We will be here for these walks, no need to call, just show up.  Rubber boots are the best thing you can have these days.

Monday 0900-1000

Tuesday 1600-1700

Thursday 0900-1000

Sunday 1600-1700

Felipe.

Yes, the ferrets and the leprechauns have departed to do mischief  elsewhere.  It seemed to me like a really crazy day yesterday,  glad we are back to normal here.  Only so much of that excitement a guy can handle.

Catherine and I are off to the Episcopal Church tomorrow to lead a group in talking about pilgrimage.  Apparently they didn’t get enough the last time I was there.  I think Kelly and Rebecca went with me and now have talked Catherine into going.  They will have great questions to chew on.

And that will end the latest flurry of engagements for Felipe.  Geez five in two weeks.  I am getting my act pretty sharpened up with all this.  In some respects  I find myself back to where I started a few years ago.   Being at one of these question and answer sessions is more about presence than about relaying information.  How I react and zero in on a person’s specific concern is more important to me than my answer really.  Information is in surplus these days,  just Google it.  But being able to just be with someone is rare and appreciated.

Off to finish my taxes today.  Man, what a nasty chore but the light is at the end of the tunnel.   Yup, glad this is a once a year deal.  Glad it is rainy so I can concentrate.

And you, have a good day.  Spring is coming on this Monday, something to look forward to.    See you, love, Felipe.

Some days are like that.  It must be St Patty’s, there are leprechauns crawling all over my day like some kind of Irish Federico Fellini movie.  Not that I am complaining mind you.

How can French roast coffee with two half and halfs in it taste like coconut.  See what I mean?  Mother Mary seems the only one being straight with me today.  But I’ll be keep my eye on her.

Speaking of her I am reading “Regina Coeli” – Art and Essays on the Blessed Virgin Mary by Father Michael Morris.  It was a gift from Our Catalina, our art historian.  Lucky me.  I might be the most beautiful book that I have ever had in my hands.  In my mind there is nothing that compares with Christian art.  Regina Coeli translated from the Latin means Heaven’s Queen.

I remember vividly sitting in dark classrooms watching art history slides and being some impressed and mesmerized by Christian art.  What were those artists on anyway?  I want to be one of those guys when I grow up.

Well, I have a late lunch date after my treatment and then back to the ranch for a big St Patty’s Day corned beef and cabbage feed.  Catherine y Dana, Wiley y Hanna and My Rebecca will be there.  Mr Guinness will probably show up.

See you tomorrow, greenish loves, Felipe.

In the December 2016 edition of National Geographic there was a fascinating acticle entitled “The Healing Powerof Faith”.  It was largely about placebos, healers, shrines and the power of the group.  How expectations can influence our health and ability to fight pain.   At the very end of the article the author started writing about pilgrimage and I’d like to quote some of it.

“Nowhere is the power of group belief more evident than in religious pilgrimage…”

This was about the religious pilgrimage to the healing place Altötting, Germany:

“Everyone is here for their own reasons, but they are all here for each other just as much,” said Marcus Bruner, a cheery priest and 27 year veteran of the walk.  ” The group carries you, and you carry the group all together.”

Here are some email communcations between Commando Bill, one of my cancer buddies, and myself.  We live here on Vashon, we travel to Swedish Hospital for treatment and we walk together at Phil’s Camino.  We have known each other for at least a year and have been through some serious ups and downs.  And we have figured some stuff out.

BILL – Watching The Way … it’s long, that’s good. The juxtiposition of the disparate personalities so randomly thrust together holding on to each other like magnetic poles rejecting each other … takes one in.

It’s only a story, made up, yet it has an engrossing feeling to it. We don’t choose the way, it takes us.

I hear there is another story about a fellow on Vashon. I will watch that one tomorrow morning.

PHIL – Thanks Bill for being with us today, a merry band we are. Off to the big city tomorrow. I have to go get some sleep.  ( He was with us for the 909th lap that day after getting back here from his treatment.  And then I am off to treatment the next day.)

BILL – Hope it goes well. I feel pretty good tonight. I need sleep to. Great get together!!!

PHIL – At the mine.  ( I’m at the Treatment Center the next day and feeling sorry for myself.)

BILL – strike gold, buddy, all those nice people there  (See that how he turned the mine, a place of drudgery in my mind,  to a place of possibility with just a few well chosen words.   As the priest said, “Everyone is here for their own reasons, but they are all here for each other just as much.”)

Yup, for each other loves, Phil/Felipe.

If you by chance are coming to Phil’s Camino in the next month wear your rubber boots. Or if you come anywhere near the Great Pacific Northwest wear your rubber boots.  It is crazy wet and we are supposed to see the sun til Sunday.  That seems appropriate.

Dispite that we were out there in the elements yesterday to finish our second walk across Spain.  We had seven walkers and three big Rhodesian Ridgeback dogs tearing up the trail.  Yea, the end of 909 laps, seems impossible sometimes.  Of course then we had to have tapas and wine to wash those down.

What strikes me is the realization how much effort goes into a Camino walk that last forty days.  That is the time the average walker does it in.  Compare that to six months for the first Phil’s Camino here and a year and a half for the second.  I am just blown away when I think about how much we did in Spain in such a short period.  But what we do here is good, it is appropriate.

So please come by when you get a chance.  You probably need a break from doing your taxes about now, right?  Rubber boot loves, Felipe.

This PM the Phil’s Camino gang will be at the Cathedral of St James having completed 909 laps of Vashon countryside.  Could it be so?  Catherine y Dana will be here, back from all their social engagements.  Commando Bill will be here after all day chemo.  I’ll try and get Rick and Kelly.

Wiley said recently, “What’s next?”.   Well we thought that walking out to the Spanish coast and back would be good.  I didn’t have a chance to do that in 2014 when I was there.  But we will do it in the backyard like always.  In my hand is the Brierley “Camino Finisterre” so we can’t get too lost.   So come join us.  We will do this on our same schedule.  Remember now that afternoon walks start at 4 PM for six months.

Also, coming up this summer is a one day Camino at the Santiago de Compostela Catholic Church in Lake Forest, CA.  I finally made up my mind to try and do that.  It is on my bad chemo weekend but will figure it out.  That is July 22.  This will be a chance to see Southern Cal friends and catch up.   So, put that on your calendar.

I have to go here quickly as Quick Rick will be here momentarily.  We are moving the cabinets from the wood shop down to church with his delivery truck.   Oh boy, should be fun.  Alright, have a good day there,  Santiago loves, Felipe.

We just got done with the Monday morning walk.  Cynthia came by with her two dogs and we all got wet.  Yea, what fun.  So tomorrow, God willing we will be able to do the 908 and the 909th laps and be on into Santiago.   We are going to start at 1600 and will probably have some tapas and wine to celebrate.  So come if you can.

Yesterday just immmediately after the walk there was a mature bald eagle that landed in our north pasture.  What a sight.  He was there for half an hour, just resting I guess.  It is unusual to see them at ground level.  This is the time of year when we see them the most often.  Some more Wild Kingdom.

Also in the news is a book coming out in July entitled Mission Walker.  It is written by Edie Littlefield Sundby.  Is is the story of her cancer camino, a walk through the missions in California and Mexico, the Camino Real.  I am looking forward to checking that out.  Somehow we are FaceBook friends.  I can’t exactly remember how that happened but anyway yesterday we put two and two together and figured out who we were and started conversing.  She is a major Cancer Commando and it is an honor to be around her.  So I am sure there will be more to come on that account and I will keep you informed, meantime Mission Walker has a FB page.

So little odds and ends of news from here at Phil’s Camino.  It is all “so far so good” around here as my walking buddy Bill puts it.  Remember your intentions for Lent, don’t let them drift away.  St Patrick’s Day coming up Friday.  Things happening loves, Felipe.

Hurray!  It is the daylight savings time switch today and we are switching our afternoon walks to start a half hour later starting today.  Even though we have more light the weather is

always iffy this time of year.  There is standing water on he trail so wear rubber boots.

Monday 0900-1000

Tuesday 1600-1700

Thursday 0900-1000

Sunday 1600-1700

We are going to walk two laps this afternoon and walk the final lap into the cathedral tomorrow at 0900.

Thanksgiving, Felipe.x

Post 3
“I had walked from Leon to Santiago in 2011, and that was a life changing experience for me. When I went in 2014, I was mainly aiming for some time for myself, to be back to synchrony with my own rythm and needs, a change from what my life had been the previous 2 years.

“My Camino experience until that day in the Albergue Guacelmo was not “as revealing” was I would had expected, or at least, that is what I thought. I was enjoying my time with my Camino family, several of them met in the first night in Orizzon, I was enjoying my walking time with my pilgrim friend from Canada, and I was enjoying the conversations with so many other pilgrims that while not walking with me daily or not being part of “my Camino Family”, were (are) part of my Camino. But I often times found myself that I was also “following” their times, their wishes, their plans for the day… not fully synchronized with my time, my wish or my plan for the day.

“That was a daily question: “how do I combine all the good and enjoyable and care that I get with them, with this need of me for time, for coming back to my rythm, to follow my wishes?” At the end of the day, wasn’t that why I left to the Camino? Wasn’t that why I did not have a book to follow or thought I would not be booking albergues?

“The Albergue Guacelmo was one of those albergues where you can only stay if you have walked with your backpack, the doors open at 11:30, as many other albergues, is run by volunteers and despite they have more beds, they only run it full if there is a massive flow of pilgrims, otherwise, they only take 35 pilgrims.

“The day I was there, the check in was lengthy, we were invited to sit one by one, as in an oral exam at university. The hospitaleros were a couple from South of England, the man took our information, and the woman was showing each of the pilgrims the rooms. Unbelievable, after one hour, they called us by our names and in the corridors or in the patio, they would make questions about our countries or our work or our family at home.

“When I set up the chairs in the patio to treat the blisters of the Irish Pilgrim, the hospitalero man gave me a look that I will never forget. Later, as the German lady wanted me to check her knee but language was a real barrier, the hospitalero woman came with a dictionary and tried to help with the translation. In the evening, the hospitalera already in pajamas, came to sit with me in the kitchen as I was waiting for the Young Pilgrim for his dinner, we chatted a bit about the Camino experience, they had walked the previous year.

“The following morning, the hospitalero man served as breakfast, he toasted the bread for each of us individually, so we could get fresh toasted warm bread. I couldn’t really believe their attention to the detail. She was greeting each pilgrim at the door, in pajamas and with a robe, with a handful of keys hanging from her neck –It reminded me the nuns at school!- and to each she was asking whether we had picked up all our belongings, our tooth brushes from the bathrooms, our lunches from the fridge, our walking sticks, and was sending off each pilgrim with a hug and a kiss, as if we were kids going off to school. The final blessing was a “Buen Camino, X” (X was our name). How could that be? She had met us less than 16 hours before…

“When it was my turn, she asked me to leave my bagpack and go with her to “the hospitaleros’s office”. It was a cluttered place with signs and books, and papers, a phone, a desk computer. She closed the door and handed me a post card. She recited the poem that she wrote on the back, and she wished me I could live those words as I walked the Camino and my own life. She said I should find a life I would be happy to live. I was crying, she was crying, she gave me a hug I won’t forget, and we left the room. There were some other pilgrims waiting for her to say good bye, I went back to the line, and when it was my turn, we hugged again, we took a picture, and I suddenly knew my Camino lesson was that one. That morning we walked to Cruz de Ferro, the stone I carried from home was full of a new meaning too.”

Cris

All good, check out this post on yours truly:  https://noteaday.com/2017/03/11/day-70-phil-volker/  .   This is Steve Watkins blog “noteaday”.  I finally got my personal day, it was worth waiting.

Steve has this project for 2017.  He is writing a post, one a day, for 365 memoriable people.  I made day 70.  He has a long way to go and we wish him luck.  I have learned a lot already reading it everyday.

We are back from our showing in San Francisco.  It was just down one day and back the next.  It was for a group of professional people in the medical field.  We did well with the showing and the QandA.  We all got along great.  Maybe we will get a chance to do it again.

The sun just broke through here.  Man, it was raining like it was never going to quit this AM.  Sort of a minor miracle.

OK, I’ll have to leave this a little short today.  Look for the sun break where you are.  Love, Felipe.