Then in Galicia, it was a breath of warmth

from a kitchen door, palatial with light

and a daughter’s smile, the family behind,

asking you in, as if to say, of all shelter,

traveler, you’ll ever find on the road,

even with those you know,

the stranger’s love is best of all.

REFUGE’ From ‘Pilgrim: Poems by David Whyte’

Dear Caminoheads,

I will probably write a more decent post tomorrow or during the weekend, and I will get back on the comments and the emails too, thank you all for writing and specially commenting in the blog, as Phil said, that is how the blog breaths! (This week has been a bit bumpy down here.)

Nevertheless we have short sweet news to share… The Caminoheads community is expanding into social media. We know that Phil has shared with us his concerns earlier last year, prompting us all to watch the movie “A social dilema”, but surely our content will contribute to goodness…

Ryck proposed the opening of a facebook group for the post Oasis, which is called “The Oasis 2021”; and the Caminoheads blog is in Instagram under the name “Caminoheads” (we started the instagram as a mitigation for connection when the blog went down, but it might be good to keep it considering it might be engaging and the content will be the same).

They have place for all. And both are Covid safe. Show up!

Social closeness loves,

Cris

Dear Caminoheads,

So, what’s next? These days feel like the days after getting to Santiago and partying there, don’t they? Now, we have to make a decision, and for us, it seems right to keep walking… Maybe on to Finisterre, or Muxia, or maybe back to St. Jean, or maybe back home, but if there is something known to us is that we have to keep going, but keep going by walking.

I know we might be tempted to think we are done because we arrived, but as pilgrims, we know that the Camino starts once you get to Santiago. And it seems that this is a well expanded metaphor: this time, our Camino starts once we have gotten to the Oasis. Now, what is next?

The answer is not “let’s wait to see what future brings”. Remember, we are pilgrims. We have to leave a trail, a path. Even not present at the Oasis, I know what is my path forward, and would love to hear what or which is yours…

So, for you, what is next?

Walking on loves,

Cris

The pilgrims have all departed after the great get together, the 2021 Oasis.  I had sixty bandanas and they are all gone.   And I made it!!   Just as there were serious questions about how the Oasis would fit with the Covid situation we also wondered about my health at this point.  That was a big wonder but I’m here!

Thank you for all your work on this,

Felipé.x

Posted by Cris on behalf of Felipe, Phil, The General, The Boss.

Dear Caminoheads,

The Oasis has come and gone… well, I don’t think it is gone, the event has finished but the experience continues because it is not different than the Camino… I am lost for words. I haven’t been there, and I do not know more than those of you who have not been able to attend, yet I sense what happened there and to find my words is difficult. Lucky me and lucky us, we have other wonderful human beings who were there and shared what they saw and experienced…

Read this from Nancy…

“Oh yes, a corn feast was had. The General and a few of us walked to the cornfield to pick the evenings rations. 30 ears we needed, he said!

Most delicious.

The gathering was pilgrims from hither and yon who broke bread and gave thanks and enjoyed meeting new friends and catching up with old ones. Wonderful afternoon into evening.
Blessings abounded.”

Or this from Ron…

“As one who is privileged to be here with Phil and the team savoring the refreshing Oasis I want to say that Catherine captured it very well. The hearts and minds of all have been stimulated and we are thankful for Phil’s influence on our lives.” 

Look at the picture, taken without permission!!! from Rebecca’s facebook… Look at it again.

I don’t think there is much more I can add.

Holding hands, blessing abounded and gratitude for Phil’s influence on our lives Loves,

Cris

Dear Caminoheads,

The Oasis looked as if it would be a moment in time more than a place in space… in our minds, at times it seemed as if we were all walking encompassed to a timer, more than to a celebration; but one more time, this favorite line of mine from BJ Miller proved to be right: “Let be death what takes us, not lack of imagination”.

The Oasis has taken its own shape, I believe. I am clearly the less qualified to say this as there is no other Caminohead who is further away in physical distance terms than me: Google says there are 6918 miles from Buenos Aires to Vashon Island and 4 hours timezone difference-, but I got some lines from Catherine about yesterday that to me describe a celebration:

“Last evening and well into the night there was an ever growing sense of love and joy abiding, and spreading, and spreading outward, and outward. Like the way the stars seem to blink on one by one as the sky darkens. Maybe that’s what being there in spirit really means – entering into the mystery of love, love bigger than anyone of us.”

And Catherine’s words go pretty well with her dear friend’s words, John’s (John O’Donohue, friend of Catherine), wrote this blessing “For a Celebration”. I like to read this blessing in the day of my birthday, as most of the times is that moment when we give ourselves the opportunity to do all the blessing says (although we should do it more often!) I think it is proper to read them today too, because the blessing is for the celebration of life. And at the Oasis, that is what is happening: Life is being celebrated. And Fr. David kindly sprinkled another layer of celebration saying mass at the ranch at 11 AM this morning.

Now is the time to free the heart,
Let all intentions and worries stop,
Free the joy inside the self,
Awaken to the wonder of your life.

Open your eyes and see the friends,
Whose hearts recognize your face as kin,
Those whose kindness watchful and near,
Encouraging you to live everything here.

See the gifts the years have given,
Things your effort could never earn,
The health to enjoy who you want to be
And the mind to mirror mystery.

John O’Donohue – Blessing For a Celebration

Celebratory loves,

Cris

Dear Caminoheads,

We all have arrived to the Oasis! And when I say “we all”, it really is the case. What a marvelous thing!

It has been a long walk. Along these past couple months, some of us have been painting and placing yellow arrows hoping we could arrive to the Oasis safely (and when arrived, there would be water!!!) General Volker has sadly had the hardest part: giving the instructions to his vassals and trusting we would do our best without his consistent hands-on oversight. We had some enemies in the middle of the walk that we hadn’t expected: the blog went down, COVID-19 delta variant surge everywhere, and some other bed-bugs that are not worth of words. But we made it. Blistered, tired and injured, but here we are.

Remember the happiness of the arrival to Santiago? That is how we have felt since yesterday. That pure joy of having arrived.

Now, there are no more yellow arrows showing the path forward. What we do and the path to take moving forward is up to each of us. There is the hope that we have learnt something along the way and this is our first rehearsal to put them in practice. We have talked extensively in this blog what the Camino has taught us and “what we have figured out”, this is the time and the place to show them all.

Like in The Way, we haven’t chosen a life, we live this one. We have to make sure we make the most of it. Embody kindness and goodness. Be safe and make sure the others are safe (we are still in a pandemic). Sprinkle around Camino Dust. Have fun.

From the busyness of the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina, I will be with you in spirit.

We have arrived Loves,

Cris

Dear Caminoheads,

Continuing with the topic of questions, here is another majestic post by Ryck, our Bureau Chief. Pour a glass of wine, or Scotch, and just enjoy…

At what point do we realize the true value of time? I am not referring to the value of time regarding working on a job, or how long you are awake or asleep, I mean the value of time as if it were sand in an hourglass and you can visualize the micro-grains of sand funneling non-stop from the top of the glass to the bottom. When you realized that the grains can never flow from the bottom to the top again, what remains at the top of the glass is what is left, and none of us truly knows how many grains are left. Only an estimation at best.

-How old were you when you realized this?

-Did it change any aspect of your life?

-Did you prioritize your personal grains of sand as they continued to flow towards the bottom, or was it irrelevant? Although, I think, everything is relevant. I almost think the word “irrelevant” is, well, IRRELEVANT…an oxymoron because one thing affects another.

-If I could change anything in my past, would I place less emphasis on those things that would matter not at all in the end? Oh, and then, what is the end? Or is there an end?

I have so many questions, but I know that no one can answer them for me, only the hourglass itself will reveal the answers when it determines.

Now, for a goal, I do know how that works…whatever the goal. I imagine it as I am hiking up a mountain with my big walking stick. At the beginning of hiking the mountain, I look up at it. “Damn that’s far” I will say to myself. Then I will look down at my feet as they slowly move one foot after the other. I can see the earth under my feet moving at the same pace and hear the crunch of the shoes as they hit each step, you know, the best sounds on the Camino as you crunch along, step by step by step…..”crunch…crunch…crunch”…..

As I continue to look at my feet, then around the fields or path, occasionally I will look back up to the mountain and the mountain gets ever so slightly smaller. Then I look down again, crunch, crunch…. then occasionally up at the mountain, the goal becomes within my reach, and suddenly it is possible. As I get closer to the mountain top I think of how many others had quit

or veered off onto another, simpler path with a smaller peak. Maybe these are people from my life, some that left me too early, some that I left not soon enough….some that lost their way.

Finally, I reach that damn mountain top and I look over the valley and the valley is big.

There are many people down in that valley and they are looking up at the mountain top I am now on and they are thinking, “Damn, that is a big mountain”. Some veer off, some will leave too soon, a few will keep looking at their feet as they crunch along, earth moving beneath their feet, occasionally looking up at the mountain top.

At the top of the mountain top there very well may be an hourglass, and the hourglass may now be either completely empty as we have reached the goal, or perhaps, it is completely full again…….But, we will not know until we reach that mountain top.

Maybe, even, at the top of that mountain, everyone throughout our whole life is there, and they say, “We watched you walking from all of the way down in that valley. We watched you almost veer off the path, then you got back on track, but now, you are here with us”.

Cheers:

Ryck

Dear Caminoheads,

It is easy to think we don´t need to reinvent the wheel once more, right? Why do we just settle for what is familiar…? I asked myself this question a few times today…

The truth is that the obvious is not so obvious, and what has been in front of us or has been part of our “always”, often is seen as just a birth mark that cannot be changed, has nothing to provide other than what already did and hence we will walk with it until the last breath, un-questioned.

Once, I listened to David Whyte (English Poet) explaining his poem “Working Together”. We can fly in planes because what existed since always: air and shapes, were seen with new eyes, were studied, and engaged in a conversation that had never happened before, despite they had been there since “always”.

Like the rounded shape and the ground.
Or the stone and the friction.

Which are the parts of me that need to talk to each other? Which are the conversations that are yet to happen? What will I see if I let the familiarity go? …

Working Together

We shape our self
to fit this world

and by the world
are shaped again.

The visible
and the invisible

working together
in common cause,

to produce
the miraculous.

I am thinking of the way
the intangible air

passed at speed
round a shaped wing

easily
holds our weight.

So may we, in this life
trust

to those elements
we have yet to see

or imagine,
and look for the true

shape of our own self,
by forming it well

to the great
intangibles about us.

-David Whyte

Bewildered loves,

Cris

Dear Caminoheads,

That phrase (or something like that) if I am not recalling wrongly, is from the writer William Faulkner. I once read that it was one of the phrases that had the most interpretations. Once says that we cannot run away from the past or our ancestry, not just because of genetics, but also because there is something larger than it that you can call it epigenetic or influence, or culture if you would like.

To exemplify, let me use a personal fact: I mentioned already that I have had “3” fathers. One of them is my blood father (yes, I don’t come from a cabbage, it seems!) and while I lived with my blood father only until I was 5 and afterwards spent only occasional moments with him at the time your parent’s influence you, somehow I inherited not only his passion for music and literature, but also his same choices…

Yesterday, with the ancestry and historical research that Richard provided to us, we could somehow confirm that “the past (the ancestry)” of Phil Volker “is not the past”, because at the present time, he couldn’t run away from it anymore and accept that he is a General himself, recreating his own ancestry… He may have tried to convince us that “this is all in my head” but the reality is that it is not… It is in his genes and his epigenetic too… You may think that I am “making up” all if this, just because one of yesterday’s paintings shown a Volker General wearing a red baseball cap like the one our Phil Volker wears, but it is not… It seems that since Phil “acknowledged his past”, he has started mastering strategies, exactly as his ancestors in the WWII… all in the same Volker’s way… somehow old-fashion, all handwritten, but most importantly very practical. Look again at the picture… it doesn’t allow me to lie.

Tie-Back Loves,

Cris

*Tie-Back is a way to end a story, where the ending connects to some odd or offbeat element earlier in the story (according to Poynter Institute).