In between showers the light outside has a beautiful quality. It is a pretty morning and I bet that it smells heavenly out there. It’s May and most everything is trying to bloom at once and the air is loaded with fragrance. Nothing is neutral in the atmospheric department around here. Everything is full of invitations.
So what are we, week something or other of the lockdown. I can’t seem to remember anything else. What did we actually do before all this captured us? Before we were the chosen people and now we are refugees in our own land. The need to stay centered and grounded and focused is great. Maybe that is our main work.
I know that writing this blog is one way that grounds me. It is one of the constant heartbeats in my life. The blog is needy and needs constant attention. And so glad that you are here to share this space. It is one of the places of connection for us.
Catherine will be here shortly and time for me to find my rosary. I do miss going to our parish on these Sunday mornings but I also appreciate our pilgrim ability to worship on our own in our own creative ways. God isn’t shut down these days and is most likely more open than “normal”.
Sunny trails are here (sometimes)! (photo P Volker)
Here we are open again. We are outdoors maintaining the distancing rules and for the near future no tapas parties. Just the basic walking and talking for us these days.
My Rebecca says that I am obsessed with the weather and weather forecasting. It is just thinking like a farmer in my mind. Help me Pilgrim Farmer John. But the weather is an important part of my everyday, could be worse.
Had two Zooms this AM while it sprinkled outside. My Bible Guys at 8 -9:30 and a Cancer Survivorship Group at 9:30 – 11:30. Both were great and I have a lot to digest and think about. It is fun to surround oneself with heavy hitters. Never a dull moment, always a clarification or a new idea to incorporate. Thanks both!
Meanwhile I see where our little island made the NY Times with a story about testing strategies for rural areas. Some of my neighbors, in this case medical folks have come up with some practical plans to deal with the shortage of testing. I shared it on FB. Article title is Remote and Ready… We have an amazing amount of talent around here that has to be coaxed out of the woodwork!
Well, time to move around and “get something done”. Clover to plant, the shop to clean up, stuff like that. Enough Zooming for one day.
Off we go loves into the gray PM, Felipé.
“The love of God creates in us such a oneing that when it is truly seen, no person can separate themselves from another person.”
Julian of Norwich
Here is our guest blogger for today! Please give him a big hand!
RON FROM ASTORGA
I hope this memory has the ability to tuck a seed into the soil of your life and that you continue “Mother Henning it along.”
I took the hospitalero training offered in the US by the APOC organization before moving to Spain with the thought that I could volunteer. I lived in Virginia and, of course, the training was near San Francisco.
The 19 students and two teachers bonded immediately with Camino glue and began the first exercise. A long roll of brown paper hung horizontally on the wall of the training room with a line representing the path of the Camino Frances. We were all seated in a curved line facing the map as one instructor gave us instructions and the other gave us a red and a green sticky dot.
The instructions were to think of the highest point on our personal Camino during quiet time going over that in your own mind. Do it yourself right now!
I struggled. Everyone did, thinking back to a period full of high points.
The silence was broken by the instructor asking us to think of the lowest point on our Camino. Again, some quiet time.
Silence was broken and the task was to walk up to that paper map, one at a time, and place the green dot where you had the highest point, explain it and then the red dot for the lowest point, explain it. They started from the right, I was thrilled to be number 14. Where did these things happen? I’m not much on geography. Some explained in great detail and some were very brief. There were some tears.
I was close to next. Everyone was nailing it: stuck the green dot, told the story, placed the red dot and explained.
The person to my right walked up and was very brief.
I was next.
I still had no idea.
So I asked for help finding the places. I told them a few things about the place and almost all exclaimed “Agés” in unison. The same for the red dot and they exclaimed “Logroño.” I made it!
No spoilers – take the training to find out the rest!
However, you don’t know the highest point of life when it’s happening, nor the lowest point. I’ve used the hang-nail parable that reminds me that though a hang-nail is really annoying and hard to ignore, it is nothing compared to other conditions like cancer, or even spring allergies. But if all is well except that darn fingernail we can overreact and feel sorry for ourselves.
Think again of the high point of your Camino, and the process that you went through to select just one, and realize that at each of those points along the Way you were really stoked and joyful. The same is true today, be mindful and recognize the high points on your journey, knowing you’re free to squeeze every drop of goodness from them to share with others.
If you are struggling now with the low point and no juice is coming from your effort, keep your eyes up as another high point is ahead. You might get some lemonade from the blessing beside you.
Stick your red dot someplace in memory and then gaze upon the location where you will stick your green dot. Take a moment to fold over an edge of that green dot so that you can peel it up and move it to your next high point.
We wish you joy from Astorga where Spring is showing beauty and creation refreshed all around us. Keep on walking!
My Rebecca belongs to so many writing groups and singing groups that it is hard for a guy to keep up. But one long lasting and not so regular group writes poetry. They have this one idea about how to have this fun. Members receive eight words and they have eight days to write a poem and then they get together and everyone reads theirs.
Somehow My Rebecca is in on this network and now after a long absence the group called a gathering around these eight words:
dark fear amaze shaking dead world threats answer
So here is what she came up with:
Pandemic
Shall I talk about how we are in a dark time?
Keep track of the world and her dead?
Catalogue the threats contained in our daily lives?
We all know this–it’s all anyone talks about.
I do not want fear to be the answer.
As the great Sufi poet Hafiz said,
“Fear is the cheapest room in the house.”
Let’s not dwell there, okay?
I want the things I see to amaze me.
I want to be overwhelmed with the beauty
Of the world and her people.
I await Nature’s dazzling treasures.
If this is some giant hand
Shaking the tree of the world to shed the old leaves,
I will try to hang on as tight as I can,
And if I cannot, I do not want to waste my last days in fear.
I will rest in the bliss of the quiet moment,
Savor each distant hello!
And try to be grateful for all the myriad blessings
That the world has rained down upon me.
Fondly. Rebecca
So there you have it. Such a beautiful poem from such a grim list, well except “amaze” which it seems carried the weight. I’m impressed, nice work Rebecca.
Finding the wiggle room in hard and dark situations is a talent to appreciate and foster. Let’s have more of that stuff!
An beautiful Christmas tree ornament that never got put away. Plus wisteria blooming out the window. (photo P Volker)
“Anyone can find the dirt in someone. Be the one that finds the gold.”
Beth a Caminohead and FB friend had this passage from Proverbs (11:27) up today. That was soothing and important for me to hear this morning. So much of our world these days is loaded with not only politics but the worst side of politics. I for one need a break.
Fortunately I have been spending lots of time out in the corn Mother Henning that along so that someday we can slather it with butter. Got some great help. Thank you Patti, Cyndi and Craig for your spirited support. Had to finish up by dark yesterday as I am off to the Institute this AM. But we got all the corn seed tucked in, half Sugar Buns and half Big N’ Tender. And 5 pounds of New Zealand White Clover sown over the top of that, my new experimental weed control. So, the irrigation is all set up and hooked up and ready but for the moment we have some light rain, perfect. Oh, so proud of us! That is a major milestone in the year. Now to wait for the middle of August for the show to begin!
Sorry that I didn’t get a post out for yesterday. It has all been a blur. But this show goes on despite minor glitches and major glitches.
There are now over 2300 posts since the start about this time in 2014. I have been doing some reading of the archives lately. This is to help out Catalina our historian. Things are in the works to compile a condensed version as an inspirational book. We have to run all this gravel through a sluice box and find the nuggets.
Well, time to get ready to go, off to doctor and nurse land at the Institute.
A new word just arrived on the scene. It’s all Cris’s fault, ah inspiration. We were writing on our comments in the Comments. She was bringing up the idea that planting corn during the pandemic was a sign of belief in the future. She compared it to the guy that started painting the first yellow arrows on the Camino. He believed it would be helpful but he never envisioned a future where so many would follow them.
I then took that a step further and wrote that maybe we are painting the yellow arrows on a new trail right now. We are just feeling our way along presently, groping. Things aren’t always clear. But we are guided by Camino Think or Caminothink (a new word has been born)!
This is all like a Twilight Zone episode, “Imagine a future where connectivity is the most important feature…”. We are working on the rest of it. Keep going!
Some of the Sugar Buns variety waking up in the warm moist environment. (photo P Volker)
Here we are celebrating in the midst of our lockdown. I got My Rebecca a punchcard from the Vashon Theater for a gift so she can catch some flicks when things thaw out. Things will thaw out won’t they? Sure they will!
There was a pic of a Mama Swan and her Five Cygnets (great word) just taken in Ireland by Christine Valters Paintner. Yup Mama and Her Babies. Happy Mother’s Day Mama Swan!
I’m getting into the mama thing here with my corn seed. Friday morning I put it in coffee cans and added water. Then after 24 hours laid out layers of seed between water paper towels to keep them moist. They are waking up after their time in lockdown. Soon there with be a visual difference and off they will go. So off they will go in the warm moist soil when we get them planted is the idea, a running start.
This soaking process isn’t necessary but it gets these little corn cygnets started while the soil out warms up a few more degrees. Our growing season is on the short end of the scale for sweet corn so I am trying to stretch that by half a week.
Yup, momness is around and well. Oh, have to go Catherine will be here momentarily so we can do our homespun church service.
A Face Book friend Janet from Indianapolis posted a story about a time in Spain when synchronicity struck big time. One shakes one’s head when hearing of something from someone else and it seems wonderful and intriguing. But when it actually happens to you it seems supernatural, sort of a step above. I think that the difference is that when it gets personal it is real in a lot of dimensions and records itself in more than one of our senses. Not that one one story is better than another or mine is better than yours.
Janet was lost in a Spanish city as she looks for the home of a friend. She ducked into an Internet cafe to just find a seat and get her bearings. What to do?! And at that moment the friend walks in like that is all the normal way you do things. I can so relate to this because I have a lot of dreams like this where I am lost or late and someone bails me out to my surprise and delight.
My story also happens in Spain. I arrived in Santiago with my friend Rick and his daughter Maryka in the morning. We got our diplomas at the pilgrim office. They were impressed that I had a official letter in Spanish from my home parish in the US saying that I was on official pilgrimage. I was so kosher! We went to the cathedral, went to Mass and I visited St James twice in the crypt. That was extremely moving.
But due to my abbreviated schedule I had these few hours and was flying out early the following morning from Santiago to Madrid to make my connection to NYC. That last evening we probably as a group celebrated. But the most important thing that happened was that I met this other American pilgrim who was also flying out the next morning back to the US. We had a good conversation and thought that that was the end of it. But wait!
The next morning I taxied off to the Santiago airport alone, a fragile pilgrim about to be thrown back into the rough and tumble of the world. My short flight to Madrid went well. But I totally lost my way in the endless Spainishness of the International Airport. Nothing was making sense and I couldn’t find anyone to talk English to help me. Time kept getting shorter and shorter and I could feel the panic coming on. I was terrifically alone in a crowd. I have nightmares like this. Then all of a sudden after rushing, schlepping and sweating I spy this pilgrim that I had met the night before. I ran to him to be saved. He so casually said to me in my native tongue, “Do you see that door?”. ”Walk through it.” I am looking at the door and it is a small white door in a big white wall. Absolutely no signage. I do as told as in the Camino provides and viola there magically is my gate. My absolutely correct gate, it is waiting for me! Are you kidding?!? Camino magic in a rush had hit me. I was going to make my connection! Glorious synchronization!
So, Janet I totally realize the magic of your story! This stuff is so amazing that it really defies explanation. And it all happens so casually like, “What did you think would happen?”
Our Cris, Caminoheads South America Bureau Chief. (photo unknown)
SHAPING A BEAUTIFUL MIND
Phil wanted us, BCs, to share news from our side of the world, but I was thinking that these days, the world is like never before, one world. And what happens in this one world is painful. And while it hurts in different ways in different places, if there is one thing that is common, is that these days are painful.
It is difficult to be at home alone. For others, it is difficult to be at home with others. For some, it is stressful to be at home working for 10 hours. For others, it is stressful to be at home having been subjects of a furlough.
No matter on which situation we are, it hurts.
And to find solace, I have been back to the trusty lines in my trusty books of my trusty writers. Lines about these arts of “always have something beautiful in your mind”, or “asking beautiful questions in unbeautiful moments” have been a life-vest.
John O’Donohue often quoted a phrase from Blas Pascal, that “you should always keep something beautiful in your mind”, so you could look at it when in times of difficulty. And he used to say that shaping a beautiful mind is an actual discipline, and one of the ways he said you could shape a more beautiful mind is by asking beautiful questions. And he would clarify that a beautiful question starts to shape our identity as much by asking it as it does by having it answered.
This life in lockdown has the gift of time, that otherwise is too often too short to invest in this endeavor of finding beautiful questions to ask ourselves.
And these days I have been deeply listened by many friends, work colleagues -some who are friends too and some others that I had only met in the kitchen at the office-, my therapist and even my boss. And these days I have given my best to deeply listen to my friends, work colleagues -some who are friends too and some others that I had only met in the kitchen at the office-, my therapist, and (even) my boss!
And these days I have seen so many pictures of doctors and nurses who in addition to providing medical care to COVID-19 patients while in isolation at the hospital, they are also providing them with company, courage, strength, love, being the only ones who are there for them bedside.
And the question that came up to me has been “What would it be like to imagine that I could be trustable by a fellow human being who is suffering?”
Maybe, for us pilgrims, this may not be a new question; instead of in a bed-side situation, we surely were path-side, but when wondering which could be our voice as pilgrims in this pandemic, I think it might be around that question… which I think is beautiful in any context.
