I am still lingering in my mind with the conversation that I had with the audience on Saturday. I know that my words are incomplete or the thoughts behind them are incomplete or I’m not exactly sure of some major point. Buenos Aires Cris is listening to me lately and writes this comment:

Hi Phil,

Yes, I think I have come to realize that no matter what, there are two ways to do the Camino: and inner way, that is a pilgrimage, and an outer way that is a hike. And neither of them is better than the other, they are just different and people may be ready to do one and not the other. A hike requires a pretty healthy body, a lot of physical resources, is fueled by calories coming from fat storage, and is more successful when you have the right equipment and gear. While, a pilgrimage requires vulnerability and an awareness of the frailty of our hearts, is fueled by pains, hurts that we carry, doubts, etc., and is more successful when you carry the very basics. In a hike, the experience is the best when you are prepared. In a pilgrimage the experience is the best when you are unprepared for what you may encounter. In the hike, you do better when you are an “expert”, in the pilgrimage, when you are beginner.

This maybe why people who have faced adversity in life arrive to Santiago’s Cathedral after covering by foot 500 miles and their lives are transformed.

Likewise, may this is why those who have the tailored backpack and the right gore-tex clothing and carry the perfect weight and the right getting-to-the end mind-set, hike 500 miles from France to a town in Galicia called Santiago de Compostela.

Just a thought; as I know there was no way I could have hiked to Santiago.
Pilgrims Love,
Cris

There is a major divide there between the hike and the pilgrimage. They seem miles apart. When I talk of the Camino in any way it is always about pilgrimage, end of story. And when I falter with an audience it is because I may be talking one thing and they another. I see that now. And I have been messing with this for a long time and I am just realizing this?

Thank you Cris for you have shined a light on the fork in the road. One way is about performance and the other about vulnerability. When I try and go back in time to remember how I thought about this back then it might be: “I am buying this new pack and new shoes so that I can perform well enough to have the experience.” In other words, the experience (the pilgrimage) is the foremost idea.

Somewhere in the talk the other evening I mentioned that there are people that walk the Camino with no money. That sort of stopped the show for a while. These pilgrims trust so much the idea that the Camino will take care of them that they can undertake this. I am very impressed by someone who would even consider doing this. It is really thin ice, being very vulnerable, very trusting.

Food for thought as they say. And time for me to go. A funeral later today in Seattle.

vulnerable loves, Felipé.

The point is a lot of great things were accomplished with way less than great gear. If we put things off till we get the latest “gee wiz” stuff, that is a mistake. Advertising is saturated with all kinds of over-engineered gear these days. We begin to think that stuff equals success.

Half of success is technique if half is gear. Development of technique may take time and effort but zero money. This is working smarter, the phrase that we have all heard.

I love the pic of Grandma Gatewood next to the Appalachian Trail sign with the burlap sack on her shoulder. No backpack just a sack, pretty funky. In the 1960’s I had the opportunity to hang out with Earl Schaffer the man credited with walking the AT for the first time in it’s entirety. Then he hiked twice more, once when he was seventy something. All his gear was army surplus when I knew him.

I copied him of course. Boots with no socks, modified Korean War era pack, poncho shelter. He ate dried soups which he would boil up with corn meal in it. I am trying to remember details. A guy like that could survive on pure technique and maybe a knife. “We don’t need no stinking gear!”

He is probably a major reason why I am in the Pacific Northwest. He had hiked here in the Cascade Mountains and had fallen in love with it although his home was Pennsylvania. He raved about it. And I see that he died there in the East in 2002.

Anyway, maybe I am just old school but think about it. Things don’t have to be perfect for you to start. “Just do it” as they say.

don’t hesitate loves, Felipé.

I am off to a funeral in the afternoon on Tuesday and the walk for that day is cancelled. Thank you, Felipé.

There is a Seahawks game on this morning and just back from Mass so I am going to blog away with the sound off hoping to accomplish two things at once. Catherine is coming over to join me watching at halftime. So, onward.

Last evening My Rebecca and I went to a “slide show” on the Camino by author Cathy Fulton. She walked the Norté as part of a trek around the world. Very impressive, her story. So I got invited to add something where I could. It was so hard to keep my two cents to a dull roar.

I was telling this to Catherine this morning as we drove back from Mass and she wanted me to write about it. Cathy the speaker and myself were the only ones who had done the Way and there were a dozen folks in the small audience. It always strikes me the divide that becomes apparent between the two groups no matter where it happens to be.

The folks who haven’t gone ask lots of questions about equipment, facilities, communications and routine. I probably left some categories out. But regardless the questions center around the engineering of the journey. And this is where I always have to bring up the “fact” that the original guys did this walk in burlap underwear. There seems to be something important to me about this. Just trying to steer rookies away from these physical concerns.

The interesting point here is that veterans barely talk of these concerns. They talk about all the community stuff, the spiritual stuff, the beauty encountered. They talk about emotional stuff. They mention cafe con leche. They talk about snoring and friendship. Everyone has a getting lost story.

See what I am getting at? They are world’s apart. Not that I didn’t have rookie concerns beforehand, I did. But I did realize that there was the inner journey to prep for, to expedite.

OK, Seahawks 10 Eagles 3, second quarter. It’s not like I am beating up on rookies, just saying that they generally really don’t know what they are in for.

Sunday loves, Felipé.

I got a nice haircut this morning to look good for the week ahead. Massively big week coming up for Phil. Tuesday is the funeral for our dear beloved David, founder of our Bible Guys group. He had many ties in business and law in the Seattle area. There are going to be hundreds of folks there.

Wednesday I have a day at the Institute with Dr Gold, also beloved by the way. How many years has he kept me alive, he better be beloved. So, the salon will happen there which is my favorite part. Then before that I have a few hours so I was going to try and get my Enhanced Driver’s License, the one to make air travel easier. So, it’s a whole day.

Then Thursday is the big American Turkey Day. We just got a big invite to our daughter-in-laws’s parent’s home. Yea, sounds good. Maybe some football squeezed in there or charades perhaps.

So a lot to do and a lot to contemplate too. How about Cris’s post on Friday? That was terrific. We have so much talent hanging around here I tell ya.

Well, here I am trying to get this done and we have a social engagement lurking within the hour. It’s a tapas party with a slide show of an Islander’s Camino trip. Ok, let’s check that out!

Off we go, social butterflies R Us.

stay wonderful my friends, Felipé.

Conversations that need to happen

The Camino is a conversation-igniter. We had conversations with other pilgrims, with the hospitaleros, with the owners of the shops, with the farmers, and certainly with ourselves and our own story. Phil (and Felipe) in Caminoheads keep us in our toes to do the same. And Wednesday’s post “Stay Productive My Friends” challenged me, once more to have a conversation with myself, and hopefully with you all, like in the Camino. Is it true that the only option we have when life gets hard is to stop living?…

It is easy to think we don´t need to reinvent the wheel once more, that we don’t need to find a “work around”, why would we? “Stop walking if you have blisters”, that is what we have to do, that is what others always did…Why should we do something different?

Like “people with cancer die”… but then we have Phil WITH cancer FULLY LIVING. I thought how this conversation we are having here challenges me… and challenges this concept that “this is how things are”.

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

Some time ago I listened to David Whyte (English Poet) explaining his poem “Working Together”. He wrote that poem per the request of the Boeing Company to celebrate the anniversary of one of the planes. And he came up with the idea that we can fly in planes because what existed since always: air and shapes, were seen with new eyes, were questioned, and engaged in a conversation that had never happened before, despite they had been there since “always”.

Like the rounded shape and the plain ground.
Or the stone and the friction.
And life and its challenges.

And Phil’s post set me off to think in this idea of David Whyte: 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, the concept that “this is what has always happened when…” ?

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.

Conversational Loves,
Cris

Henriette said some of my blog post titles were confusing so I thought that I would throw that in to make matters worse. She was here on Tuesday for a couple hour chat and the usual walk and tapas. She has this book going about Cancer and the Camino and I am going to be part of that. Pretty exciting it is.

We had a most valuable session this time I thought. In the process of answering questions and unpacking ideas a certain clarity arrives. Certain aspects of my journey are starting to come into better focus. Some things that seem haphazard now seem parts of a plan or at least a trajectory.

I thank Henriette for attempting to unravel the finer points of my “battle” against cancer. This so reminds me of Catalina, Kate Barush, our star art historian that puts my journey in the bigger artistic context. They both look and see things that I don’t see because of their training and experience. It brings clarity to me and that helps me to operate at ever higher levels.

So thank you to both of you my intrepid investigators. As we continue we add to the increasing body of knowledge about living life and more specifically living life with Cancer. Everyday we are putting a finer point on our pencil and finding out new things and passing them on. It is interesting and rewarding to be a part of that.

absolutely positive loves as always, once more, Felipé.

this is worth a week on the Camino

Every once in a while there is a rent in the veil of reality and it stops you in your tracks. You didn’t plan on it but it was waiting a long time for you. You didn’t believe it at first but it wormed it’s way into you. And part of you still doesn’t believe it because it was too different or too good to be true.

Just chuckles in general this morning. So, the situation is that we ran away with the Camino like kids of old ran away with the circus. And it’s not Kansas anymore for us. We live in a slightly different place than we used to. And most of the time we can’t exactly put our finger on it, the change, but it lingers and we savor it’s particular flavor.

These young singers have rent this veil for me. They are precious aren’t? Their energy is contagious. It sends me to this Camino place just like that. That’s what is going on here for me.

this is worth a week on the Camino

Off to Wednesday loves, Felipé.

Oh, I feel so much better today. Off to the shop to make doors for some cabinets I built earlier. I’ll make a fire in the wood stove there and be all cozy for that.

But we have an hour til then, time to blog. It was fun on the comments yesterday with the sayings our Mom’s used when we were kids. How about this one from Jessika, “Oo La La Sweet Mama. Sixteen kids and no Papa.” Long one, verging on poetry there.

My folks loved to play cards, 500 rummy, with other couples and then later when they ran out of those with each other. My Mother had a whole vocabulary that she saved for that. Most were whole words and phrases but some squeaks and sighs that meant certain things. Maybe it was all code to pass things on to her partner. When her hand was all small cards that was, “nits and lice”. Nits are the even tinier eggs of the tiny lice.

My Dad had sayings that we’re mostly of the Ben Franklin sort. But he had one that took me years to unravel. It pointed out the poverty and the hardship that he had faced in his life. And it pointed out my wealth as I was separated from that. When someone was debating over a decision he would say that “you don’t have a problem, you have a choice.” In other words to really have a problem you would be in some dead end where there are no choices. So having any sort of choice is a joy, cherish it.

That really points to how rich I am/we are generally. Here it is the land of too many choices really. It tends to be exhausting and confusing and sometimes in the end leads to it’s own sort of poverty.

Well, thanks for being here with us. Walk this afternoon and tapas party. I will have to take a moderate course through the festivities.

choices loves, Felipé.

I am having a hard time getting going today and that reminds me of one of my Mother’s favorite sayings. People that were moving too slow for her were “slower than molasses”. Yea, OK, I get to have a molasses day once in a while.

Maybe I partied a little too hardy yesterday afternoon at tapas. One of my nurses come out with her husband and a friend. And Janie one of our regular walkers was here too. Sounds all very innocent but apparently it got a little out of control.

One of my Mom’s other favorites that I hope doesn’t need too much explanation was when someone “doesn’t know sh_t from Shinola” or one doesn’t know manure from shoe polish. I think we are on the OK side of that one anyway.

OK, have to go and try and get a few things done.

Monday loves, Felipé.