Dancing Flames and there on top of the stove is the steel Camino shell that Kelly Sorvig made for us.
Thanks to Ron for the Friday blogpost allowing me to goof off yesterday. He did a pretty darn good job beating up on fear which is always welcome around here. Fear has had the run of the place for too long now. So anytime anyone wants to saw it’s legs off you are welcome.
So yesterday with all my free time I am watching the tube probably baseball now that it’s playoff time. And there is an add that I have no idea what it is for. This is not uncommon these days with me though but beside that it is for some medical condition called PV. What the heck, should be a law. Can’t just use my initials on some ailment that I’ve never even heard of. Who do I write?
Well that’s the peaks and valleys (PV) but the real news is the intrepid new wood stove. Still getting used to it’s operation. Playing with things to get it adjusted. But am I the hero for getting it hooked up for this Fall weather? I like the Operation Instructions calling for “dancing flames”. None of this smoldering stuff for us, dancing flames all the time. OK, I’m on board with that.
Welcome to another “B” team posting, this time from Ronaldo, the Bureau Chief in Spain. Like the other Bureau Chiefs, I don’t know what my responsibilities include, but I’ll just use the Camino model and put one word in front of another until we get there and then celebrate.
I see the Camino as a life model compressed into weeks instead of decades. Like many, the movie The Way got me into this. Then I met Annie in Six Ways to Santiago. Then I met Phil via Phil’s Camino. Movies delivered a vital base for my Camino experience.
I started in St Jean in September, 2016 and fell in love with hundreds of pilgrims and Spain, Astorga in particular, as a place to live. My Ann met me in Santiago and also felt good about Spain.
I took Ann to see Astorga after walking from Porto in March of 2018 and she loved it too. So we are now living the good life learning the culture and language of Spain.
What seeds can I plant in your garden today that you might harvest blessings from in the coming days, and hopefully share part of the harvest with others?
Let’s dive in deep and bury the thought “Fear Not” in a shallow depression in your richest soil. Many of our friends said we were ‘courageous’ or ‘brave’ for moving to Spain. I disagree. Fear is the sharpest tool in the enemy’s kit and there is lots of it around.
Nothing new, the bible contains the phrase ‘fear not’ some 80 times I am told. Must have been an issue early on as well. I’ll let you find a few of those verses and read them to nourish your seedling and hope that your fearless life is fruitful, that love abounds and that you come visit us to tell us your story. I have not yet met a stranger, fear not.
Thank you all Caminoheads, Rebecca and Filipe for making me feel part of the family. We WILL be at The Veranda next August, fear not.
It will be a short blog today as I find myself more involved with correspondence these days. But Ron Angert our guy in Astorga reported that Karen Kelly our gal in Cambridge, England showed up there for a visit. And they sent a pic.
We are experiencing some beautiful days in between the rains. I am walking momentarily, the Thursday morning walk. It is lovely but we are expecting rain later today and lasting for a few days. Yea, that how it goes. But we hit the trail in most all weather.
Hey look there’s Felipé and Sture. This was drawn up by Rho’s Aunt Charlotte.
The days are getting shorter and the temps are steadily falling. October it is. The trees are starting to turn with the pears leading the way with a dark red. The deer are getting real serious about gathering calories to put on fat for the months ahead. And I haven’t started to get organized to start feeding the birds. Think that I will wait for the time change.
The new wood stove sits in it’s spot on the hearth. Today is the day to clean the chimney and hook it up. Have to start adding heat to our living quarters. No foolin says Rebecca. Then the propane tanks need filling. That is the fuel for the cook stove. Don’t want to run out cooking the Thanksgiving turkey. With wood and propane we are not dependent on electricity which can be down for days some winters.
We had tapas out on the deck yesterday with Henriette. We were all bundled up with sweaters. But it was bright and dry, so good. OK, just looked up when daylight savings is over for the year. It is 2am PT Sunday November 3rd. So, the walk that day will start at 1530, a half hour earlier til spring.
Off I go. Off to work on Autumn, a time of change.
Snow on Sunflowers from William, Cochrane, Alberta, Canada.
Cris has Spring in Argentina, William has snow in Canada and we are somewhere in between. Time is cooking by and maybe the next Veranda isn’t so far away. This will have to be short today as there were lots of Comments to read and lots of emails to answer. Correspondence takes up more and more time.
Had a great letter from a man that brought his two small sons to the showing in Seattle. I see a father taking his little men very seriously. His letter was very thought provoking and and genuine. We have a great audience.
Last night we got the throughly enjoyable chance to have dinner with Terry Hershey and our longtime friend Nancy. Terry has a outstanding blog entitled Sabbath Moment. It comes out every Monday like clockwork. Check that out when you get a chance.
We had a frost last night, the first. The new wood stove is close to being hooked up but not quite. We have lots of beautiful maple firewood ready to go. Maybe by the weekend.
The Bureau Chiefs meeting, August ‘19. Left to right: William, Felipé, Cris, Rho and Farmer John.
Five weeks is not a lot of time. But something new has appeared since our spectacular get together. There has been a shift in our style and our sharing. It is subtle but noticeable now and Farmer John pointed to it in his comment today.
The blog is less Felipé’s blog these days as other talents start to participate and express themselves and their viewpoint. I don’t mind this and welcome it. It has been my intention to have this happen for a long time now. And somehow it just sort of evolved as of late.
It is sort of a shift of gears. And it’s affects will become more apparent as time goes on. We have developed trust in each other and we have begun to work together in a new way. This is all very exciting. Ultimately who knows where this is going to take us but it can’t be a bad thing.
Off I go. A beautiful morning walk coming up. We are then on a drive down to Olympia to pick up a new wood stove. Have a dinner invite this evening after all the work is done.
The discussion about National Tinfoil Week. This cracks me up.
It’s quiet now and two days past Friday and the showing of So Far So Good. It rained and hailed but we persisted. And the wonderful QandA. I am so so honored to be part of those happenings. That one had especially gratifying with tremendous chemistry.
Elsewhere we have news from the Camino, yes, the Camino de Santiago and Astorga specifically. I think that this is a first. We had a meet up between one of our Caminoheads, Debra Jarvis with Ron our Bureau Chief in Astorga. Debra was here at the Veranda and several days after that she was off to walk the Camino. I had been texting with her and set her up with our folks who live along the Way. Yes, very cool.
Ron , Caminoheads Astorga Bureau Chief with Debra Jarvis.
I’m happy. Here we are making news locally and abroad. Sort of almost a juggernaut!
It’s a little old German church on Capital Hill, Seattle. We were lucky to know a great person Nick a lay pastor there. He wanted to show Phil’s Camino there for the neighborhood. Unfortunately it was a crazy evening with a downpour including hail. But people showed up. I guessed that we had sixty, a quarter of which were some of my nurses from the Institute.
Nick somehow wrangled the long version which is always fun for My Rebecca and me. It still seems like the first time we watched it. I love the hummingbird story and the more Wiley and the more Kelly. My Rebecca and the National Cheese Fortnight tickles me.
But the high point of the evening for me was the QandA which sometimes turns cosmic like it did there last night on the Hill. There were people there that were struggling with cancer problems and I got to talk to them. I am totally humbled and deeply honored to be able to do that. Those folks combined with the energy of all my beautiful nurses was great chemistry.
I wish we could film these events when they happen but they are way too intimate for that. Just have to do them one at a time I guess the old fashioned way.
But a lot of folks were interested in coming out to walk the trail. And for sure there are new folks reading our blog posts today. Yes, a bigger readership is welcomed. Yes, welcome all you new folks!
So time to head out for now, starting a new work project today. Need to pick up and transport materials to our shop. It’s my semi retirement hustle.
So as always love and appreciate you all. It is an amazing pleasure to know and work with you. And let’s not let the rain spoil our fun either.
Hola a todos! Yes, that is surely the righest way to start!
Followed by: bear with my English, Spanish is my first language!
You may know me already, as The Boss, aka, Phil/Felipe, has talked about me a couple times,… but anyway: I am Cris, I am from & live in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I was invested with “SACBC” South America Caminoheads Bureau Chief, which I accept very humbly and live with high responsibility as it includes the Spanish and Portuguese speaker communities from Colombia to Antartica (as I write this, I wonder if I take care of Central America too??? but that is for a private email to the boss… and a different number in the check!) When not busy in affairs that the SACBC role implies, I have a busy job in the “corporate world” of Clinical Research, working on the development of treatments through clinical trials.
But if you ask me who I am, I am a Pilgrim. Even when my days go by commutting into the city, and sitting in an office with my computer and phone, I am a Pilgrim. Clinical Research is just what I do for a living.
I had that sense of having become a Pilgrim when I came back from the Camino in 2011 (after walking from Leon to Santiago). But it was difficult to feel I was living up to my Pilgrim identity dressed in business clothes, taking trains and subways, and walking only from the elevator to my office… but the connection I kept to the other pilgrims, my Camino family, was what made me persevere in being in the world who I was: a Pilgrim.
Fast forward January 2017, I came across the trailer of Phil’s Camino in the Facebook, I visited Caminoheads, left a comment, and the next thing was an email from Phil inviting me to a Skype call… and the Magic started… My Pilgrim and human identity are reinforced through the daily interactions with Phil and the Caminoheads. Since then too, I not only have a Camino Family, but also a Camino Neighborhood. And in this neighborhood, the neighbors like to invite each other to the living room of their homes (although we are posh and use the word “salon”, as the French do!) and we have amazing conversations about books, life, death, blessings, suffering, love… Very often we sit outside in the Tapas Table and we drink wine, break bread, and share our gifts. Most of all, we walk together and encourage each other, sadly, we haven’t lost weight, but it is all muscles of generosity and beauty…we have grown a lot…
How do we do all of this living 6800 miles away? Well, we have “figured that out”, that is what Pilgrims do. Believe me, I also wondered if “all of that is true”, and then we had the Veranda 2019 and now there is no doubt…
New neighbors, new family members and new homes that opened their doors to me Loves,
