Day 51m: Rewriting the Record … (06/04/2019)
As mentioned previously, the people of St. Privat (including more than a few of the fellow pilgrims I encountered that day*) were less than friendly and not all accommodating as I flowed from hostel to hostel to church parish to shop owner, and was repeatedly met with either cool dismissal or outright rejection. There were also no parks or bus stop benches available, and I resigned myself and my aching hips to the fact that I would have to walk onward in the gathering gloom — at least to the next town of Monistrol; an additional 4 miles that were reportedly extremely difficult to tread … :O … And so it was that I shrugged my shoulders and smiled and waved farewell to pilgrims and residents alike as I flowed up and out of town.
And yet “Camino magic” (what some call “the Grace of God”, and others label “good luck”) was at work here as well, for the very last building on the very outskirts of town was the local campground. The manager thereof was an exceptionally kind woman who heard my story and offered to let me sleep that night on the handicapped bathroom floor, and yet my hips were in so much pain that I knew it would be less uncomfortable to walk onward. So after thanking her profusely for her gentle generosity, I limped upward and onward again towards Monistrol …
And yet I hadn’t gone very far at all before that same campground manger came running after me, calling for me to stop as she did so. Apparently she had been watching my less than smooth departure up the trail (I was limping pretty badly at this point), and felt compelled to tell me that walking along the roadway would be a walk both much shorter and much less painful … And this was the reason that I turned back towards town, this was the reason that I came across a yet-unseen pilgrim hostel (La Cabourne), this was the reason that I walked up the front steps of the same, this was the reason that — lo & behold — was reunited with Alain & Celine who were resting in its garden patio, this was the reason that this same lovely couple offered to pay for my stay in that quite-high-end hostel that night (in the last bed available — the bed in their own room, no less!), and this was the reason that I did indeed remain in St. Privat that night … :O 😀 😀 😀
“Love is by far our species’ most unifying and empowering spiritual denominator, and the more we ignore its potential to bring greater calm and deeper meaning to our existence, the more likely we are to continually repeat our current inglorious history of man’s callous & cruel inhumanity to man. On the other hand, the more we choose the opposite — the more we choose to embrace our innate oneness and treat each other accordingly, the more potently that long record can be rewritten as one ladled with peace and prosperity and happiness and harmony.” ~ inspired by Aberjhani
*I’m pretty sure this lack of kindness was primarily due to it being the very first night “on the road” for almost all of them. Feeling unsure about any situation always makes it that much harder to reach out to another in need … 😉
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