Fr. Tom here…at SeaTac awaiting my wings back to Cali. What a wonderful time at Casa Volker. Phil and Becca, the consummate hosts. I enjoyed walking Phil’s Camino and re-learned the value of impermeable shoes. My hiking shoes from Burgos are now riddled with holes, from miles of walking the droughted trails of California. Ten meters on Phil’s wet-grassy camino had me sloshing in cold and soaked socks. The Camino was telling me something. So, said shoes are now in the dumpster at SeaTac. Relics of holy times on holy roads that are now simply hole-filled shoes. Buen camino, my dear friends. Thanks for accompanying me oh these many miles!
My time with Phil re-kindled the camino spirit within my soul. Being with him is like re-entering the timelessness of pilgrim life “en camino”. It opened again my eyes to the angels that surround me in city life, but whom I never take time to greet. Life “en camino” has a mystical way of opening my soul to the strangers I meet along the way, impelling me to share freely the things I withhold from those with whom I work daily. What is it about that mystical trail? The lessons we all learn…
From Felipe ~ yes Father Tom.
PV has always been a teacher. I suspect neither he nor most of his friends would have forecast he’d be walking through his classroom trail as a gentle purveyor of a chance for insight and wisdom.
Yet, look who have come to let their internal windows open wide.
In a way, it’s not unlike the archery lessons — providing a place to draw one’s bow and shoot towards a target; sometimes towards a moving target.
Sometimes, too, , it seems simple and clear that everything is everything. Oneness.