Elk Hotel in the smoky Gifford Pinchot National Forest. James had his trusty drone along. (photo J Hyde)Close up of the Elk Hotel with Wiley, Felipé and James. (photo J Hyde)
Just when we are all tired of being housebound with the covid we have an air quality disaster here on US West Coast. We have the worst air quality in the world here now and it will be bad for the next couple days. Maybe some rain coming to rescue us. Geez.
Wiley and his friend James and I went up to the mountains for the weekend but we got smoked out and we are running back home a day early. I have to get inside to some conditioned air. Right now we are sitting on the ferry dock waiting for the next boat. We had zero cellphone reception up where we were so this is the first time that I got to be with you.
Thank you Ron for your post yesterday. I am so grateful for my Bureau Chiefs. Such a happy neighborhood!
A flock of Canada geese going over me, honking and honking. Maybe they will fan some of this smoke away from me. No joke this is really really bad. Please pray for us here.
I think that I will leave the Camino closed for tomorrow even though I am back. We are all supposed to be inside. I intend to take the next two days and get caught up on my homework. I have a bunch of reading to do for the blog book that Catalina and I are putting together.
“Unusual, un-virtual Camino experiences this week. Thursday morning was filled with a short walk west of Astorga to the memorial garden in Valdeviejes with none-other than Stephen Shields and Johnniewalker Santiago of WeWalkForYou2020.org. We looked at the progress of planned improvements to the garden area and envisioned the way it might appear when completed. It was a great followup to tapas and drinks the night before celebrating “Buy a Priest a Beer Day” in Astorga. What? You didn’t do it? Add it to September 9th on your calendar.
Then at 11 am our friend Tomás picked us up and took us to his wife’s childhood home in Santibáñez where the extended family spends the summer months. Tomás was preparing some food from the garden and all was pretty normal until his wife, Marycarmen, arrived and encouraged us to leave the kitchen. So Tomás took us where he spends the middle of most days, the local Albergue.
Yes, a local guy meets other local guys at the albergue and enjoys drinks and tapas. Back in the US I called this the ‘Geezer Table’ found in many family restaurants. I admit to having occupied a seat at this table more than once. Same guys saying the same stuff to each other for years. Tomás told our story in proper Spanish (I wish I had recorded it, it sounded so good!) and we got to know the guys around the table. Some were cousins and brothers and the like. Then Marycarmen showed up and you could tell she was a regular at the table too! The tapas and drinks were informal and great – croquetas, mussels, patatas fritas, aceitunas – and the conversation was wonderful for us as only one person spoke at a time at a leisurely pace. Nothing heated or contentious.
What had me from the start was that local folks congregated at the albergue in this small town. Today two pilgrims were at another table, but I understand pilgrims often join in the conversation with the townspeople.
So what’s the point here?
Just as Felipe walked a pilgrimage on his farm in Vashon Island, and many of us are participating in virtual Caminos online, and Stephen and John are carrying others’ prayers, intentions, or things to the Cruz de Ferro, these local people are realizing another level of what our hearts are led to experience along the Camino. They are witnessing pilgrims, even in this unusual year, they are communicating in a supportive and loving way, and yes, they are enjoying the tapas, coffee and cold drinks enjoyed along the way. We were first-timers at the table and were accepted immediately and non-judgmentally. Sounds like the Camino to me.
Wrapping it back around to the White Eagle posts this week, “You need to be well and strong. And for that, there is no other way than to maintain a beautiful, happy, and bright vibration. This has nothing to do with alienation.” I sure experienced that with both The WeWalkForYou team and the albergue ‘team.’
Please be looking out for your chance to do so too! ¡Buen Camino!
With bright vibrations love,
Ronaldo“
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Hair on Fire. Thanks Jim and Jen for help on this self portrait. (photo P Volker) (photo P Volker)
No time like the present they say. The direction is coming clear. It won’t be a straight shot as the road is cluttered with debris and wreckage. It seems like a long way from the here and now to the portal but the more we walk the easier it will get. We will learn the best way to do things and it will be easier.
Let’s quit spending our precious energy worrying and dithering. We have been walking around in circles in the uncertainty and smoke. It is time to go now!
We won’t need much just the basics, nothing fancy. We have done this before. If we can keep our flame burning we can concentrate on that and not the uncertainty swirling around us. We are together. It is time to go!
Terry Hershey and Felipé with our Grace Bower prayer shawls. Getting our photo taken for Grace’s birthday. (photo N Pendergast)
White Eagle’s words have served to crystallize my thoughts during this strange time. I had my thoughts but they swirled and eddied uncontrollably. But now I see the beginning of the trail.
The goal or the Santiago of this journey is to get through that portal that she talked about. “You were prepared to go through this crisis. Take your toolbox and use all the tools available to you.” We have been trained for this, extensively I might add. We have to realize that! We have these tools!
Getting through this current ordeal joyfully with energy left over is the next challenge, the next Camino. Little did we all know several short months ago that we would be on this road and on this road together. It is all Buen Camino again!
This is the only road right now. Isolation and depression take us through the hole to be lost. Getting on the road is getting away from that. We will be together again. Can you see it? We know how to do this. Can you see it?
We had a terribly smokey night although at the moment the air is clear. There are fires in Eastern and now Western Washington. The strong winds are fanning the flames and blowing the smoke around the State. Hopefully this will all improve.
I am a little preoccupied with this but trying to break away to be with you. One thing that came in was, it was an amazing thing, was that Padre dreamed up a poem about me. And now instead of being preoccupied now I’m self conscious. Geez, cut it out. I was trying to get it here to the post but as of yet can’t navigate that. Maybe I will try again.
Well that is not in the cards for today. I can’t figure out how to move it here to the post. So, just as well for I never had a poem written about me and I am trying to get used to that. Thank you Padre though.
So, I have been thinking a lot about the words and ideas from White Eagle in yesterday post. I feel like I am still digesting her words bu t we will go back there soon. For now I think that I will go.
“This moment humanity is going through can now be seen as a portal and as a hole. The decision to fall into the hole or go through the portal is up to you.
If you repent of the problem and consume the news 24 hours a day, with little energy, nervous all the time, with pessimism, you will fall into the hole. But if you take this opportunity to look at yourself, rethink life and death, take care of yourself and others, you will cross the portal. Take care of your homes, take care of your body. Connect with your spiritual House.
When you are taking care of yourselves, you are taking care of everything else. Do not lose the spiritual dimension of this crisis; have the eagle aspect from above and see the whole; see more broadly.
There is a social demand in this crisis, but there is also a spiritual demand — the two go hand in hand. Without the social dimension, we fall into fanaticism. But without the spiritual dimension, we fall into pessimism and lack of meaning. You were prepared to go through this crisis. Take your toolbox and use all the tools available to you.
Learn about resistance of the indigenous and African peoples; we have always been, and continue to be, exterminated. But we still haven’t stopped singing, dancing, lighting a fire, and having fun. Don’t feel guilty about being happy during this difficult time.
You do not help at all being sad and without energy. You help if good things emanate from the Universe now. It is through joy that one resists. Also, when the storm passes, each of you will be very important in the reconstruction of this new world.
You need to be well and strong. And for that, there is no other way than to maintain a beautiful, happy, and bright vibration. This has nothing to do with alienation.
This is a resistance strategy. In shamanism, there is a rite of passage called the quest for vision. You spend a few days alone in the forest, without water, without food, without protection. When you cross this portal, you get a new vision of the world, because you have faced your fears, your difficulties.
This is what is asked of you:
Allow yourself to take advantage of this time to perform your vision-seeking rituals. What world do you want to build for you? For now, this is what you can do — serenity in the storm. Calm down, pray every day. Establish a routine to meet the sacred every day.
Good things emanate; what you emanate now is the most important thing. And sing, dance, resist through art, joy, faith, and love.”🌎
The barometer climbs. The sky is blue. What else could go right? I am pretty sure Catherine is off on a little hiking trip with Dana and a guy with some llamas, pack llamas. So I have to do our church alone here today.
I am so happy for some routines that give some structure to my life these days. Little deadlines are here and there to be met. Otherwise I’m afraid my day would be a big mush.
Yesterday I completed the soil tests on our four different plots of land dedicated to growing food and flowers. Afterward I called up my buddy Herb, the land guy, to put orders in for lime and fertilizers. The lime goes on this Fall and the others go on in April. We had some pretty big failures of crops this year and we can’t blame it all on the year 2020. Time to feed the land and regroup.
Our soil situation so mirrors other aspects of my life now that I think about it. Remember back about a year ago when I realized that I was so
focused on my cancer that I had been neglecting other needs of my body. And I felt so much better when I addressed those. And my beloved truck was the same, as long as it went forward and stopped that seemed good enough. But then too many small things were adding up to make the situation unworkable so it took me two weeks and some treasure to get that all fixed. Now with the land I have concentrated an some aspects without worrying about others. And that works for a while until it doesn’t.
And come to think of it maybe that is the same with our society. We have concentrated on certain aspects and disregarded others. And that works until it doesn’t. Time to rebuild to achieve the proper balance. Bu it is opportunity to be seized though rather than doom and gloom to be endured. There were some beautiful and haunting words that were on Face Book from an indigenous woman describing our current situation. She said in times like these life can either appear as a hole or a portal. You get sucked down into the hole and die or you cross through the portal to something on the other side. She teaches us that this has happened before to peoples so we are not alone in this. It can be done.
William sends us the view from his boat. Always on the move! (photo W Hayes)
I have no direction today as I write this. It’s Saturday and am working on testing the soils in our various gardening and farming spots. And starting to split some firewood for a friend. Dr Zucker(Danger Zone)is going to show up this afternoon for a visit. Mariner’s Baseball game tonight. That’s what my day looks like or my proposed day. The unexpected will be in there too I’m sure.
We had Bible Guys Zoom session this morning. I missed it last week because I was on Annie’s Pilgrimage in Place Zoom QandA meetings. Art joined us today. He is the overall leader of something like fifty five small men’s groups in Western Washington. He visits on occasion. Somewhere we in our rambling conversation we talking about the Apostles and he was saying that they were probably all teenagers. It was a thought that I had never had any time.
Teenagers, really? Of course those were different times and they weren’t exactly teenagers as we use that term. But none the less they had were strong on energy and short on perspective. They seem like such knuckleheads on a lot of occasions. And it is really not until the visitation of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost that they receive understanding. But before that their slowness and cluelessness runs rampant. But their is a reason for that and we forgive them just as we can be slow and clueless. But in this case it leaves the opportunity for Jesus to further explain which looks like it is for their benefit but is really for ours.
So time marches on for us in our situation. School opens for the kids. Colleges open and close again. The news is still a little of this and a little of that. Nothing is for certain except our own personal strengths. Additionally God’s help is needed for us to maintain in this trial. Ask for help early and often.
Walking the Camino is all about the experience. What great memories have I collected from the dust and mud of it. Have you noticed when listening to a pilgrim who has walked one of their favorite stories is about the time they got lost. This happened, then that happened and so forth. That to me turns out to be a memorable grade A experience. So “getting lost” is really an unexpected added experience that would have been lost, so to speak.
So concentrating on the experience of it all we can appreciate so much more. Usually the best stuff happens at those unplanned times, those out of the ordinary times and places. Maybe things are a little or a lot out of control. That happens. But generally with a little help we get back on the trail and back to the familiar.
Right now we all sense we are off the trail as we search and grope along. It will all be a memory soon, something to talk about with the grandkids when they ask. But today the sun shines and the sky is blue just like the best of days.
Please know that you are not alone in all this. Reach out if you need a friend or help finding the next yellow arrow. We are here for you.
