, and people who end in the Camino for a walking vacation. None is better than the other, they are just different; but some of us are lucky enough to be there for the reasons you described; whether the pilgrimage is easy or not, it is another story but still related to being lucky for the opportunity.
Thank you SO much.
Finding your email in my inbox with this post made my day.
Buen Camino Peregrino!
Cris
Amen, Brother!
Yes, it certainly pulls us in. For me, my husband picked up “The Way” at the video store. He liked the director, I fell for the Camino. I was so obsessed with it that I spent several months researching before deciding that yes, I could actually go on this journey. It wasn’t planned this way, but for me, I too ended up starting the Camino in St Jean on my birthday, my 58th. And I sat at the dinner table in Orrison that night.
Joy
So glad “it” pulled you, Ryck, else I’d never had the pleasure of knowing you. And all those others, similarly pulled. I am continually amazed at the “goodness” of all those similarly “pulled” folk. My life has truly been enriched by those connections.
SF,
PFJ
Hallelujah Ryck.
You hit the nail on the head.
When I spoke to the students at the Calgary Waldorf School, just days before I left for this Pilgrimage,I told them I had no idea what this Journey was all about.
I said “all I know is that the Camino has told me to come and this I will do”………………..
Dear Ryck,
Perhaps the Camino pulls those who can best live, reflect, interpret, and share their Camino Experiences, giving heart to many far and wide. With thanksgiving for all those pulled.