“I think this is blog material” said The Boss (Picture by Cynthia S.)
Dear Caminoheads,
This is Cris reporting from Buenos Aires, Argentina, and today I have some news from the ranch to blog about! Although we are in the internet era, I sometimes trust more in the pigeons, swallows and storks to transport messages back and forth, and while communication literally “flies”, it is not at light speed!
It seems that Monday was a day full of fun at the ranch. Cynthia showed up to walk with Phil as per Felipe Walking “Smart”-Schedule and they were joined by Jen, Jim, Catherine, Dana and Charlie. There was walking, I know the corn was inspected, I imagine as well that Phil may have made use of those many hands to weed some, and I am fully sure there was chat and laughter. Cynthia captured this terrific picture, that doesn’t allow me to lie here! (THANK YOU CYNTHIA!!!)
Once I got this picture and these bits, I couldn’t help but calling my reliable swallow and ask her to take a message back to the ranch with only one word: JEALOUS!!!!!! I am glad the swallow doesn’t read (or that is what I think), as maybe she would either refuse taking the message or might change it for a “I wish I was there too <3” (You know, swallows are kinder than humans!)
Yes. Some days call for poems, others for beauty, many for a double double-coffee with chocolate cake and lots of them for blessings… Blessings for this thing we humans do which is crossing frontiers, moving from one stage to the other, trespassing thresholds, growing from child to adolescent, etc… we are always on movement, and we certainly need blessings for the crossings, but also blessings for the stops. The stops are not only needed to recover energy, but also to appreciate what we have.
Today, is one of those days that call for a stop and a blessing. This one is one I truly love. Hope you too.
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.
My (Phil’s) favorite Kelly pic from the 2014 Camino. (photo K Burke)
Dear Caminoheads,
I don’t think that I ever told you that I have had 3 fathers, but yes, that is the case. And probably, that is also a story for another post! The important piece for today is that one of my fathers, who is Brazilian, shared this inspiring text through his WhatsApp status, and has remained in my mind the whole day… As I know the Caminoheads neighborhood is BIG on Beauty, I feel the urge to share with you all. Hopefully, this rudimentary translation by me from the Portuguese (in this case from Portugal and not Brazilian) to English keeps a bit of the beauty it has in Portuguese.
The autor is Valter Hugo Mae, who is Portuguese born in Angola, and truly influenced by Jose Saramago… this book is called “The most beautiful things in the world” (or something like that!)
“For Beauty, it is imperative to believe. Those who do not believe are not prepared to be better than they are. Even to appreciate reality, it is imperative to believe. My mother says that I have become a dreamer. But to change the world, I do know I have to daydream. Because only those who have given up, save dreaming for bedtime. “
Then we pulled out the cork with a visegrips. Always a way! (photo W Volker)
Laissez les bon temps roulez!
This last week I graduated to Hospice Care and am no longer taking any treatment. The Island Hospice nurse came over to the Ranch today to ask a thousand questions and find out our vision of my flying away. So, I ask if she is ready for my vision? So, I described it starting with that I want to pretend that I am a Civil War General passing away in his tent. And she didn’t blink and as a matter of fact said, “ How about costumes?” Hehe!
So we are setting up the Elk Hotel (tent) on the deck by the house to have this happen.
And also the really fantastic news that describes the other half of the Circle of Life. Wiley and Henna are pregnant with a baby girl and scheduled for February 22. They are so glowing right now. My Rebecca is so in heaven. So that is the other side of it all. I am so amazed by the synchronization of this whole thing.
So, Happy Saint James Day! Where would we be without this guy?
Felipé.x
Posted by Cris on behalf of The General (aka The Boss, Phil, Felipe)
Terry Hershey and Felipé, September 2020. (photo N Pendergast)
Dear Caminoheads,
In the “details about you” section in facebook, one of the things I wrote in 2011 was: “I love traveling and meeting people and listening to their stories.”
Over the years, I have reflected a lot about this gift of being worthy of the others trust, for them to share their stories with me. The Camino had a lot to do about that, because in the Camino, mostly everybody share their stories with the others.
I have always loved reading too. To me, reading is very much related to listening to stories… when I read, I feel as if I am listening to the conversation the writer has with him/herself and while I read almost about anything, the books I love the most are those that tell stories of people, or that start with a question, and definitely those that take you to a deep dive into the essence of the other, even if it is a scientific book. I also love stories or tales for children and I love listening to others reading children books. And I also love listening to conversations between people, like a podcast or an interview (it is not that I go through life meddling into the conversations of others, although it has happened occasionally, I admit!)
Maybe this is why I also love the art of sitting with my therapist, or even sitting with a challenging priest for a confession (in the old fashioned way, when you really needed to go deep inside yourself…)
I once listened to John O’Donohue saying that if you wonder how your life is going, one of the questions you should ask yourself is “when was the last time you have a great conversation, a conversation which wasn’t just two intersecting monologues?… a conversation in which you overheard yourself saying things that you never knew you knew… a conversation that continued to sing in your mind for weeks afterwards?”
In many shamanic societies, if you came to a shaman or medicine person complaining of being disheartened, dispirited, or depressed, they would ask one of four questions: 1) When did you stop dancing? 2) When did you stop singing? 3) When did you stop being enchanted by stories? 4) When did you stop finding comfort in the sweet territory of silence?
As pilgrims and neighbors of this blog, we may add a few others: When did you stop walking? When did you stop talking to strangers? When did you stop enjoying the tapas table/inviting a stranger to dinner?..
Where we have stopped having great (GREAT) conversations, dancing, singing, being enchanted by stories, finding comfort in silence, walking, enjoying the tapas table/inviting a stranger to dinner, is where we have experienced the loss of the wealth of our lives and minds, and most importantly, the loss of our aliveness and soul.
To close, a line that I love: “Let’s be death what takes us, not lack of imagination”.
My poor Camino map that I carried and then Catherine carried across. (photo P Volker)
Dear Caminoheads,
And today is one of those days because… it is BRAIN DAY!!! And believe it or not, the brain and poetry are great partners…
Once, I listened to a psychiatrist who was explaining the role of poetry in the “human movements”. From the perspective of the psychiatry, he had been able to experience that art was a healing experience, but that words had the power to make real the path humans wanted to take. John O’Donohue, the late Irish writer who many in the Caminoheads neighborhood love, wrote a book of blessings; and in that book, he said that a blessing (a bunch of words too) is “a circle of light drawn around a person to protect, heal, and strengthen. … when we bless, we are enabled somehow to go beyond our present frontiers and reach into the source. A blessing awakens future wholeness.”
And I thought that this psychiatrist and John, who was a Catholic priest, were talking about the same… the healing power of words for our present and future. So, I would like to invite us all to read Ithaka, this moving poem of Constantino Cavafi, that speaks so much as us, pilgrims.
As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.
Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.
Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you’re destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you’re old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn’t have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.
Ron and Ann, reporting directly from the Meseta, Spain.
Dear Caminoheads,
My fellow Bureau Chiefs are just amazing, and we seem to be developing some sort of mind-reading thing, as there are 2 deep and touching comments on the post from yesterday that must be read by all, and they came very handy as today I am not feeling great, I guess I caught some bug and my stomach isn’t happy.
Here is Ronaldo’s… Remember: he is our Bureau Chief once in the USA East Coast, but fell in love with Astorga and the meseta, and moved there along with his main love, Anne.
When this ‘war’ first started, having no idea that it would go on even this long, I had the feeling that the restrictions limiting personal contact enjoyed by Spanish people (kisses as a common greeting, for example) would contribute to mental health issues apart from, and potentially longer lasting than, the virus particle itself.
But from my vantage point as a new-comer to this community in northern Spain, I have observed wonderful resilience and great community responsibility despite many deaths and infections. Many businesses have closed, and recently a few new ones have opened, people here do respect mask use and personal spacing and hand cleaning upon entry to businesses, and perhaps most important, I think I can see smiles underneath those masks.
So I hope that you too are smiling under that mask and that your smile encourages others to ‘Carry On’ even if there is a ‘war’ going on.
Cris signed off with HTL. Do you know what HTL means, at least to me? Hug Too Long, that kind of contact that is long enough to release some magic things in our bodies that overcomes physical and emotional pain, brings a flow of warm memories and makes one want to do it again.
This past weekend Argentina media was over-flooded by the news that the deaths due to COVID-19 reached 100.000. Today, 20th of July, we celebrate “Friendship Day” (Día del Amigo), and roughly one third of social media was taken by pictures of folks gathering as if nothing would be happening, another third taken by pictures of folks that were good friends to others and are no longer here due to the pandemic, and the remaining third by pictures of those who are madly missing gathering and hugging their friends.
I couldn’t help but thinking on this letter to the editor that I read last year. There is a reason behind the three attitudes that have filled up the social media here. “Our hunger is of contact”.
Letter to the editor from a Spanish 27 years old man: “Hug me tight, that you never know”
Any child of my generation has a common memory: being forcefully stuffed at your grandparents house. “Eat it, that you never know when another war may come”, my grandmother used to say, even when all had left in the plate was a single chickpea.
Her biggest collective trauma was hunger.
And because of that, since those times, treasured, providently, every occasion of feeding as if it could be the last one, and saw in each full table, a privilege.
Meanwhile, we, able to throw away half of a fridge in the garbage with no regret, grew up in a bubble of presumed safety, convinced that nothing would happen.
Now we get our first wound.
Yes. This pandemic is our war, our hunger is of contact, and I believe that our trauma will be isolation and distance. That is why I wonder if in the future, we would not become in provident treasurers of affection and will tell our grandchildren phrases like the tittle of this letter: “Hug me tight, that you never know”
