I open the door and a pretty young lady is holding a big bouquet of flowers.  A gift!  Wow, I feel like the winning jockey at the track.  So, it was Annie sending some love our way.

I am so impressed by the quality of the writing that has been flowing in here lately.  It is as if we shifted gears somehow.  We are starting to create our own weather around Caminoheads.

Here is Annie from LA:

It is a rare rainy day here in Southern California. Nothing makes me happier than thinking of you and Charlie walking three times in the sunshine. What a blessing you are! What a blessing Charlie is! What a blessing your Camino is to all us Caminoheads near and far! You walking in the sunshine is answered prayer, my friend. The title of my spiritual reading today is Unifying with the Spirit. Maybe that is part of the answer to Lin’s question. Maybe what you are doing, what we are all doing, is unifying with the Spirit. What else is there, really? Ultreya y Suseya my pilgrim friend.

Here is Sherie from San Diego:

We’re with you, Phil. As Annie said, I love you. I love you. I love you. The Camino has connected us all together. The field of stars has cast a bright light across the sky wherever we are….all connected by the glistening white against the dark sky. We make up the sparkle, the flicker, the awe. All together….it has shined bright in the sky…..those little stars are holding hands with each other. Feel it….. ❤

Well geez, I’m going on vacation.  It doesn’t get much better than this stuff lately.  See what I mean?  What a bunch we are!  So glad to be included!  Happy to be in the same playpen!  Heaven in our back pocket!

I don’t know about you but I feel pretty darn uplifted.  I might even try peeking out of the trench here.  Oh, look the sun is out!  It’s been a long siege.  Winning jockey loves, Felipe.

I am so extremely happy to list Steve as one of my good friends.  We have shared work, camps, campfires, shotguns and dogs.  One of his major talents is conjuring up gourmet mushrooms.  Well, then there is his writing:

What have we figured out?

From way over here, Buddy, seems like a lot.
1. That nothing gets figured out– as past tense with a period at the end. It’s the figuring that is the pilgrimage.
As in, keep on walking/keep on figuring.
2. But, we’ve learned a lot about how to figure. Or I have, at least, from you. We’ve learned that Figuring means taking Figuring seriously. It’s not a whim or a notion or a vacation– it’s a serious spiritual quest, to know oneself in the grand scheme of things as a mysterious, magical part of that scheme. I love Rohr’s messages on this.
3. We’ve figured out that looking inward takes time and quiet; reflection; meeting one’s ‘significant insignificance’ as purposeful pilgrims — and that looking inward then compels looking outward– to others.
4. That each day has enough to meet and grapple with and experience and love– Matthew 6:34 stuff. Be Here Now stuff. ‘Now’ matters more than yesterday or tomorrow– it is, after all, all that actually IS at the moment. Meaning comes with the reflection that happens later.
5. Ease and Grace. Ease. And. Grace. Joanna’s term for what authentic spirituality asks us to aim for. To experience each day– whatever it holds– with Ease and Grace. Oh– I am so easily triggered to NOT be this… (Note to Steve: read #1-5 again!). It doesn’t mean passivity. It means living in purposeful mindfulness, I guess. You lead me/us there, to be honest.

6. That aiming with intention and discipline towards all of this seems to mean not missing life, but ‘doing life’. ( Joanna again). To keep on walking. Finding community. Knowing one’s family in awe. Experiencing love. Experiencing the love that is made manifest in joy, in grieving, in hoping, in reflecting– in enjoying breaking bread together.

I’m just learning, slowly, to Figure.

Thank you for that.

Your pal
Steve

I am so glad that Steve is here with this in the nick of time.  I still am feeling pretty darn low.  Trying to ride out this late winter crud that I seem to have on top of everything else.  But that was a very nice piece of writing, thanks Esteban, you’re a peach.

Anon, nick of time loves, Once Again Felipe.

Yea, whatever appeals to me, I’m consuming.  It’s open season.  I need to turn this weight loss around pronto.  But it looks like a beautiful day happening here alao.  Maybe I will get outside a few times.  We are working on pruning the few fruit trees that we have, I could maybe finish that up.

Anyway, I don’t have a lot of time hear now.  Walking in a few minutes.  Maybe Charlie will be here, our neighbor.

And as a matter of fact Charlie did show up to walk our three laps in the sunshine.  I was telling him about our quest to answer the question “what have we figured out?” that was posed by Lin recently.  Lin doesn’t know what a turmoil she has caused with that.  The dear girl is like a hit and run driver speeding off from the scene.  Anyway,  with all my spare time I have been thinking about answering that.  Both Cris and Catherine have put down some great thoughts on the topic.  As for myself, somehow I am too close to it to see it clearly.  I wrestle with it daily and the analysis of it all should probably be left to someone beside me.  That is my current thought.

One way to explain how the relationship between me and my cancer works is to start with the idea that I have a relationship with my tumors at a very basic level.  They know me and at know them.  Which is different than just having a relationship with my cancer as sort of an abstract thing.

And when I go into this reationship I am following a certain template that I always use.  And the easiest way to relate it to you is to tell a story from my childhood.  As a boomer born shortly after the Second World War we boys often related to the history of all that.  I was always fascinated by the guys who would go in to disarm unexploded ordinance.  Sometimes it would be sort of a routine operation where  a known piece would be worked on and things would go smoothly till a safe outcome would be achieved.  Other times , maybe a new never seen before  device would show up.  So, our guy would be out there on his own with a radio reporting each move, as he made them, to try and find the way to a safe resolution.  Everyone else is back two hundred yards listening and learning.  So, maybe that guy dies in the process but eventually with enough guys and enough radios a way will be discovered.

So, that is how I see my mission as I approach my tumors.  At this level one doesn’t know what is important or not.  Everything is reported and a body of knowledge hopefully begins to form.  I will probably die in the process but something valuable may be learned and that is the point.  So, that is the basis of what I do.  I am not sure that I individually am able to figure anything out.  But when people get together and we talk our salon talk ideas do come together and interesting notions start to form as a result.

So, going long today, sorry.  Recovering loves, Felipe.

Just a short note to you all.  I went in today for news of the scan and for treatment.  It was sort of a good news/bad news deal.  The scan was good showing a 10% shrinkage in the tumors.  But the two month effort has left me too beatup to get treatment.  So Nugget sent me home to recoup for one cycle.  Try to gain a few pounds back.

Some I am home at the ranch.  Will be making it out to the airport to pick up My Rebecca this evening.  So, that’s the situation.  Catch you tomorrow.  Please pray for me. Love, Felipe.

Off to the big city with Catherine in a while to get a scan to see how my lungs are doing.  Two months of treatments accomplished and now to see what is happening.  Thanks for all your thoughts and prayers.

Wiley and I were out pruning our plum tree yesterday.  I worked for half an hour before I ran out of steam but it was a gorgeous day and I couldn’t resist trying.  It is right along where we walk the trail and Wiley found this brand new pair of reading glasses in the grass.  They are 2.50 strength with brown frames.  Who knows how long they have been out there.  Are they yours?

Time for a shower and shave.  Hope everything is well with you.  Love, Felipe.

Monday morning and have an precious hour to be with you.  I am going to walk at 0900.  Blue sky out there right now overhead.

Well, we lost Rho.  Well, we didn’t really but she isn’t physically present this morning.  Ah, she will be missed.  Like all our guests she left certain jewels and hopefully she took some with her from here.  By jewels I mean inspirations or methods that we can now employ.  One lovely practice that she played with was picking up three things from the environment and making little collages.  Then rearranging and maybe rearranging once again.  The pics of my rosary with various other items were her works.

I walked only one lap on Phil’s Camino with her and then I had bad symptoms and couldn’t continue.  But when I said that she could walk alone and it would count in the logbook she just took off and did seventeen more laps in the next few days.  Yea, enthusiastic!

We had some time to talk about archery and we got one archery session in.  We will have to continue later as we just hardly made a start on it.  I did get a chance to give here a beginning lesson on praying the rosary.  Hopefully that is a jewel that will stay with her.

Well, that is sort of the bad news that Rho has had to go.  And the good news that I have been waiting to announce is that I have been chosen to go with the Order of Malta on their annual pilgrimage to Lourdes, France.  Just got the official phone call yesterday afternoon.  This is happening in early May.

And the bonus to that is that Padre Tomas the official unofficial padre of Caminoheads will be going with me as my care giver.  This is an unbelievable occurrence really.  There is some sort of chemistry that will certain take place.  Fasten your seatbelt Felipe!

Now in this time before the pilgrimage I will be preparing.  Lent will help immensely just as it did for me before Spain in 2014.  Please pray for me and Phil.

All good loves, Felipe.

Here I am inside on the blog couch and Rho is out doing some laps before breakfast.  Seems so odd to change positions.  I am always the guy going past the window on the outdoor side.  Oh look, I think she is doing another lap.  Since I told her that her laps without me would count in the logbook for getting closer to Santiago she has been at it.

Yesterday we reached Villatuerta, Spain on Phil’s Camino.  It is approximately 40km west of Pamplona.  The pic above has the beautiful bridge over the Rio Ega.   All the old bridges were so impressive.  How many pilgrims have funneled over them since their building in what year?

Oh, there goes Rho and she has Hanna with her.  Wow,  some kind of movement going on out there.   I’m just going to hang tough on the couch.

There has been some bad news in the neighborhood.  I don’t often talk about the neighborhood here on the South end of Vashon.  There is a very talented woodworker down the road here has just gotten injured in his shop.  He and his family belong to St. John Vianney Parish.  Please pray for Marcus.

OK, that’s what it looks like today.  Rho is back making her breakfast.  Thankful loves, Felipe.

Had a three hour conversation this morning with Rho on things archery and things Camino.   Wore me out.  It was just supposed to be writing and I fell asleep in the meantime.  Rho just walked three laps on Phil’s Camino while I was snoring.  Glad someone is getting something done around here.

Somehow in all our conversation we were able to connect the archery path with the Camino path.  Which was very cool.  It is maybe a truism maybe the the Camino can be connected to anything somewhere someplace.  The connection maybe is history, or inward fortitude, endurance or what not.  Don’t have that sorted out.

Here are some pics that Rho came up this morning:

Well, we have been busy if not slightly disjointed.  The sun is out and we are going to shoot some arrows here in a little bit.  I need to get my energy together.  Here we are,  life with Rho, love Felipe.

Ron from Virginia got that in his fortune cookie recently.  “It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.”  Yea, a good thought to start out the day.  And our day here looks like snow and Rho.  We have this cold streak with the white stuff to go along with it.  And in addition our friend from the warm place is visiting, Rho from San Diego.

There has been so much good material come in from our amigos y amigas from all over. I have been richly benefiting from all that.  I am continually searching for clarity with our situation.  We know that we are holding a jewel but just what is it?  While we converse Catherine longtime Caminohead just emailed in a comment which I can share:

Good Morning Felipe,

I really enjoyed reading Cris’ post (Our Bureau Chief from Buenos Aries) about what we have figured out here at Caminoheads. It was such a thoughtful and well articulated response: once a pilgrim, forever a pilgrim; fellow pilgrims are a treasure; we are all connected. I am not sure how to add anything more without being repetitive. However, in the spirit of on-going dialogue, I will give it a go. Think of it as another lap around the trail.

Ever since the Camino it is easier to see everyone I meet, and know as a pilgrim, each carrying their own particular load. This point of view makes it easier to extend grace to people and situations that once before might have annoyed, confused or frightened me.

On the Camino it seemed effortless to simply be in the present moment. Here, there are so many distractions, competing engagements, never-ending “to do” lists that pre-occupy my mind. Walking with you reminds me to let all the other stuff go and come fully present. Like the other day when it was so cold and windy and we found that the little corner of field bathed in sunlight and protected from the wind by the hawthorn hedge. That bit of winter warmth was so welcome. We stopped talking and just stood in wonder and grateful silence for what seemed a long time. And then we just started walking again. Be open to miracles, even the tiniest ones.

Finally, I am growing ever more aware of the impermanence of things: relationships, situations, material goods, health, vitality – nothing escapes its eventual passing, and creation is on-going. Like the changing of the seasons, good fortune can slip into ruin, and ruin can be dissolved by kindness and suddenly appear as good fortune once again. We all come and we all will go, this state of mind makes every minute more valued. On the Camino we walked with some for a minute, with others for the whole way. I was surprised how important even those momentary companions became to my journey. When we walk and tapas here, whether on your trail or through the virtual landscape of this blog, we are moved, changed by the conversations, the comments, the time together.

OK that’s my two cents worth. Many blessings Felipe, Cris and all caminoheads everywhere.

Catherine

Yea, we are so rich!  I have to go and make some things happen.  Love, Felipe.