Had a great coffee meeting yesterday. Finally after a few years of bumping into each other we got a chance to spend a few moments together. Carla is the rector at the local Episcopal church. I have gone to various services there over the years and I gave a Camino talk there. But it was good to sit down and work out the fine points of history and talk about where do we go from here.

I worked her over with Camino talk, a fresh ear. Don’t we love that? We also talked about luminaries that we both knew in common. I gave her the rundown on my Cancer Camino. She talked about her upcoming retirement which will be a big change. With all her upcoming free time she will be at Phil’s Camino for walk and talk. Yea, we will look forward to that. We can walk and search for signs of spring.

So, what I got out of the talk is important. This to me is the value of spendng time with spiritual advisors. They clarify my local personal environs. I am able to get past the mist and the mud that I usually operate in. OK, so what did this clarity reveal? First she characterized me as a “hungry heart”. Yea. I like that, I can live with that and more I can build on that.

And then secondly that “hungry heart” has a practical application. Somehow this Felipe coming out of the mud and the mist of grassroots life has been able to run into or bump into or stumble into some amazing situations, territory and relationships. How did that happen? How does that work? We could try to answer those questions but the real point is that Felipe is just an average guy, without degrees or money. And he stands for the idea that anyone could do this too, this isn’t rocket surgery as they say. This is the real value of the Felipe story, that it is attainable. Thank you Carla.

Well, just reporting on life in the neighborhood. Remember Pilgrim Farmer John as he goes in for his new gleaming hip joint. Remember Our Jennifer and me as we go in for treatment tomorrow. Pray for us and pray for the thousands of stones on the pile a few feet from here, each has a story.

Always attainable love, Felipe.

My dear walking partner, Kelly, who I talked into going to Spain with me, is a retired elementary school teacher. He has lots of experience keeping semi formed individuals on track and moving forward. This served him very well getting old Felipe from town to town dispite the numerous distractions of August in Spain.

One of his favorite lines that he would whip out at dull times was, “Let’s review.” And we would go through a list of important items that would keep things orderly for us. Man, I have to love the guy. I think our banter was hilarious for people within earshot all the way accross. Love you Kelly!

Anyway, I just want to “Let’s review.” with you the fact that Terry Hershey’s wonderful weekly blogpost comes out Monday morning. Just finished reading it with my bacon and eggs. Well, this is so highly recommended that I am just bursting at the seams. For instance the story about Saint Brigid of Ireland is worth the price of admission right there and check some of the others you get thrown in: Mr Rodgers, Yo-Yo Ma, Leonard Cohen, Walt Whitman, Rumi, C.K. Chesterton, John O’Donohue, Donovan, Joan Baez, the Anna’s Humingbird buddy and the family of Dark Eyed Junco. Yea, see! Love you Terry!

OK, just Google “Sabbath Moment” before you get caught up in the day’s, week’s, year’s details. So glad you all could make it, loooooove, Felipe.

I promised you a weekly report on our current location on Phil’s Camino second walk “across Spain”. It is not like we are moving quickly for our weekly distance, six miles plus, is about the same as the distance that we walked before lunch each day in Spain. But we have other things to attend to called life these days.

That said, we are a little over 2/9ths of the way across. We have a strange 1/9 fraction. Since there are 909 laps total, every 101 is another ninth. Today Catherine y Dana and I walked three laps in the falling snow to complete the 219th lap.

So that equals 192.72 kilometers from St Jean, the beginning. We are past the cities of Pamplona and Logrono with Burgos still a long way off. So after Logrono are the towns of Navarrete, Ventosa. We are through those and we have Najera less than a km ahead. Look, can you see it.

It’s not like there is a bad Mass really but some are just sweeter for some reason, like when you tasted ice wine for the first time. That’s the wine made from grapes after the frost resulting in naturally concentrated sweetness. Yea, you say, “That’s where I want to live.”

In the end it is alperfect, but we know that, love, Felipe.

Actually it is the Good Luck Southern Dinner that My Rebecca made yesterday as she always does on New Years Day. The centerpiece is a pork roast which is surrounded by side dishes of sauerkraut, black eyed peas and corn bread. We had four guests to share this with and there was a report of good luck coming in from one of those. So yes, I think that we are starting off on a good foot here at Raven Ranch.

What else do we have for you? I decided that it was time to wade into my office and start cleaning house. It is currently close to gridlock. It is amazing how far down the priority totem pole paperwork can get in my world. I am sure that this is not that uncommon. Please tell me that.

I also started a map on a whiteboard at the rock pile on Phil’s Camino to illustrate where we “are” in Spain on our second walk that we are on now. Then maybe in addition it would be good to have a regular report here on the blog about this, coming out say every Sunday. OK, let’s try that mañana.

Also, there has been a report of Our Annie having talked with Ken Burns about the Phil’s Camino documentary. Yes, this is THE Ken Burns together with THE Our Annie O’Neil. This was totally unplanned by them. Remarkable things continue to occur when St James is afoot. Let’s all of us keep alert to possibilities that seem to come out of nowhere.

Well, I could continue to write away here or go and start on my office clean up. Thinking that it would be good to have some heavy equipment to push the piles around or perhaps some pyrotechnics to loosen things up. It is sort of like an archeological dig and I need to take more care perhaps. Or perhaps I should quit talking about it and just start. Yup.

Here we go clearing the deck to take on 2016! See you tomorrow, love, Felipe.

We ended 2015 with a final post about après earth wear. Those jammies do not have feet in them by the way, that would be a bit much. Don’t want to look like an adult version of Ralphie in his bunny suit. We are ever fashion aware here at Caminoheads. And now at the beginning of 2016 let us keep the same light heart and walk on to perhaps our finest hour.

Go Notre Dame, beat Ohio State, love, Don Felipe of Viana.

Would it be OK to show up to heaven in my new elk jammies? Just a random thought I had this morning before too much coffee. You know when you are out on the edge thoughts tend to lose their worries about appropriateness. They don’t seem to care what anyone thinks about them any more.

This is related to a wish I had to die in the Elk Hotel. The Elk Hotel is a marvelously serious winter worthy tent that we have used for years on various and sundry trips to the Middle of Nowhere hunting the elusive __________ (fill in the blank). It’s original light green canvas is overlaid with the brown from woodsmoke. It has provision for the use of a wood stove, it has a porch and a fly for insulation in the really cold. Yea, all the comforts.

Well, it is New Years Eve. Another chunk of the future coming up for us to be challenged with and to romp around in. Well, let’s see what happens, elky loves, Don Felipe.

Nice phrase and it is sticking with me this morning. I feel like I am experiencing that more and more these days, not all the time but still noteworthy. Something has changed in the last month to calm me down in a very deep way. I’m reporting here and attempting to give myself and you a rough idea of what’s going on.

This all started back at least a month ago when I started a meditation exercise that I came up with. A guy that can build his own Camino can come up with a reasonable mediation practice, right? So, to review, I am quietly flat on my back in the early morning hours practicing, putting to use, my times of sleeplessness. The idea is that I am inviting God in to the site of my cancer to bring some peace and harmony to that area, to that battlefield.

This lead to me starting to pay attention to my lungs in a very intimate sort of way that had escaped me up until this point. It had been some obscure place that I couldn’t access but now I was there seeing for myself the chaos, the damage, the disharmony of that area in the very core of my body. And going there with God to bring some relief was changing things for me, I was breathing easier, so to speak.

Next time I am at the hospital I am going to have the staff give me a graph of my blood pressure readings over the last four months. The last two times I was there my numbers we good for me, that being in the last month. Was something showing up?

Anyway, this morning I was doing my practice and the thought came to me about how closely my chemo was resembling the military move where you call air strikes in on your own position. Why would that happen? Well, it is the ultimate “jump the shark” move and obviously only done when there is no other option. The situation is that the enemy has overrun your defenses and is among you and that is only going to get worse for you and as the commander you call in death and destruction from the sky on the whole mess. Your guys are smart enough to know to dive under some cover last minute will fare better than the enemy who has just arrived and has no idea of the layout and is running around on the surface. Well, that’s the theory and the result is not going to be pretty whatever because we all know about theories.

Yea, well this has been just a little bit of reportage from the front. Just a reflection on the last two years of calling in air strikes on my own position over and over again every two weeks. It is definitely starting to resemble the movie Groundhog Day with it’s repetition. Am I trying to do something different all of a sudden? Have I learned anything? I guess so.

Here we are creeping up on New Year’s Eve. It is cold here just like it is supposed to be, I guess. OK, enough of this loves, Felipe.

“Don’t get overwhelmed”‘ that’s the very first rule of the Cancer Commandos. Whatever it takes to achieve that is a priority. Just as championship football games are won with defense we do the same to keep the general disarray of life out of our headquarters area. Once we have a solid area to work from we can go on the offensive.

I am bringing this up today because I feel a whole bunch of New Year’s anxiety around right now. Terry was talking about it on his blog yesterday. The boat is rocking with all kinds of random energy about shortcomings in 2015 and possible fixes in the coming year. OK, reassessing is good, making plans is good, all that is good if not done in last minute panic mode.

Somehow the phrase, “jumping the shark” comes to mind. Don’t ask me how I know this or where I heard it but… It’s supposed genesis is way back in the production of the “Happy Days” TV show featuring the Fonz, the ultimate cool guy. The show’s ratings were flagging and the writers were tasked with coming up with something really big to turn the momentum around. They came up with this water skiing episode where the Fonz jumps over the giant shark and escapes to happiness as only the ultimate cool guy could pull off. Well, somehow it didn’t have the intended effect on the ratings and the phrase came to stand for an effort that has that feel like the classic Hail Mary pass in football. Meaning, success is something that needs some underpinnings; it’s way more than a last minute desperate move.

I am talking mostly to myself here when I say, “relax and do it the right way”. OK, I got that out of the way. Time to get out the wrenches and other tools and work on the underpinnings. See you this afternoon on the walk or tomorrow here, skip the shark loves, Felipe.

Yup, the bleak mid winter but we are still walking on Vashon. Areas of the trail are periodically flooded so rubber boots or pacs are apropos. We want to be fashionable, right?

This should be the schedule for another month, till we get some more light in the afternoon. Then we will switch back to the 1600 starts for the afternoon walks.

So come please. Sometimes we have three or four pilgrims and sometimes I walk alone with the birds. I never know and that is the sort of beauty of it for me. And if you arrive late, hang out for a few minutes and we will be around.

Monday morning 0900-1000
Tuesday afternoon 1530-1630
Thursday morning 0900-1000
Sunday morning 1530-1630

And if you are coming from a distance and those times won’t work we can maybe get you a special time with some notice. It’s really not all that complicated and it is achieving a life of it’s own, so no worry. Buen Camino, Felipe.