Day 05a: The End of the 1st Beginning … (09/13/18)
(The following entry is mostly taken from the public missive I sent out per email to friends & family on September 17, 2018; a few days after leaving the hospital in Nagold and just before ultimately deciding to put my pilgrimage on hold until the following spring …)
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Well, it seems that I have now been called to offer a fresh corollary to the well-known saying “Make plans, God laughs.” And that addition — at least relative to this particular walk — now reads: “Set plans boldly in motion, and God all the more heartily guffaws.” For in my current case God’s chortling was quite clearly heard in the wee hours of this past Thursday morning – a celestial snickering that came in the form of a kidney stone … :O
Yep, that’s right. After a mere four days of walking I was quite literally knocked down by a quite indescribable wave of pain – a wave of pain that had me literally crawling form door to door in the little town of Hochdorf, ringing doorbells repeatedly until I finally woke someone who was willing to call me an ambulance to come and take me off The Way.
Now there are number of tales that could be told related to this recent happening (some of them quite amusing, and most of which I will save for another day), and yet the one I wish to now share relates to the Truth that resides at the very center of this Pilgrimage — indeed, it is the Truth that lives at the very core of everything of import I have to share with each & every one of you. And that Truth is the following one: No matter its frequency or intensity, pain is never our master. Yes, it is true that pain finds all of us at some point. Indeed, there is no escaping the same. For no matter how much wealth or “fun” or “love” or comfort we nestle around us, pain will ultimately find its way into our lives. And yet even though pain cannot be stopped or conquered, pain is never the master of our days. For we are always the ones who choose how we respond to pain. We are the ones who always choose whether to shake & quiver & mewl & moan in its presence, OR to stand up even while hurting and care for others anyway.
Admittedly, the former choice is quite reasonable – given our eons-old, self-centered programming; a programming that calls for us to take care of ourselves at all costs. And yet caving to this selfish temptation is the primary source of all our suffering (secular pain studies happen to agree — having consistently proven that over 90% of all perceived discomfort comes not from external events or their sources but rather from our own internal resistance to &/or fear of the same). On the other hand, every time we are exhausted or terrified or deeply depressed or in great pain and choose to perform even the smallest Kind Deed for another, that Deed becomes enormously potent for others — AND our own suffering completely disappears while performing the same.
And it was during my short-yet intense bout with my Friend, the calcified nieren-nugget, that I was blessed to re-discover this Truth. For whenever we are in deep pain, it is enough to lend a gentle smile to our caregivers. Whenever we are in deep pain, it is enough to ask others if there is anything we can do for them. Heck, whenever we are in deep pain, it is even enough to crack a clever joke about hoping you have just vomited in the appropriate courtyard recycling bin of the family who you less than gently woke just a few minutes before … 😉
Anyway, longer story made much shorter, after receiving a day and a half of excellent healthcare in the town of Nagold (Oh my! Healthcare as a right instead of a privilege?!? Someone needs to tell both the Republicans AND the Democrats in the U.S. — politicians who ALL still inexcusably bow down to the same oligarchic overlords, by the way — that it really is possible to treat ALL their constituents with basic decency; that universal healthcare really is so much more than a mere pipe-dream), I set forth once more the following day’s afternoon and made slow-yet-steady going over the next several days – ambling less than nimbly through the towns of Lossburg and Alpirsbach and Haslach; finally arriving in the outskirts of the village of Elzach, where I met the lovely couple who noticed my obvious persisting discomfort and then offered me the tiny apartment-monastery in which I secluded myself and weathered the coming winter.
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