Just copied that word “perseverants” out of Cris’s last comment about Farmer John’s Friday post. Spell check thinks it’s bogus but some of our best words are bogus. Maybe it’s the new hip word that just got birthed. Spell check liked ”birthed”. I’m not sure that is a word though.
Sometimes life is confusing like that. Maybe it would help to capitalize it and then it would sound like a sports team. Or maybe it is like The Commitments which was a film about a band with that name. Maybe we need a sports team jacket with The Perseverants arched across the back in bold letters. Then we could see if that looked right.
Anyway, I think her idea is sound. I just reviewed Farmer John’s post and it talked about being enamored with things that last. We seem to be lasting here at the blog. Not earthshaking are we but just a constant soft vibration that you can hear if you are in a quiet place and listen intently.
But the Perseverants must be folks that have a certain bent, a certain way. There must be a commonality in the thinking or the sensibilities or the purpose. It also might be that they appreciates a certain sense of history about things.
I don’t know, just kicking around ideas here today I guess. Time for lunch here now and I do know that. Thanks for being here as always.
“The pilgrim route is a very ood thing, but it is narrow. For the road which leads us to life is narrow; on the other hand, the road which leads to death is broad and spacious. The pilgrim route is for those who are good” Codex Calixtus 1140 AD
Long before I became a Pilgrim on the Way of St. James, I had been a fan of “things that last”, be it a well-made tool or a well-used book, or a prayer that had provided succor and hope for generations. This penchant for the permanent was probably, yet unknowingly a driving force behind my immediate recognition that this journey was something I HAD to do.
My early conversion to fan-hood of Phil’s Caminoheads Blog has led to other like-minded Blogsters (Google thinks I made that word up. Maybe I did). Phil’s Blog is perhaps the epitome of “Long Lasting”. There are others that have attracted my attention and won my loyalty. Paul Salopek, for instance, is on a multi-year walk around the world, and writes a splendid blog called “Out of Eden”. He is now in his third year of trekking. He is following what is thought to be the migration route of all of us humans from the beginnings in Africa. His skill at writing of these all-encompassing experiences is superlative.
Phil Jenkins has walked to all 88 Temples of the Shikoku Pilgrimage in Japan. His journey has also lasted for ages and his photos are wonderful!
And a free spirit and intrepid sojourner from the last century could put me and most other infrequent long-distance walkers to shame, though from her writings, it is clear that she never would do that. She started walking in earnest while yet in her teens, and had walked much of Europe by the time she was twenty. The Orient was her true fascination, and she spent may years walking in Tibet. Her legacy is long, and she lived to be 101. There’s that “things that last” again. The following is a quote from one of her several books.
“I climbed barren mountain-tops. Long tramps led me to desolate valleys studded with translucent lakes … Solitude, solitude! … Mind and senses develop their sensibility in this contemplative life made up of continual observations and reflections. Does one become a visionary or, rather, is it not that one has been blind until then?” Alexandra David-Neel.
The point I make today in my Stand-In-for-Phil-Blog-Rotation is that this preoccupation of ours with “our” Camino creates the ultimate ripple effect with all those others of our ilk. It’s like, ya know, we’re connected.
The new woodstove all cranked up. Getting ready for November.
The last day of October, Halloween it is. Not that we have ever had a trick or treater. The driveway is too long and scary for everyone.
The last day of the regular deer season today. I was out last evening before dark and saw two small bucks close up but couldn’t grow them any bigger by looking at them hard. Well, still got this evening and then there is a four day late season around Thanksgiving.
The wood stove is running all day and night and will be for a long while now. Yea, and the new little stove is working out nicely just have to get used to it’s quirks, likes and dislikes. Every morning it is a special ritual that we go through to resurrect the flame. And the ritual is different than the one that I had with the last stove that we had for twenty years. Have to figure out the finer points of the new dance.
All this might seem a little primitive or quaint to some of my city friends but it seems to make sense out here. Some of us have to live out on the prairies or in bayous or on islands.
We recognize things, we build things, we use things. It is what we do in between feeding ourselves and fighting wars and other such “necessary” activities. Somehow we need to touch the beyond on a regular basis. We can’t live on bread alone, someone important said that.
As we walk our laps here at Phil’s Camino we are participating in this quest. As we walk a labyrinth we come into contact with that bigger thing. We travel to a shrine to touch something that doesn’t seem readily available in our daily lives.
Henriette brought a friend yesterday by the name of Donna. She works with labyrinths. She knows about people too. And she try’s to get labyrinths and people together. That is my very basic understanding. So I have been thinking about that this morning.
Of course Catalina enters my thinking when on these topics. We enter into this world with her words. It resonates with us, this talk, these ideas. We long to touch this other place with her.
Thank you Henriette and Donna and Catalina for this news that you share with us. Thanks for pointing it out and bringing it into focus.
I usually check through my emails before I get into writing the daily blog post. And just now opened a wonderful email letter and stack of pix from William our CCBC. Since we are walking out to Muxia from Santiago on Phil’s Camino he kindly sent this material to compliment this. So, I will skip writing today since this is so great and I will just sit back and smoke my pipe. Wait I don’t smoke a pipe. Anyway, here is William:
“Good morning Felipé,
Do continue to enjoy the warm weather on Vashon.
Here it was minus 9F wind chill as I shovelled for an hour this morning. 🙂 🙂
The Pilgrimage from Santiago to Finisterre to Muxia was,for me, a most rewarding Journey.
Many memorable experiences including helping a local farmer with the birth of several Lambs.
Finding a secluded beach, just before Muxia, to fully strip and submerge my body in the cold Atlantic Ocean.
Don’t forget to do this.
I wish you “Buen Camino”.
With Joy.
Your C.C.B.C. William.”
Thank you William. That is a wonderful addition to our walk. You were very timely in sending that in to headquarters. Off I go to my day. Walking later in the afternoon then tapas.
Pic from Farmer John, the last of his standing unharvested corn.
A Monday toward the end of October. Fall is in high gear and the leaves are piling up. Wiley harvested a buck yesterday, My Rebecca is grinding our summer corn and Farmer John is wrapping up his harvest.
Had a nice walk yesterday afternoon with friends and their sister from out of town. We tapaed inside in the kitchen afterward because by that time we were all chilled. The tapas table outside soon will be neglected soon til I’m guessing April or May about the time to start working on the corn again.
Yup, quickly slipping down the old slippery slope into winter. But we know how to do this, right? We got this! Just a matter of keeping the spirits alive and nimble. We will be walking all winter and tapaing around the new woodstove so don’t stay away.
Off I go to the Monday morning trek. What hardy souls will show up? Our new Phil’s Camino walk is from Santiago to the coast and Muxia.
Beautiful pic of Annie with Padre Tomas at Veranda time, August 2019.
Maybe a week ago Our Annie had a post somewhere, probably FB. Wish I could remember exactly. But she said something very interesting and I have been thinking about it since. She was writing about the difference between being ON the Camino and being IN the Camino.
We have all heard the phrase “being on the Camino” a billion times. And we ourselves use the phrase endlessly. But Annie comes up with this elegant little change, “in the Camino”.
Yea, I get the world of it right away!
This is the kind of stuff that we have been kicking around on the blog forever and here it is put in its a very nice tidy form. Being IN the Camino. And that translates into Living the Camino even though you are physically elsewhere. Yes, that is what we are talking about!
It is the way to live or maybe the Way to Live. It is the internalization of the Way INTO our lives. Thank you Annie, this is priceless.
And with that I am going to exit for today. Our Seattle Seahawks football team is playing right now. Got to go but think about it.
I went to my Bible Guys class this morning like every other Saturday morning. It’s been a long time that I have been going, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen years. I would need some help figuring that out but maybe unimportant really. But the point is that a short time before that maybe a ya ear or two that group started up.
And that starting up was the work of David and Bill. Bill has since moved off the Island to be at an assisted living apartment. So we miss him. And this morning at our class we learned that David has passed away. He was with us last week just like normal.
I am mourning this loss along with the rest of the guys. Always thought of Bill And David as the adults at our gatherings keeping us in the lines. So now it is up to us to carry on.
And then there is Helen, Dave’s wife of numerous years, got to be something like 50. She always did the hostess thing when we met at their place. I feel for her and the rest of the family of course. And another big “of course” is the idea that she was probably the source of his enthusiasm for studying the Bible in the first place. I would have to guess that.
Well, that is all that is on my mind today. It fills me up. Be back tomorrow with a new perspective. Thanks for being a friend and listening.
Steve-O here, a NWBC, FOF (Friend of Filipe) and former Vashon Islander (28 years) before moving to Southern Oregon and now to Portland, Oregon. I met Phil and Rebecca when I was looking for a home for one of my Flat Coated Retrievers. I was very picky about the home he’d go to; I didn’t really want to part with him. After looking for a year or so, a friend called and said she’d finally thought of the perfect home – great people, lots of property, a serious hunter to boot. But, she said, I probably wouldn’t really like him that much, we were too different, philosphically/politically. Welp, Sture found a great home, I’ve enjoyed Phil as one of my absolute best friends, work and hunting partners ever since– and our dogs got to play and hunt together for several more years. Big Lesson: how many connections do we bypass because we’re timid about approaching and listening, mindfully, to the soul of others? In this case the dogs, Sture and Trygve– who had no expectations except to expect good times and dog food– led Phil and I into their happy, devoted world of in-the-moment joyfulness and humor.
Via the blessing of Caminoheads, I often wonder about the core sensibility of being a pilgrim. I think that Sture and Trygve ( and now Rasmus, here) lead the way on that, too. Mindfulness practiced, learning the way to be centered in the moment, was the way we could see and feel how the dogs experienced life every day– the Be Here Now idea– which allows the wonder of the moment to envelope us. Practice, I say, because practice is the operative word for me as I begin to dive in, in earnest.
It’s a pilgimage to Right Now, as I expect the step-by-step moments on the Camino became at some point. The deep spirituality of learning to center oneself in the moment is for me enticing, seductive and liberating. It has all to do with how I’m starting to understand discouragement and anxiety and fear, not as my reality, but as thoughts that pass through my awareness. Real thoughts, but just transitional thoughts. Or feelings. Just transitional feelings. And thoughts and feelings are known to be, in the practice of mindfulness, just like cloulds and storms passing through the limitless sky. They’re not the sky, they’re just passing through. Things we can observe and appreciate as we can observe and appreciate beautiful clouds and stormy skies.
While we keep on walking.
The Camino is a real place. The Camino Experience is a metaphor we get to encounter here, via the Caminoheads community, every day. A place to remember to that it’s not the ‘doing mode’ but the ‘being mode’ – moment by Playful-Dog-like moment– that nourishes our souls.
I like this. It’s SO Raven Ranch:
The Bright Field
I have seen the sun break through
to lluminate a small field
for awhile, and gone my way
and fogotten it. But that was a pearl
of great price, the one field that had
the treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying
on to a receeding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.
R.S. Thomas, Collected Poems
Just a rough guess but about twice a day I get discouraged. Pretty much I am able to talk myself out of it or something seemingly random occurs to inspire me. I am sure that it is pretty much the same for you. Steve Watkins our friend the writer had a post on FB that was a little inspirational one about “keep walking”. And that little thing was what I needed.
In Annie’s book Everyday Camino with Annie my quote there was something like, “At first I was trying to conquer the Camino and now I am just happy to be walking it.” Something like that. That idea is getting pretty close to how I view life anymore. Sometimes it seems I realize that it would be healthy to understand that it’s necessary to be happy with the struggle of it all. Like Lieutenant Dan up in the rigging of the shrimp boat laughing at the storm.
