Before leaving town, I stopped briefly in Mansilla’s primary church – once more to reground my humility; offering sincere gratitude for having been blessed to walk this Walk at all, and a renewed resolve to continue onward as long as the same is right & possible … “Spiritual pride tends to speak of other persons’ […]
“Proper walking is the same as proper living: one can only learn the same if one does not imagine one knows what it consists of in advance. Walking smoothly – like living well – means always being willing to flow onto new routes when they present themselves. It is rather living well, which means being […]
“Our lives can be well compared to beautiful streams, those which flow ever onward, those which grow in majesty over time to create wonderful features such as cascading waterfalls and nourishing deltas, those which give nourishment to all beings who encounter its cool sustenance, and those which always find their way back to the sea […]
The day had grown quite long indeed by the time I made it to the outskirts of Puente Villarente, where the very first albergue I encountered (Delfin Verde – The Green Dolphin) heard of my Walk and took me in without hesitation. Most of the other pilgrims there were already starting to bed down for […]
I woke after a relatively restless night’s sleep at the usual uber-early hour and quietly headed outside into the hostels’ courtyard to pack for the day without disturbing my still-slumbering Camino compatriots, and then made my way back out onto The Road – pausing only briefly to retape my shoes under a still-shining streetlamp. I […]
Very soon after entering Leon’s upper outskirts, I saw a fellow pilgrim walking towards me, a fellow pilgrim who happened to be Alberto Castello* – a fellow pilgrim who happened to be a fellow Peace Pilgrim, walking a pilgrimage for Kindness & Harmony all the way to Jerusalem! “Don’t run through your life – walk […]
There were several special places I re-encountered along the Spanish portion of this current Camino – places where great peace was known or great beauty was witnessed or great Kindness was received. And this particular spot – a small park alongside The Way as it made its way through downtown Leon – recalled a moment […]
I only had two goals in Leon (if they could be called the same): 01) see the sunbeams stream once more through the glorious stained-glass windows of the Leon Cathedral and 02) find the wonderful donativo refuge that had taken me in so graciously back in 2008. And seeing as how it was still quite […]
Though I wasn’t feeling very inspired to wait until the cathedral opened, I did take the time to walk its perimeter and marvel over its resplendent architecture … “A beautiful building is one upon which the eye alights and stays lit.” ~ via Ezra Pound “The greatest products of architecture are less the works of […]
I had just given up looking for the donativo hostel where I had been offered refuge back in 2008 when I came across an open doorway that looked strikingly familiar – a doorway that happened indeed to open onto the gutted remnants of that same albergue. And yet now there was nothing left of the […]
I could feel that it was very close to time for me to depart – very close to the Right Time to get back out onto the Right Road, and yet I felt just as compelled to take a brief stroll through the vaulted halls surrounding the cathedral’s main courtyard … “I have known many […]
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