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”.

 

Saving with stories Love,

Cris