Gorma Tales of the Camino: Christoph and the Icy Lake

January 31, 2018 / wanderinglightning / 0 Comments

Gorma was cleaning up her picnic lunch, shaking away crumbs for the ants and birds to share, and washing her bowl and her spoon in the water of a beautiful mountain lake. The water was icy cold, and made Gorma shiver by the time her bowl and spoon were clean.

As she packed everything away in her bag, she saw a man standing a short distance away from her, looking very concerned and very undecided, as is often the case.

“Have you lost something?” Gorma called to him and startled him from his concentration.

“Oh, Gorma, Gorma, yes I have – I’ve lost track of time, and now I’ve lost my way, because of it,” he called back, and his shoulders carried a heavy weight that could not be seen by anyone but Gorma. His name was Christoph, and in his coming and going to and from work, he had started to think about things, considering more and more each day his three sons, and what he should teach them as their father, and this started him wondering what sort of man he had grown up to be, and thus he had quickly gotten lost in endless thoughts that wandered down endless paths, and his feet had simply followed, until now he was in a wilderness he did not recognize.

“Well, luckily your feet have wandered onto the very path you need, as feet often do,” Gorma reassured him. “Can you not see what is directly before you?”

“This large lake?” Christoph asked, baffled.

“Look farther,” Gorma urged him, so Christoph took a deep breath and looked as far as he could see across the lake.

“Why, it is my own village, just there, past the opposite shore,” Christoph responded, quietly surprised. “I must have been walking in circles for some time.”

“Oh yes, this can happen easily when our wandering thoughts loop ’round our cares,” Gorma agreed.

“Well, at least I know where I am now. But it will do me no good – my sons need me to meet them in the village and take them home from school. There is much talk of a wolf loose in the forest surrounding the village, and they are too young to take on a fully grown wolf, even three boys together.” Christoph’s eyes were worried, though he simply stood and looked at the village away across the lake.

“But if you were there, you would be able to manage this wolf?” Gorma surmised, understanding his concern.

Christoph took a second deep breath. “Well, I am no great hunter, Gorma, but I suppose I would do what I might to drive it off, if I had to,” Christoph replied seriously.

“And what will your sons do, waiting at the schoolhouse, if you do not arrive to meet them?” Gorma asked plainly.

“Oh, Gorma, Gorma, this is my fear – I have not told them the stories of the wolf, because I did not want them to be afraid. So they do not know, you see?, the danger waiting for them! What can I do, Gorma? What can I do? They will decide to walk home without me.”

Gorma looked out over the lake. “It is too far to walk around this lake, because it is stretched out long across the land. Even with a ride from a kind stranger, no horse or hay wagon is fast enough to reach the village before they set off.”

“Yes, this I have calculated also, Gorma,” Christoph nodded, and he gave a great sigh of despair.

“Sometimes, we must meet danger with the element of surprise,” Gorma nodded back. “Sometimes, we must risk everything we are for the benefit of everything we love.”

Christoph turned to Gorma. “How so?” he asked, baffled once again.

“You think if you hide uncertainty, peril, from your sons, it will not find them? That if you hide from it, it will not find you? Even now, it prowls your woods. You must go to meet it, Christoph. You must face your fears. And you must do it with confidence and conviction. There is only one path to your sons – the most direct, truest path of your life. You must choose it. And you must choose it now.” For Gorma knew that there is no other time…only now.

At Gorma’s words, Christoph saw his path. He took a third deep breath, and as he did so, the weight on his shoulders was transformed into a great strength, which carried him forward – as he dove into the icy lake. Under the surface he went, where the lake is dark and full of mysteries. But as he swam, strong and determined, he rose again toward the light, and air, stroke after stroke pulling him all the way across the deep water to his village, where he arrived soaking wet but proud and confident as he walked up to the schoolhouse door. For duty and responsibility can drag us down to the bottom of the dark waters, or they can make us strong and sure, and this strength will carry us far. In this way, instead of being lost, we find our true path to the joys of our heart that stand waiting at the doorway; it is no matter, then, how we may appear to others.

Gorma picked up her bag and her walking stick, Saint Thomas, and walked on down the path by the lake, quiet and smiling. She reached the next albergue just in time for a bed, for which she was very grateful, and she slept deeply. Outside, the lake waters lapped gently against the shore, and ducks floated sleepily in the gentle rocking, warm and cozy in their downy feathers. And far, far away, many days’ travel from the village, high in the wild mountains, a lone wolf howled.

Buen Camino, Christoph.

Prometheus is hot

January 31, 2018 / wanderinglightning / 0 Comments

woke in the warm clouds
I fell asleep to without you
went back
to the stones
of the courtyard
where you found me
kindled a fire
and found my way
to the end of the world

I had an infatuation hangover, still slightly intoxicated from my date with a monk, drunk on stars and God and attentive understanding. I went looking for a little “hair o’ the dog,” retracing my steps from the day before, dazed from the idea of being seen, yet also hoping to be seen once again, a dazzling thought in this city of starshine around every corner.

A day of rest is often a day of perspective. Sleep on it; answers sometimes come to us in the night. Or follow us through the crowded streets, as we wend our way back through our supposed destinations.

Passing the smaller churches, I headed for my sacred altar: the coffee shop table. My love of the coffee shop was interwoven with my love of writing. I remembered grabbing my notebook and dashing out the door – of my high school, of my unhappy marriages, of my far-too-serious jobs – to free my words, unleash my voice, unmuzzle myself, amidst strangers at tables with lives intersecting mine for mere instants as we ordered coffee for here, as we stirred velvet cream into bitter cups and imagined our lives receiving such grace, as we slurped and sipped and scribbled and talked and found our lost minds among other kindred souls, in small books and self-published magazines and at the open mic. A coffeehouse had been my stage and my workshop for many years, a home for this homeless poet, this author with no publishing house, this singer with no band and no label.

An open mic is an open world. At an open mic for poetry, I first sang, a capella, and got a roaring, shouting standing ovation at 1:30 in the morning from drunk and stoned fellow poets. At an open mic, I first told – told what happened to me as a girl, with imagery of pain and betrayal and misery woven into word, my clenched voice shouting quietly, screams echoing in the imaginations of the audience as I stepped down and away. At an open mic, I flirted with every man present, describing in exquisitely slow detail an aching in the back of my throat, until the night turned into an orgy of words, each succeeding poet painting every erotic feeling imaginable, but one at a time, the glory of legs oh legs, the next offering nipples rolled on his tongue like pistachios, the heat of voices melting the strings of lights hung over us until we were all swimming in the stars above us.

Hung over. Us. I didn’t need a mic now. I could free my mind with my words, say anything, any way I wanted, or say nothing in a moment, keeping my words to myself, for myself. It was the family of poets I missed. Needed. It was the other seeking voices, other singers of songs. Las Peregrinas Artistas. Caminantes Poetas.

I looked up from my notebook in the cafe, and through the window, I saw Mauro walk by. Packing up my book and pens, I hurried to the bar to pay. But payment for café con leche cannot be rushed. The barman took his time, as I had taken my time sipping and pondering meaning at the far table. Finally paid, I hustled out the door into the growing crowd of pilgrims and tourists on this main road to the cathedral. I walked fast, moving through the people, searching for the familiar tossle of hair, lean form, easy gait. Looking into small gift shops, stepping into markets, I poked my head everywhere, finding myself at last at the Pilgrim’s Office, now somehow closed. I glanced at the complicated hours posted and turned away. Mauro had dissolved into Santiago somewhere. I felt like I had failed him; I had not found him, given him a joyful greeting, the way Christoph had found me. I had not gotten my joyful greeting in return. I could not sing for Mauro again, joy for us both.

Wandering, still seeking my people and now disappointed, I found myself in St. Fructuoso Church. Saint Fruitful. Mauro was not there. Volunteers with the group “Piedras Vivas” stood inside, marked out by their vivid green T-shirts. One friendly young woman approached me.

“Hola, peregrina!” she beamed.

“Hola,” I replied.

“English? Irish?” she asked pleasantly.

“Americana,” I smiled.

“American! So far you have come! We are asking peregrinos if they wish to contemplate, meditate, yes? on their camino experience?” She offered me handouts in English, explaining they were for my use as prompts to help me uncover meaning found on my journey. “And you may write a prayer, here, if you wish,” she concluded, indicating a small book on a stand, like a writer’s journal perched in the sanctified air of this small church.

The paper was divided into three sections: TO REMEMBER, TO GIVE THANKS, and TO RETURN.
I sat in a pew inside the small sanctuary, and looked at the writing prompts.

Do you remember, during the Camino, the moments in which you felt alone and disappointed? 
I sat up straighter, intrigued by the timeliness of this exact question. The written word was speaking to me.

Which encounters or situations gave you the strength to continue?
Remembering the Camino Frances, I smiled wryly, and scratched notes to myself on the handout paper: Finding compassion freed me from my frustration. I thought of Mauro, and Christoph, and all the friends I had listed to myself in the cathedral only yesterday: Friendship, being known, gave me strength to keep going.

In what situations did you get inside a feeling of peace and joy?
Peace was easy: Just walking, eating, showering.

Walking. I saw it plain as day, that word on the page, revealing itself to me, and an answer flowed back without me forming the words. Being in stride with myself, with my life.

Writing. Singing. This was me in my stride. This connection was my joy. Even meeting up for coffee had been a series of joyful greetings, reunions. When I was a young poet, the coffeehouse had been a weekly gathering of a wild tribe, a congregation of miscreants stealing the fire of holy words, to give to each other, those who knew us best and would keep the words sacred.

The GIVE THANKS section mentioned all the encounters made during the Camino, and I sat in my pew, holding my fat notebook full of scribbles in my bag, remembering hugs and shouts and laughter, the poets of long ago and the peregrinos now, all walking, sitting, standing, arm in arm, shoulder to shoulder, face to face. I remembered Christoph swinging me around and around on the plaza. I remembered Mauro at dinner, telling me about his life, and watching the sunset together.

There is a YOU, Barbara.
Shhh – Barbara is singing.

I didn’t want to give thanks for intimate moments with men I’d met, moments that made me want to kiss them. I wanted to write neat answers, tidy summaries of the Camino to take home with me like souvenirs. I didn’t want my words to burn beneath my skin any more, stoke desire and longing. I didn’t want to miss the dinner party in Santillana del Mar, Jon’s hand on my back, him feeding me new foods. I didn’t want to miss Pablo’s protective sweetness and open heart, Svend’s stunning chiseled face and rugged body, or Wolfgang’s wild, restless energy and dangerous, purring voice. I wanted them to be peregrinos, not men.

After cutting away my body to remove the cancer, not much familiar remained. And I still carried HPV like plague, like AIDS, for a lifetime. I felt like a leper. I could kill these beautiful men, one indiscretion sharing this slow kiss of death, knowing I gave them the genesis of cancer.

But that was just my own body insecurity. I knew there were ways, protections, and I was being melodramatic. I had turned away from men to keep my distance. I had cut off all my hair to avoid attracting attention, and it had worked; but as my stubble grew back into unruly waves, I felt my unruly body turning traitorous with attraction itself.

Men had been my prisons, my locked towers with only windows affording glimpses of the larger world. Men had been my drug of choice, my addiction. Like psychodrama, I had re-enacted my original abuse by choosing poorly and often, trying to prove to the world that I was all right by demonstrating to the world that I was a disaster.

I did it to myself. All of it. I sabotaged the dream I’d had at 17, and the weapon I’d used was men.
It was hard to face my 17-year-old self. But as I looked at her, I saw how destroyed her heart had been. I saw her face shine toward mere scraps of attention, lunging at any mirage of someone understanding who she was, what she wanted.

It was Prometheus bound by love. She kept chaining herself to that rock, and the eagle kept coming, over and over. No one understood: it wasn’t about stealing the fire. That was the easy part. It was about the love that motivated the deed. It was about the love of human beings, freeing them from believing they were encased in clay, stuck, trapped as piedras vivas, living stones. Because she would not believe it. She couldn’t. There had to be more – for herself, and so for everyone. She fell in love with potential, possibility, over and over. But who could believe that a
17-year-old would love connecting with other people so much.

Give thanks for all the experiences that have allowed me to make contact with the deepest part of me, and that have made me an ally, and not an enemy, to myself and to others.
An ally, to myself, finally. I felt myself unchained, beginning to be the person I was born to be, more a world citizen, a traveler, a poet again, a singer of songs, more than the labels of an American social worker single mother. A singer with no label. I was Me, with nothing but this self that mattered, that experienced, and cared, nothing but this self to share. I wanted to write, and sing, and GO, work just to travel, like Mauro, see humanity and the world, walk the pilgrimages of other lands, other faiths, reconnect with the burning mystic soul of me that loved what even poetry could not give words to. Experience what could not be told…what must be lived.

It all moves on, this life, my feet, The Way. I am feeling alive again, and more whole, even as my identities are disintegrating. I am in love, with a man and yet more with myself, with human beings, this earth, this universe, the Universal, whatever that may be. Send a poet, to bring back fire from the stars. I will go. I will go.

Definitely still drunk on Santiago. I wrote a prayer in the book on the stand. The young woman from Piedras Vivas handed me one more paper on my way out. It had Bible verses printed on it.
I looked at the portion of Genesis 32 quoted there, where Jacob had been wrestling with the angel on the road:

“I will not let you go unless you bless me.” And he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” Then he said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.”

I had been given a new name already. Maybe I had done my striving, as well. Lord knows I had striven with God and with men for years now; to prevail would be a welcome change. I walked back to the chapel where Christoph and I sang. This day, it was filled with candles, set on the altar and all around cushions on the floor. Santa Barbara was burned alive, for refusing to marry, for defiance, for her belief in something more than herself; stepping carefully into this ring of fire, I sat down crosslegged and looked deep into the flames.

From the altar, Our Lady of the Traveling Mother, Maria Peregrina, watched over me, her child in one arm, her walking stick held firmly in the other.

pilgrim’s progress

January 16, 2018 / wanderinglightning / 0 Comments

815
in the morning
you are sleeping
in the middle of the night
back home across the ocean
I walk the quiet
quiet streets
and reach my dream
815
in the morning
round a corner
into the quiet
quiet plaza of stones
pigeons
and a slow sun
as if still sleeping
in the middle of the night
it is later
my compostela shows
my name
and where I walked
and when
and how many kilometers
the way
815

It rained in the night, all the world washed and fresh for this Sabbath. Lingering clouds kept the morning dark, as I entered Santiago de Compostela. It seemed the city was still sleeping. My boots found foreign footing on bricks and cement, empty sidewalks lifting me above the roadways. I listened to the rhythmic tapping of my walking stick echoing against the dripping store fronts and wet skies. Like ticker tape of wings, pigeons flocked silently over my head as I entered Santiago, birds like confetti fluttering from the skies, block after block. Streetlights like spotlights lit the way until the gentlest morning light suffused the air, and they, in turn, popped off, the reflected halo of their last light glowing before my eyes like fireworks, before fading.

This hill though high I covent ascend;
the difficulty will not me offend;
For I perceive the way of life lies here.
Come, pluck up, heart; let’s neither faint nor fear.

— John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress

The Old City. I crossed an empty intersection at a stoplight and crossed into history. Now the roads narrowed immediately, worn cobbles carrying me up and up, past old churches and new shops in buildings that looked to be relics of the Middles Ages. Scallop shells in the road led me on, past a fountain with a statue of Cervantes holding the broad courtyard in his gaze. Only a few shopkeepers were awake to receive deliveries at side doors, and I passed unnoticed.

A moderate descent brought me to a plaza, to my left a side entrance to the great cathedral, and to my right, a formal garden standing before a massive convento. I tapped with my walking stick down smoothly polished stone steps, landing to landing, layer by layer, and passing through an arched gateway, I came to the fabled Praza do Obradoiro. There it lay before me, quietly waiting.

My lip trembling, I stepped forward. I looked up and saw the grand cathedral, this destination of the ages, and began to cry, as I beheld the Portico of Glory – wrapped in stories of metal scaffolding and plastic tarping. Confused, tears still poured as, overcome by my feelings of gratitude and relief and accomplishment, I simply stood and stared, high above, to where the highest towers emerged from their protective cocoons, shimmering and bright, transformed by being washed clean.

Calmer, I smiled; then I chuckled…and then I started laughing. The Mighty Catedral de Santiago: “Please Excuse Our Mess.” Everything human was a work in progress. Not a capilla, a chapel; no, The Capullo de Gloria – Cocoon of Glory. Somehow, I felt like Saint James had set up a fantastic punchline, just for me.

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“A man there was, though some did count him mad, the more he cast away, the more he had.”

— John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress

I saw signs for SIN MOCHILAS everywhere – No Backpacks – to enter the cathedral and the smaller churches, so after the plaza, I found an albergue just outside the Old City, “Seminario Menor,” where I could stay multiple nights if I chose, and for an additional three euros, have a private room. I turned the key in the lock of the heavy wooden door, and it swung in to reveal a simple, plain room, with a single bed, a sink, a closet, and a small desk and chair by the long window. I wanted to stay and live here forever; instead, I booked two nights.

Stowing my stick and backpack in the closet, I returned to the cathedral, lighter. I still wore the clothes I had on when I hiked into the city, still wore my boots and cap, my small badge of honor, still obviously a peregrino.

Line upon line upon line. First I stood in line for 45 minutes to enter the cathedral at 11am for the noon Pilgrim’s Mass. So then I sat for another hour, a wonderful reprieve yet exhausting to my aching hips and back, as it was a wooden pew. Still, it let me have time to reflect and begin to rejoice.

Just so surreal: I am actually here. I wanted this journey, and planned, and didn’t plan, sold the house, quit the job, made my flights, took the bus to Irun, learned how to navigate the trails and the albergues, how to pack my backpack so it rode evenly and easily, my routine each night of shower laundry food writing sleep, up at 6am, coffee and something, and walk again. Walk. And walk. And somewhere along the way, walking the road became living my life. And the people I talked with, really talked with, became people I loved. And as I once thought Pablo would be someone important in my life, because of his generosity and his protectiveness and love of my stories, I realized they had all become important people in my life, each giving me their own gifts and unique perspectives.

I sat on the hard pew and thanked the Camino for Svend’s gift for reflection, and Wolfgang’s fierceness and Cordula’s directness; the merry jostling of the first three women from Britain, more sisters than friends; the sweetness of Hernani, and the hopefulness of Felix; the sass of Francesca; Joanna’s open, loving touch and affection; and the mystery and intelligence, the struggle of pride and humility, science and religion that was Christoph.

He had become the best mirror for me so far, willing to tell me when I was being judgmental, or distant, and willing to love me all the same. While it was easier and more soothing to talk to others like Svend or Francesca, I had grown the most talking to Christoph.

The Pilgrim’s Mass was crowded, both in the cathedral and in my heart’s memory. People filled the pews, and sat on the floor beside, and stood behind them, hearing the beautiful service in multiple languages, the priest listing the multiple caminos that brought us all together, people from countries all over the world. Behind the altar, I could see pilgrims filing in one by one to hug the statue of Saint James, and the endless flow of humanity rippled the very air. The readings and prayers kept shifting languages, until an Irishman read one of the Lessons, and here were familiar words I could hear and understand, before I slipped back under the lovely waves of Spanish once again. For communion, the oldest priest brought the wine and bread all the way to the back, for the peregrinos, while the other visitors and attendees went forward to the priest up front. The shaking of hands, saying peace to you, and this touching communion act for the pilgrims, brought me to tears; small gestures, always, were what got to me the most.

And then, as pilgrims stood in back, sat on the floor, and leaned on the stone columns themselves, they lit the incense burner, and it began to swing. Having given my pew to an older woman, I stepped to the place where the church crosses in the center, so I could watch the botafumeiro swing slowly back and forth, between the columns and under the arches, over the priests and over the people, like the watchful pendulum of Time.

I am here. I came. I am in Santiago, in the cathedral, and it is more beautiful than any movie, any cinematography. Because it is real. Now. And I smelled the incense, and felt the tears, so happy. I leaned my head on the pillar where I stood, resting on this new old friend, and smiled, and smiled, hugging myself and the aged stone. Deeply satisfying, this grand gesture of purification and sacred essence that I could not completely understand, which was always attractive to me.

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I left the cathedral by first entering deeper within. As I stepped into the oldest chapel, I felt the presence of layered centuries, the hush so solid it seemed to fall from the massive gray stones themselves. So small, so rugged in feeling and texture, this powerful space gave me a feeling of awe and something close to fear – maybe a wariness, or proper respect, for old energies I did not quite know the power of. I later learned this was the parish church of Santiago before the rest of the cathedral was built; it would have been where medieval pilgrims came, those of the Primitivo.
I had followed their footsteps into the inner sanctum of absolution – the Christian word for freedom. I was freed from my past, as they had been. The question was where we would go from here.

The obvious answer was the line for Hug-A-Saint. Reverence to sacrilege, tears to giggling snorts, I got in line for Santiago’s next Redemption Park ride, behind a string of tourists and peregrinos making a hot mess of salvation as we waited under the now clearing skies and burning sun for almost another hour. I entered by slow steps forward, through the Monks’ Door, into the cathedral but now behind the gilded altar, NO PHOTOS, SILENCIO, and at last, up the marble stairs to place my two hands, one on each shoulder of Saint James, and to touch my forehead to the scallop shell on his cape, thanking Life for this moment before I was whisked away again by the surge of humanity.

But the center of the spiral rested at the bottom of the stairs leading down, and down further: the silver casket holding the bones of Santiago. I stood before this window, this gap in rock wall and eternity, and then, as my spirit reached forward, I knelt. As if I were Pelayo. As if I had found something, something real, buried below all the shine.

“Most men will not ignore the present world that they can see
in order to make the world they cannot see
the object of their desires.”

— John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress

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After you go to mass, and hug Santiago, you head to the Pilgrim’s Office for the compostela, which means: a long, long line. I resigned myself to hours of waiting, and watched the people. The French bicyclist, slightly older than me, cut the line, and though people told him where he could join the queue, he refused to move back, as if either he didn’t understand what they were saying or he didn’t give a flying sello. I later saw that he understood several languages.

I was chatting with the sweet, tired-eyed Portuguese woman who shared her breakfast cookies down the line, looking back toward the fountain in the center of the courtyard, when I saw someone moving diagonally through the crowd – Christoph. I put my hands to my mouth as we recognized each other, and I let out a truly delighted shriek, and called out, “Christoph!” How wonderful it was to see him, to hear him, to have him say my name back, “Barbara!” I felt like singing.

We shared a heartfelt hug, and I held onto him. He told me how much they had missed me and talked of me, Joanna, Cordula, and himself. Joanna had played them my songs she recorded when I sang to her in the albergue.

“I have been searching for you, since arriving in Santiago,” Christoph told me. For two days. As his words sunk in, I imagined him searching faces in the long lines, walking through the now-crowded plazas. He had come today, looking for me, just for me, to find…me.

I hadn’t felt this loved since I was a child, and my father carried me to the doctor for stitches, my blood dripping onto him, and I squeezed his hand at every stitch in my leg; or when he gathered me in his arms and carried me to the house for a sling when I broke my arm falling out of a tree; or to the hospital for my concussion falling from the high feed truck, or the doctor’s office for more rocks ground into my knee on the school playground. It was always him, always there when I fell, and I knew it was okay, no blame, only love. Because he knew that in life, we need help, stitches, slings, and this was just the cost of being alive. He loved me ALIVE. And I felt this again, with Christoph.

He stayed with me in line and told me how the others were, and where, Cordula finishing research on alternate Camino routes and albergues so she could write her guidebook, Joanna on the way to Finisterre, and he, himself, going tomorrow. But first, Christoph had plans.

“There is to be a certain style of singing, here, in this chapel beside the Pilgrim Office. It is sung in four parts, and I think you would enjoy this. Would you like to meet there, at 5:00?” So away he went to attend to other concerns, and I waited in line, and waited in line, until I was next, and stood excitedly, watching for an available clerk. When it was my turn, I stepped forward, from dust of the trail to dust of the courtyard line, my turn, adding my name, and my dates, and my distance walked, to the neverending list of compostelas. And yet, in those few minutes, it was just me, questions asked about me, and I was congratulated, and smiled at. Me.

At 51, I had arrived.

“Sing, Faithful, sing, and let thy name survive;
for though they kill’d thee, thou art yet alive!”

— John Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress

Sermon on the Monte de Gozo

January 13, 2018 / wanderinglightning / 0 Comments

waves of voices
washing over me
still the morning
shone golden
through the trees

“Wait for me!” yelled the chubby teenage boy with the lopsided backpack, careening down the trail past me as his friends laughed from farther ahead. Directly before me, two young women, maybe 18 years old, worked a sultry, languid sashay, hips rolling in short shorts, tiny tight tummies bared in belly shirts, sparkle laces in one’s tennis shoes, rainbow laces in the other’s, nodding seriously to the pulsing of their earbuds. They carried the tiniest backpacks I had seen yet, scarcely more than a beach towel string bag.

Proud Spanish women marched next to their men, in wedge-heeled faux athletic shoes and perfect nails, one assumed both fingers and toes, wildly-patterned cropped running pants ending at the knees, busting out of sleeveless running tops, not a teased hair out of place. The men wore snug sport shorts and silky T-shirts and gold chains, with new running shoes for the walk. Again with the tiny backpacks – where did everyone get these? With the same small scallop shell painted with the Sword of Santiago, and a miniature gourd tied beside it?

It was a bit of a shock as I finally joined the Camino Frances. So many more people. So much yelling to each other down the trail. So much hairspray.

“The scenery here is not very interesting,” I heard one man remark to his friend, as one of their female companions added, “I’ve lost the high of a few days ago.” A long weekend, they’re hiking. People’s attention spans were very short. These holiday pilgrims, the “tourigrinos” on the 100 km mini-Camino, tended to stick to the direct route of the paved roads; they did not want to take the detours of the dirt paths.

“Now when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down.”

— Matthew 5:1

So I fled to the dirt paths. I focused on the sound of boot and gravel, breathing easier. The twittering of birds felt like a secret signal that I had located my path again. I found an abundant crop of blackberries, untouched, and laughed at the luxury of having them all to myself.
I ate the plumpest, ripest ones, eating berries, alone, in the quiet, until I was full, and content.

I knew blackberries would carry this meaning for a long time: sweet, quiet morning time to myself, along a dirt road. The ones that get the most sun become the sweetest, by the way.

I was so overwhelmed by the new energy and new reality that I didn’t follow any grand thoughts or hear any new songs or come up with any stories. By noon, I stopped to find a bed in Arzua, to have time to prepare for my last day of Camino as it had been – about moving toward Santiago, about the walking, about mulling the significance. Because tomorrow, I walked; and the day after tomorrow, I would arrive in Santiago.

Suddenly, it felt like it had come so fast. In truth, it was just over five weeks. I counted it up: exactly 40 days. I would arrive in Santiago having trekked for 40 days. Like all the great tests and thresholds in world religions, 40 days to deeply experience something, to cross over. Odd coincidence, yet somehow reassuring.

But of course not an odd coincidence at all. If I’d learned anything, it was to trust the Camino. And now, in Arzua, if the Camino wanted my wanderings in the wilderness to include hot showers and a bed at night, I was not going to complain for a minute.

That thought struck me, scrubbing my clothes at the laundry sink. I had received everything I needed, every day, without fear and without demand. I remembered a story from childhood, when my grandma would send me for a week of summer Bible School to the white clapboard church that was the center of her world. In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus reminded his disciples that the birds of the air are fed, and the lilies of the field are clothed in beauty. Reduced to myself and my pack, each day was “sufficient unto the day.”

Yet, in the midst of the mobs that started following him, even Jesus retreated from a crowd sometimes. Some days, he took just a chosen few of his followers with him, discussing his experience with those trusted friends.

“You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltness be restored?”

— Jesus, Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:13

My friends were far ahead, probably already in Santiago, or beyond; how I longed to talk to them.
I had sought Cordula’s experienced, sharp mind to give me sound advice to see me through. I missed Joanna’s warmth and enthusiastic greetings that elicited an unselfconscious grin from me in return. No one could shake me awake from conventional thinking like Felix. And I wanted to walk and talk beside Christoph again, hear his thoughts about the self, inner growth, and the challenges to his ideas that he was finding as he met others.

Christoph had the mind of a scientist. His speech was linear, words well-chosen, simplified to reflect each step on which he based his thinking. Erudite and thoughtful, a conversation with Christoph was a journey through questions both basic and profound, one leading to the next, a mental Camino seeking way marks to assure the path.

Christoph also had the soul of a mystic, and at times, it seemed to trouble him. This scientific man had a recurring dream that he struggled to understand – or maybe to accept. I remembered him describing it to me: standing on an ice-covered lake, unable to take a step because the ice was beginning to crack, about to give way underneath him, and he did not know what he would find below if he fell through. He found the dream unsettling, somewhat unnerving; it seemed to me that the dream frightened him, not as an image in his day-to-day waking life, but in its persistence, calling to him.

I resonated with Christoph, this logical mind and soulful heart, one always trying to lead the other, those binary stars circling each other with a fierce gravity. But unlike Christoph, I had slowly abandoned assurance of my path, at least allegiance to having any assurance. The sure path hadn’t ever really materialized in my life.  Ever since I sold my house and quit my job, I had stopped making sense, and I let it amplify on the Camino into a fantastic feedback loop. I was intentionally flying blind now, taking alternate routes leading who-knew-where, stopping by choice and gut instinct instead of by logical mileage tallies or descriptions in the guidebook. I was feeling my way.

I looked forward to Santiago, even as I stalled the journey’s bittersweet end. It had been the destination for millions of pilgrims for over a thousand years, and I planned to go to the Pilgrim’s Mass at the cathedral, and get my compostela, touch the statue of Saint James. But Santiago, for me, was just a way mark.

My ultimate destination was to Finisterre, and then Muxia, with a very different energy, a feminine energy, a goddess buried in Christian stories, and I wanted to free her energy in my life. I planned to go to the end of the world, and beyond.

“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid.”

— Jesus, Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:14

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At first, I didn’t know what to make of it all. Bikes with bells zipped past, ding! ding! One biker blew his whistle like a traffic cop on wheels, and the entourage of bicyclists began shouting a rowdy cheer in time with his silver whistle’s shrieks. Then, applauded by the walkers who were laughing together, they rode away singing.

I found myself cheering, too. Seventeen-year-old me turned, delighted, exclaiming to me, See? It’s a party! This Life! Come on!

Young men in homemade kilts, their tartan red with life, answered with gusto when their leader hollered incoherently, raising his trekking pole over his head: “Charge!”

“Gaahh! Go! Now! Go!” they roared, voices overstepping each other’s, running their irreverence full-tilt down the Camino with Mercury’s winged feet.

I went from annoyed one day to laughing out loud the next. A mother and father were bringing their tiny children, probably one and three years old, the tiny one in a backpack with butterfly wings on the back, the older one in a stroller, occasionally hopping out to hike the path like the rest of us, her father’s collapsible trekking pole exactly the right height when closed up tight.

Families with older children biked by. Groups of white-haired old couples, friends, walked the Way together, slowly, familiarly. One boy walking with his father carried a short skateboard under his arm, just waiting for smooth sailing.

Music played everywhere – arias, techno, rap. Young church groups sang harmonies in Polish and Spanish. Cows still mooed. Cars honked. Campers honked louder.

I hummed what a guy was playing on his ukelele, long after I passed him by. It was fun, happy people all together walking in the heat toward Santiago. I saw that the 100 km trek allowed many people to participate who would not have been able to make the long pilgrimage from the border, or from the coast. People shared fruit with each other; some nibbled careful bites, with their teeth carving shocked or goofy faces into their apples and pears, which they left on milestones, to the amusement of the rest of us.

All was crazy and hilarious until the arrows split – and most people went to Pedrouzo, where I had originally thought I might go. But it was early, and I was excited, so I just kept going, this last stretch of Camino an opportunity to walk well and strong, carried by the wave of good will and anticipation all the way to Monte de Gozo, 34.5 km. Tired feet and a little too much sun, but no more the worse for wear, my route was often shady, with dirt paths most of the way.

“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

— Jesus, Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:7-8

I remembered to stop at Labacolla and wash in the stream, purifying myself as the medieval pilgrims used to do. It translated to “wash scrotum,” a ridiculous name for a holy river on the approach to a holy city. I settled for dunking my shirt and washing my hair, my face, and my arms and armpits. The rest waited for a shower. A soothing, hot shower, and the rose-scented soap I had bought at a market.

Refreshed body and soul, I went to sleep early in the enormous barracks environment of Monte de Gozo, which had room for ten times the number of peregrinos who arrived. All were welcome. Tomorrow was Sunday, the day of my arrival. I dozed off, remembering a song my grandma taught me when I was small enough to ride in a backpack with butterfly wings or take my first steps forward to find my own way:

this little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine
this little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine
let it shine, let it shine, let it shine

hide it under a bushel, NO – I’m gonna let it shine
hide it under a bushel, NO! – I’m gonna let it shine
let it shine, let it shine, let it shine

— Harry Dixon Loes,”This Little Light of Mine,” American folk song

“Nor do men light a lamp and put it under a bushel, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. Let your light so shine before men….”

— Jesus, Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:15-16

in lieu of a loo

January 10, 2018 / wanderinglightning / 0 Comments

young white bull
standoff over the fence
eyes dare me

I experienced my first blatant hostility from an odd source – other trekkers. I didn’t say peregrinos because now, since we were within the 100 km range of Santiago, all the young Spaniards were doing this short stretch, the limit to get a compostela. They seemed to be similar to young Americans, backpacking while drinking beer and bragging about their fabulous and immature lives.

These particular young Spaniards overheard that I was American. I was generally friendly to everyone, tried to remember to smile, said buen camino. I ignored the first cold shoulder, which was not talking to me at all as I got a cup of coffee. I figured, people were tired, maybe they were just about to leave, maybe they spoke no English, my Spanish was terrible, the usual ways I let people off the hook. Live and let live.

But at the second run-in with them, as I reached a rest area, they left singing some song about Americanos, and made sure to sing loudly and clearly enough to be understood as I passed by.
I pursed my lips and said nothing.

HOWEVER – as I arrived at the only bar in San Román for a coffee later in the day, there they were, their gear and themselves spread out in all the best seats, as always, and I overheard them saying to each other, “Es la Americana – ‘Buen Camino, Buen Camino!’ Pfft – Mal Camino.”

I looked over, and in that instant, two of them realized I had not only heard them but understood them; one looked away, the other looked down. The look I gave them, THE LOOK, as my children used to call it, made it very clear that I was not impressed.

Seventeen-year-old me wanted to play dumb, walk up grinning my best shit-eating grin, saying, “Hola! Ha ha, soy Americana! Ha ha – FUCK YOU.” She made a really convincing argument for this response, but cooler 51-year-old heads prevailed as I said to myself, “Nice, peregrina. Your old ladies in black would be very impressed with your humble pilgrim behavior.” So I ignored them, and that was the end of that. Would have felt good, though.

The albergue I reached may have had some dirt, and mildew, and ants, and flystrips covered with flies while more flies kept coming in the open windows and doors, but my ten euros was getting me supper, a bed, plus breakfast, which made it as cheap as any other, cheaper than most. So she who eats beef and salad with pleasant travelers laughs last, you arrogant asshole young backpackers; ha ha – fuck you.

the middle of the road
is trying to find me
I’m standing in the middle of life
with my plans behind me
well I got a smile for everyone I meet
long as you don’t try dragging my bay
or dropping the bomb on my street

— The Pretenders, “Middle Of The Road”

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My fiery temper had been a source of destruction and survival for years. It had become a joke, to blame it on my red hair; but it didn’t feel fun. So much work – I had put in so much work to tame this beast. I had lifted weights, run miles, hiked mountains; when that didn’t work, I did an about-face and looked eastward, practicing tai chi, zazen, yoga. While I could exercise through all the adrenaline and physical tension, it took more than postures and poses to rein myself in. I read a library of books, and behind all of those disciplines, I finally found mental training I’d never heard of as a kid: mindfulness. It was a practice of its own.

Mindfulness was a way to get out front of my immature, reactionary behavior. When I coached soccer, I used to tell the girls on my team, “The way you practice is the way you’ll play,” pushing them to give their best effort even as we ran laps or scrimmaged. In my own youth, I had practiced explosive reactions for so long that at first, I didn’t get it. I thought reacting was natural, and responding thoughtfully was fake, a gimmick people used to hide their real feelings and thoughts.

Over the years, I practiced mindfulness. I practiced hard, often exasperated as I watched my mind wander and freak out and grab self-righteousness like a child grabbing a toy away from another.
It was so godawfully embarrassing to be me so much of the time. Even after I confronted my childhood abuser and yelled back at my mother and barked at my father for supporting my mother, the flashpoint anger didn’t slow its ignition. I was just a hothead trying to be cool.

It was by teaching mindfulness that I finally learned some mindfulness. As I met with homeless people in my office and we talked about the life choices and behaviors that seemed to be in the way of their goals, we talked about “The Hole in the Road.”¹ I would tell the story as if it was about the person before me:

“You walk down a road going home, and you fall into a big hole you don’t see. You climb out, shaken, and carry on. The next day, you walk down the road going home, and as you get midway, suddenly you remember the hole – just as you fall into it. You climb out, frustrated, and carry on. The next day, walking down the road going home, you see the hole, and make a hard stop – whew! – just before you fall in. You breathe another sigh of relief, stepping carefully past the edge of the hole, and carry on. The next day, walking down the road going home, you swing wide, wide around the hole, and smiling to yourself, you carry on.

“And the next day, you take a different road. Because there’s a hole in the middle of that road.”

This was how I explained the change process, and the key to change: noticing. It was about learning to pay attention. It was about learning to build a small space between your perception of an event and your response to it. The hope was to create a gap in which to take a breath, and then to gradually widen the gap, until you could take several breaths, with a calm mind, and choose the way you wanted to respond.

It wasn’t faking – it was crisis management, self-control, possibly even self-mastery. And I readily admitted that we all had easier and harder days with “minding the gap.”

Here I was now, walking on the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, getting all pissed off about young people being rude. How many times had I said at work, “They’re just doing their job” about our clients – “Their job is to bring the chaos, and our job is to bring order and safety.” Now I had somehow forgotten that the job of young people was to test limits. They were just doing their job. It seemed I did not know my job, in my new role, in this new environment. I kept falling into the hole in the Camino.

For every epiphany I gained, I fell back a step. Or several. I couldn’t seem to keep my balance, and down I’d go, tumbling into that hole. Finally being able to pursue this adventure into the world had unleashed 17-year-old me at last, in all her furious sweet punk glory. She was all over the map, emotionally as well as physically. I kind of adored her and kind of wished I hadn’t brought her along.

As if she weren’t a part of me. As if she weren’t the core essence of me. I’d built my entire adult life around her, fearing her rage, managing her reactions, the center of my spiral. She was the one who first left home, set me free. She was tough, a survivor. She didn’t take shit from anyone. I needed to get it together and give the kid a hand. I needed to learn what my job was, fast.

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The next day started out as one of those easy, ordinary days where I walked a short distance without incident and arrived early at an albergue in As Seixas, all smooth as could be. I really had to pee, that bellyache need – and lucky stars, the hospitalera was there! Relieved, I went to speak to her. And when I told her, clearly, I needed the bathroom, she said, clearly, too bad, go to the bar. My face registering a mix of confusion, discomfort, urgency, and astonishment, I walked miserably to the bar which, being such a tiny, TINY village, I knew she KNEW was closed. Such a jerk! on my Camino.

I have peed along the trail in remote places easily enough. But now the Camino was always fairly close to a farmhouse or road or crappy little village where they don’t give a crap if you have a place to crap – so it was harder to stay hidden, to preserve any shred of dignity.

Like I was doing now, with my beautifully poetic language.

Luckily, I only had to pee. But even as I was taking a breath and saying, easy, kid, 17-year-old me won her day. She had hiked quietly for weeks, had bitten her tongue at “Mal Camino,” but now, she’d be damned if she’d pay money for shelter to that woman who would deny another woman
a simple toilet AS SHE STOOD RIGHT OUTSIDE THE DOOR TO THE TOILET SAYING NO – and
17-year-old me was right.

So we walked 15 km more, and NOTHING was going to stop us, as we finally rested at 2pm and took off our boots and socks and put our feet up on an outdoor cafe chair and BASKED. IN. THE. SUN. And still made it to Melida by 3:15pm.

At this very nice, not-crappy albergue, I started to do laundry and noticed I’d forgotten one of my dirty shirts in my backpack. Without thinking, I ran up the stairs, and as I got to the second floor, I realized I had walked 29 km and now had the legs to just run up a full flight of stairs, no problem. That, plus the angry adrenaline pumping me through the final stretch, I thought. But no, I knew it had faded away easily. This was just strength.

Seventeen-year-old me, and me, we did a good day’s work together. I had allowed that part of myself, allowed her to take the lead, finally, with respect and appreciation for her sense of justice, instead of trying to hold my hand over her swearing mouth and haul her out a side door. It was a small indignity made right, and she did not let me down.

We took the Roman road like soldiers, but without all the fighting and bloodshed and hurling foul curse words like spears. I felt ridiculously victorious.

Some things are hard to give up
Some things are hard to let go
Some things are never enough
I guess I only can hope
For maybe one more chance
To try and save my soul
But love is a long road
Yeah love is a long long road

— Tom Petty, “Love Is A Long Road”

¹Based on the poem “There’s a Hole in My Sidewalk: An Autobiography in Five Short Chapters”
by Portia Nelson

My Camino Guide: Albergue Recipes: Gift Rice

January 9, 2018 / wanderinglightning / 0 Comments

1. Accept gift of prepackaged, pre-cooked rice. It should be mixed long grain, wild, and red, for best results.
2. Add the last of your salted peanuts on top. Be sure to tap out all the salty crumbs.
3. Microwave until hot.
4. During this one minute of cooking, peel your orange.
5. Take out hot plate using your towel, as there will be no hotpads.
6. Pull apart your orange slices and arrange them around the edge of the plate in a pleasing pinwheel design. Presentation is everything. Perfecto!
7. Eat alternating between sweet and salty. Touch your finger into the last crumbs of peanut bits and eat every single one.
8. Choices for dessert: corn nuts or a ginger candy. I say go crazy, have both. Careful of your teeth, though.