Day 067a: To carry a fallen Friend … (June 20, 2019)
I wake early and easily after a wonderful night’s rest in my lovely Le Par Chemin loft bed and head down (post wake-up shower) for a lovely breakfast with Frederic & Francoise & Gerard (the latter of whom are early rising pilgrims like myself, and the former of whom has taken to serving visiting pilgrims their breakfast so that his beloved Muriel can get some additional rest).
The banter is jovial and soft amongst the four of us, and things get briefly and Beauty-fully emotional for us all when I spontaneously offer to carry a stone for Francoise & Gerard all the way to the Cruz de Fero* in honor of Daniel, a pilgrim friend of whom they had spoken last night who had recently departed this world for worlds “other” … They each headed out to the courtyard thereafter and found one stone each for me to carry for their fallen Friend, and then we hugged each other long & heartfelt before waving farewell as they headed back out onto the Road before me.
“In communities, at work, but particularly in seemingly random encounters, we are all thrown together into something much like a three-legged race. God may not mean for us to cross the finish line together, and yet He almost assuredly means for us to help each other arrive at the same. In this vein, all the other people in our lives are tied together with us and play some important part in our progress. Sometimes they arrive to rouse our stubborn sins to the surface, where we can deal with them and overcome them. Other times they arrive to grant us sweet solace or a lighthearted reprieve from the mundane. Bundled together in flowing families, sometimes in quiet pairs and in other moments a giant seven or nine or fifteen legged pack, we often seem to make very poor progress indeed, and regularly fall to the ground in bickering heaps. And yet God has put us together – has appointed each person in our unique bundle with a task specific for his or her talents & circumstance; and we for them as well. And so, ‘little children, let us deeply Love one another’ and let us do so with might and main, hopping relentlessly together toward the finish line.” ~ via Frederica Mathews-Green
*The Cruz de Fero is a famous “letting go” Camino waystation in northern Spain, and Francoise & Gerard were not going to make it that far this time around …
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