Conversations that need to happen

The Camino is a conversation-igniter. We had conversations with other pilgrims, with the hospitaleros, with the owners of the shops, with the farmers, and certainly with ourselves and our own story. Phil (and Felipe) in Caminoheads keep us in our toes to do the same. And Wednesday’s post “Stay Productive My Friends” challenged me, once more to have a conversation with myself, and hopefully with you all, like in the Camino. Is it true that the only option we have when life gets hard is to stop living?…

It is easy to think we don´t need to reinvent the wheel once more, that we don’t need to find a “work around”, why would we? “Stop walking if you have blisters”, that is what we have to do, that is what others always did…Why should we do something different?

Like “people with cancer die”… but then we have Phil WITH cancer FULLY LIVING. I thought how this conversation we are having here challenges me… and challenges this concept that “this is how things are”.

The truth is that the obvious is not so obvious, and what has been in front of us or has been part or became a part of our “always”, or of our “new” identity, often is seen as just a birth mark that cannot be changed, something that has nothing to provide other than what already did, even it is a horrendous present, and hence we will walk with it until the last breath, un-questioned.

Some time ago I listened to David Whyte (English Poet) explaining his poem “Working Together”. He wrote that poem per the request of the Boeing Company to celebrate the anniversary of one of the planes. And he came up with the idea that we can fly in planes because what existed since always: air and shapes, were seen with new eyes, were questioned, and engaged in a conversation that had never happened before, despite they had been there since “always”.

Like the rounded shape and the plain ground.
Or the stone and the friction.
And life and its challenges.

And Phil’s post set me off to think in this idea of David Whyte: which are the parts of me that need to talk to each other? Which are the conversations that are yet to happen? What will I see if I let the familiarity go, the concept that “this is what has always happened when…” ?

Working Together

We shape our self
to fit this world

and by the world
are shaped again.

The visible
and the invisible

working together
in common cause,

to produce
the miraculous.

I am thinking of the way
the intangible air

passed at speed
round a shaped wing

easily
holds our weight.

So may we, in this life
trust

to those elements
we have yet to see

or imagine,
and look for the true

shape of our own self,
by forming it well

to the great
intangibles about us.

Conversational Loves,
Cris