“If you accept its ever-gracious offer, the Trail will ever provide everything that is truly needed. And yet to accept its summons, you must in truth set forth. You must leave the safety of home to find its greater haven, and you must be willing to be broken in order to let the Path once […]
I eventually made it to the town of Palas de Rei and hunkered down a bit in its lovely pathside church; realizing while I did so that the hyper-materialization of this final stretch of the Camino might well mean that I will receive little to no offers of food sustenance for the final 83km until […]
I deeply adored most of the stained-glass windows I encountered in many of the churches along my Walk, and yet there was something especially Beauty-full (and deeply Meaning-full* as well) about those I saw here in Palas de Rei … “Half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions are […]
Shortly thereafter I saw Nicole from Fuente del Peregrino on my way out of town. She told me that she had been thinking deeply about our earlier conversation – about the stark differences between the humbly caring & delightfully selfless Way of Christ and the arrogantly judgmental & blatantly self-absorbing Path of Paul – and […]
The walking is once again smoother thereafter, and I made it quite fluifldy into the lovely hamlet of St. Xulian, where I stopped in at the wayside Albergue O’Abrigaderiro to thank the current proprietors there for the kindness their predecessors had shown me some eleven years prior (during my last Camino pilgrimage). And it turned […]
True to local form, the St. Xulian pathside church (Igrexa de San Xiao do Camiño) was all aglow on this day as well, and I received just as much respite & solace from its peaceful confines as I did later while sitting on its stone bench outside … “Much of religion is about trying to […]
“At first with a nagging suspicion that I was living in an alien land – and then later with a growing knowledge that in truth there was no such place, I repeatedly took to the road; at first in search of places grander and more astounding, and yet in the end continually rediscovering places where […]
Serendipity is finding lemonade on the wayside at the hottest part of the day. Bliss is choosing to be the source of that same Good Fortune … “We are all equal in the fact that we share the same degree of specialness. And we are all the same in the fact that we will never […]
I then met up with Gunther, a pilgrim from Italy who was a butcher by trade, and shared a lovely, meaningful, conversation-laden stroll with him for a few miles to the hamlet of Leborero, where he offered to buy me a standard ice cream and I accepted the 100% mango vegan alternative instead (and noticed […]
“Whenever you walk, whenever you really Walk, the world has neither past nor future; not even the dance setting forth & arriving; not even the endless cycle of mornings & evenings. No, whenever one truly Walks, he or she flows with gravity and dances with both root & rock – he or she leans into […]
I head into the small city of Melide proper and make my usual stop into the town’s primary wayside church (Igrexa de San Pedro de Melide), and yet this stopover has a most uninviting vibe (eerily similar to how I felt while recently passing through the town of Portmarin) and so I didn’t pause long […]
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