Hey. So, yesterday we were blogging about Laurie and her flying away.
Only on Vashon would you have someone do their hospice and final party at a funeral home. But I almost forgot that one of Laurie’s sons, Tyler, got married the day before there on the premises. High times all around.
This so reminds me of the wedding that was at my chemo treatment center back a couple of years ago that I got to witness. Who’s would have a wedding at a cancer center or a funeral home? Well people that know how to bring joy into the world, that’s who! It is all so crazy fun and it is happening here and there like the flowers that bloom in the cracks in the pavement.
Well, that is about it for me today. Wednesday this week I am back in the big city at the Institute. I have some visitors coming to check in on me. Will make the best of it.
Laurie who drove the bus as the tomato among all the heart rock wrestlers on the team. (photo P Volker)
Yesterday we had a unique day on our family Camino. My Rebecca, Our Wiley and myself attended a ceremony for an end of life. We have a friend who was one of the Wrestling Mom’s when all our boys and some of our girls were on the team back ages ago. Wiley was with all those kids for thirteen years up through all the grades so we have all grown close.
Laurie had a constant cancer companion for years. Finally it became overwhelming and she chose to do the death with dignity. That was our first time to accompany a friend in one of these. She had about a hundred relations and friends there to be say final goodbyes and see you on the other sides. Then before the very end most of us walked off and her close family remained with her. She had already taken the substance and she supposedly only had fifteen minutes left when we made our exit.
It was all so lovely and peaceful and full of smiles and laughs and support for the family. Her whole passing seemed so like Sture’s death that you saw in the Phil’s Camino documentary. On that day too we were all partying and no muss no fuss Sture flew away.
Only on Vashon would this all occur at the local funeral home. The director of the place was also one of the Wrestling Mom’s and had turned the whole place over to the family. Not only for this one day but for the last three months of Laurie’s hospice. The whole extended family had been camped out there, a scene. Only on Vashon.
So it was good to see most of the old wrestlers and some of the coaches. They all were thirty or forty pounds heavier and had hair when they didn’t before or didn’t have hair when they had it before. You know. Anyway it was a reunion of a tight community within a larger tight community and pretty special.
Bon voyage Laurie! Love you! We will watch out for your family like always! It was a great day! You look so beautiful, like Gandhi! Yes! And see you on the other side!
If that were one of us we would all say, “Buen Camino!” Laurie said to me that she always thought that I would beat her to the finish line but here we were with her ahead. Funny how things work out.
Intimacy & Vulnerability or Waking Up With You Today.
What is it about our Camino that brings the word intimacy into focus? How does the Creator reveal intimacy? Is there a reward for vulnerability? What can we take from the intimacy we experience along that path in Spain and spread it around?
Lots of questions, let’s look for some answers.
If you had the pleasure of walking a Camino you likely remember the way Spanish people greet one another. The standard two kiss greetings shared with a woman you know, the hugs that men share readily and sharing personal space. ‘Abrazo fuerte’ (strong hugs) is a very standard closing line to letters, like ‘Sincerely’ is in the US. I just looked at an email from our Spanish teacher and she ended it with ‘Un besazo y un abrazo enorme.’ After living here for a year we are comfortable with these hugs, kisses and words but now it is curtailed as part of healthy practices. It must be hard for Spanish people to meet their friends and skip those greetings.
Intimacy is a sign of caring and requires vulnerability. We are taught to hide it except for a few family members and spouses. But looking at God’s word I see how intimacy and vulnerability are expected. The church is called the Bride of Christ. God is Our Father. Christ is The Son of Man. Other believers are Brother and Sister. These roles and titles sound to me like family – intimacy and vulnerability should be the norm.
Can it be the norm? In my Camino experience I found myself falling in love with a lot of people. I was a 67 year old happily married American guy and here I was having very middle-school-gushy feelings about a lot of people I’d only known for an hour or so. Some didn’t speak any English so our communications were body language, smiles, laughter, shared meal table, sleeping in the same room and listening to the same people snore. And I sensed that they were feeling the same. But I was feeling guilty.
I’m glad to report that I got over the guilt after a few days. I did not die from continuous overdoses of oxytocin, though I am now addicted. I am able to talk about intimacy and vulnerability honestly with friends and appreciate the reactions. But now that I’m not walking the Camino per se, how do I apply that learning outcome to ‘regular life’?
How do we love our neighbor as ourself? How do we even love ourself? And love the stranger? And the enemy? These weren’t in the footnotes, they come to us in the main text supporting the statement that God is Love.
I think the answer may include Waking Up With You (and Ourselves) Today. I’d love to see your answers to these questions in the comments.
Well, I think that covers it. That just popped up in the Comments section with Caminohead Robbi. We were talking of the Lizi Qi’s videos on UTube. Robbi watched the one on corn and loved it, cried over it she said. That particular video was about growing, processing and cooking corn recipes.
So the words beautiful, basic and bountiful came to me as I read Robbi’s words. That is what attracts me to the videos and maybe the same can be said of the Camino. It calls to me, I feel drawn to it or it speaks to me are all ways to try and describe that feeling. We hunger for what it gives out so freely.
If given the chance we could think about and fondle it with our minds and memories day and night. But reality calls and we try and integrate the two together. That’s our job now. That’s our dilemma. That’s our vocation.
Well, speaking of corn I am back out to the patch. Finally got done with the weeding and onward to mowing and feeding. The quest to keep my babies all happy and growing.
“You spell it just like it sounds.” That’s my Rebecca’s voice yesterday. I was labeling the small jars of the rhubarb chutney that she had whipped up and that is easy for her to say. She is a spectacularLy great speller and I, well I hang out at the other end of the spectrum. Yea well, rhubarb isn’t actually an easy word either.
But I digress. Later we shared a steak that I grilled and we used up a little bowl of the leftover chutney on it. Oh man, terrific flavor. That reminds me of something. There was a health nut that once said, “If it taste good spit it out.” Somebody is on the wrong planet here. But I digress on the digression.
During our stay at home we have been watching these Chinese videos that were made by this beautiful gal whose name I can’t spell. She has a huge garden outside her rural home and everything fruits to the max. And she prepares these incredible meals for herself and her grandma from all her nearby ingredients. And it is all so labor intensive and artful. They live in that province that I can’t spell but it is in the south and they use a lot of hot peppers. You know the one.
Anyway, she is very inspirational. Just watch a few of these and you will be preparing all kinds of stuff that you will be proud of. Maybe a good lockdown pandemic hint.
Oh here’s My Rebecca and she is up and has her coffee and we could ask her the Chinese gal’s name and you could look her up on UTube, she has a whole channel. And her name is Lizi Qi, so look for that. This is your hot tip for the day.
Annie with Padre Tomás at the Veranda 2019. (photo W Hayes?)
“A change in the weather is sufficient to recreate the world and ourselves.” – Marcel Proust
There could be a corollary that says:
“If we change ourselves we can change the weather or the way we look at the weather and change the world along the way.” Don Felipé.
I had a long talk with Padre Tomás yesterday and I came away knowing why the birds sing and how I can change the way I look at the weather.
“To grow up Catholic is to be especially lucky as an artist, because you are soaked in miracle and mystery and symbol and smoke and the confident assertion that every moment is pregnant with miracle and possibility and stuffed with holiness like a turducken” – Brian Doyle
Around here we love Brian Doyle author, poet and Catholic thinker. Who else could work turducken into a serious sentence?
Catalina and Annie with Jack in the middle. Veranda 2019. (photo W Hayes?)
“So I wrote you a poem:
A stable of horses is nice
but just one will suffice,
and sunflowers in a row
Make it easier to mow.
Sometimes the sky
makes us want to cry
when filled with Spanish eagles
or even Vashon seagulls.”
Catalina Barush
Catalina is working on the material in the archives of this blog and in the process is digging up a lot of the past, our past. It’s scary fun.
Jeesh, I am so busy with communications and authors and goings on. Isn’t this a time when nothing is supposed to be happening? I’m supposed to be bored and have a good start on a drinking problem right now but there is not enough time for Felipé.
I also had a great long conversation with Padre Tomás this AM. We had been trying to get together for weeks now. He is doing fine. Not much to do for a priest these days so maybe he is on FaceTime and Zoom a lot. Anyway I had some help with untying some of my personal knots from him plus always some laughs.
I am so luck to have such great personalities like Father Tom and all you guys All I have to do is call and I get support and of course laughs. It is all a great neighborhood!
Well, I have to let you go early today. Too many irons in the fire. The corn needs some time here too.
hoping for a good Tuesday for us all loves, Felipé.
The view from my writing location. Looks like Summer to me. (photo P Volker)
Ooh, summer two days in a row. A trend appears! I am SO betting on this! For the one thing the corn did not make it to knee high by the Fourth and I can’t remember that happening in modern history. But there is still plenty of time for a rally to hit the finish line on time. With enough sun, water and fertilizer anything is possible.
There were a lot of comments on the Comments lately. Thank you for those. I do enjoy those. If it goes to many days without any comments I get uncomfortable. Maybe readers have wandered off elsewhere. I have as Cris introduced me to the abbreviation, “FOMO” or Fear Of Missing Out.
Isn’t this lovely. I am out on the deck writing this and a gang of robins are up above me eating cherries. Debris is falling all around from their activity and hitting the deck. Plunk….plunk..plunk plunk plunk. Messy eaters.
Well, have to go grab some lunch and get ready for my energy session with Janet at 1.
A candle lit in a cave by William. (photo W Hayes)
The idea of hope is so very powerful. It all starts with the idea. I was reading on my Second Mountain book by David Brooks and he was writing about how hope opens possibilities. How having hope somehow allows the mind to imagine new ways, new avenues. I put somehow in that sentence because sometimes the way things work are just downright mysterious. Matter of fact it occurs often to me but it’s not a bad zone to inhabit.
I remember early in my cancer “fight” I was describing my cancer as not being monolithic. As I crawled around on it, it didn’t seem to have a smooth solid surface but had cracks and fissures. It even had caves and caverns. I learned that it was possible to “make a life” in these gaps. And that has worked for me for years now.
Without hope that wouldn’t have been possible I see. It takes a certain amount of hope to even wonder about possibilities. It is sort of the ladder or the pathway to get to possibilities. The more I think about this idea the more I see the power in it.
It has to be from God. Things this simple and elegant we mortals are not capable of producing. It is just too basic, too foundational. It’s a God thing.
And off to worship this morning. Catherine will be here momentarily so we can say our rosary together. Always a pleasure and an inspiration to hang out with her. Her could be Catherine or Mary or both.
In Buenos Aires at the moment. (photo unknown)I know, yes, one of my signs is upside down. (photo P Volker)
I must say that to write today’s post for The Boss’s blog was a bit of a challenge… It took me a while to think about the topic… What to write about when the world is upside down and I have not yet been able to put myself “upside down” too, so as to live on it without falling off…?
I actually had this thought and then realize that The Boss -a.k.a as Phil or Felipe- is a visionary, when hanging the “Phil’s Camino yellow arrow” sign upside down… (Think about it!!!)
Anyway, live has been crazy busy in these latitudes, lots going on in the country -where we are right now experiencing the peak of the pandemic, with a new strict lockdown in place-, lots of workload at work as a result of the new peaks of the pandemic in so many places in the world, and certainly my inner self has been struggling to find balance and rhythm… It has been challenging to reflect and “breathe in” that life, as we knew it, won’t be the same for quite a while…
And let me do a confession here: there have been moments, when to “breathe in” this idea has been scary…
But then, I somehow reflected that I have been in this situation before. Actually: All of us. Not under the name of a pandemic, clearly, but I can almost guarantee that all of us have been in a situation where in a moment, as a result of some news or events, our lives changed in a way that we knew they would never go back to what they used to be. Just think on our Felipe: receiving a diagnosis of Cancer changed his life for ever.
And yet, I kept reflecting that our lives have kept going on, and in many opportunities, in a pretty nicely way… like in Italy during the pandemic: there has been lots of singing in the balconies.
And I remembered all the things that we have overcome as humanity, as countries, as communities, as neighborhoods, as human beings… In psychology, they use the word “resilience”, this capacity human beings have to adapt to adversity and get stronger, but our pilgrim’s dictionary says that it is our capacity to trust again, to have faith, to say “yes”, to raise our heads above the water after being thrown in the deepest of the seas; it is this instinct of survival, this force of life…
And as I was reflecting on this, a poem from David Whyte (“The True Love”) where he quotes Peter walking over the waters towards the boat where Jesus was in came to my mind… because you know: an image is worth a thousand words…
“And I think of the story of the storm and the people
waking and seeing the distant, yet familiar figure,
far across the water calling to them.
And how we are all preparing for that abrupt waking
and that calling and that moment when we have to say yes!
Except it will not come so grandly, so biblically,
but more subtly, and intimately in the face
of the one you know you have to love.
So that when we finally step out of the boat
toward them we find, everything holds us,
and everything confirms our courage.”
If you are having one of “those days”, when you are struggling with this thought of what the future will bring, my prescription for you is to read these lines a couple times (you can trust my prescription, I am a Health Care professional!!)
