I usually try and not read too much before I write my blog post everyday otherwise I get Shanghaied by some unrelated idea. Well, it just happened but really I have to admit in a very good and relevant way. There are a thousand different directions that one could travel in after being captured by an idea but this particular one that has grabbed me this morning is related to the trajectory of Caminoheads. That is why it looks so meaningful.

On FB our friend in New Zealand, Grace, put up the sermon by Dr Brene Brown that was given at the Washington National Cathedral. It looks fairly current although I don’t know any dates. I shared in FB today in case you would like to find it there or maybe Googling it would work. I would put up a hot link if I knew how to do that.

OK, enough introduction. She is a researcher and she has been exploring loneliness. It is her observation that over the last twenty years we have “sorted” ourselves into “ideological bunkers” with the result that as we become more and more sorted we become more and more lonely. We are “forgetting” our natural state of being connected to others on a grand scale.

Members of a particular bunker are united because they hate certain others and not because they particularly like each other. A recipe for loneliness. So more people are getting more and more lonely as they become more hateful of outsiders. Yuk! And what becomes really scary is that as this gets stronger there is an ability to move the hated group out to a place where they can be dehumanized. And so that means that we are free to do anything to that group.

So, where does Caminoheads come in? I think that our spirit is a breakout from this movement. We strive for togetherness with as many as possible. We strive for understanding of people and things that we are not familiar with. We don’t like bunkers, we like universality of the open road. I think Caminoheads is a bright light in this view of the world. We aren’t lonely! We welcome people into our lives that synchronicity places there. We trust what we so painfully learned in the dust and the mud of the Camino about our fellow man, about ourselves and about God.

I am so enthused this morning not by this darkness in the world but about our little light shining. Let’s turn up the wattage! Love you all, Felipe.