“Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers or discomfort,but rather to be fearless in facing them down.Let me not beg for the stilling of my own pain or suffering, but rather for the noble heart to conquer them both — by lessening them in others.” ~ via Rabindranath Tagore
Wonderfully reminiscent of the slate-roofed homes found in the Galician region of western Spain — a region through which I would later walk on my pilgrimage, this stone-tiled house reminded me that while our homes do indeed often re-energize our inner sense of solace, it is openly caring for others as if they belonged with […]
Just before she departed Madeleine was kind enough to give me two tennis balls, hoping that I would use them to self-massage my ailing back as I walked along the rest of The Way. Of course, we Peace Pilgrims aren’t big fans of self-assistance or self-furtherance in any form, so I chose instead to adorn […]
It was getting pretty toasty out on The Way when I walked up and into the small village of Montgross, and then up and into Maison de Rosalie — a relatively high-end restaurant and B&B … The place was pretty packed (with tourists and locals and pilgrims alike) when I entered, so I waited patiently […]
The Walk started looking UPward shortly thereafter (physically as well as metaphorically) when I smoothly flowed into the city of Nasbinal and spent several soothing seconds (actually many motion-free minutes) in the sanctuary of its local Catholic church … 😉 “To fall in love with the Divine is the greatest awakening. To seek the Divine […]
Afterwards, while hanging out in an outdoor café across the street from the church, my shoes presented their first real challenge of The Walk. As wonderful as they proved to be (with this one pair of Adidas indeed making it all the way to Chattanooga), the eyelets at the apex of their lacing did tend […]
I sat for awhile after repairing my shoes, and was considering heading back out onto The Way when a neighboring café-patron (who had seen my nifty repair-work and presumably read my smock) struck up quite a jovial conversation that soon became quite Meaning-full. It turned out that Francis was a local photographer taking a short […]
“Some have said that it is only through shadows that one comes to know the Light, and yet this is actually not at all the case. Each & every one of us knows the Light from our very first moment of consciousness — each & every one of us knows full well what is Love […]
It was standard practice for me to pause every time I passed a herd of dairy cows — to offer my heartfelt apologies at the violent death that awaited them all, and to encourage them all to make a unified run for freedom; to break through the nearest fence-line and hide away in the nearest […]
Fittingly enough, shortly after appropriately bemoaning the plight of so many of my bovine friends, I came across a relatively large herd — watched over by a relatively large bull — of dairy cows; all of them sitting or standing right in the middle of The Way … :O … Just as appropriately, I and […]
This was a particularly long (35+ km) day of walking — especially compared to most of the other earlier days of my pilgrimage, and yet I flowed onward anyway; knowing as I did so that my own current trek (no matter how astounding or incredible or exhausting) still paled in comparison to the much longer […]
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