I made it smoothly enough to & into & through the tiny village of Hospital de la Cruz and then onward to the town of Ventas de Naron, where the locked doors of its tiny pathside chapel were emblazoned with three symbols* that shared all that its inner sanctuary could ever hope to tell … […]
“Many people know that pilgrimage is not about distances covered or destinations achieved, and yet what most folks don’t understand is that pilgrimage is not about slowness of tempo either. In truth, it doesn’t matter that you walk slowly as a pilgrim – it only matters that you walk just slowly enough to be fully […]
On more than one previous occasion on my Walk I had heard wondrous stories about the kindness exuded at the Fuente del Peregrino (The Pilgrim’s Fountain) hostel in the town of Ligonde, and the initial vibe upon finally arriving there certainly didn’t disappoint … “The story of being Here is always greater than the story […]
I had been sitting outside the hostel for only a short while when Nicole, a recent hospitalera there, came out and struck up a quite lively conversation with me – one centered around the stark & fundamental differences between literally walking the Way of Jesus Christ (i.e. my personal take on his teachings; essentially, that […]
“If you accept its ever-gracious offer, the Trail will ever provide everything that is truly needed. And yet to accept its summons, you must in truth set forth. You must leave the safety of home to find its greater haven, and you must be willing to be broken in order to let the Path once […]
I eventually made it to the town of Palas de Rei and hunkered down a bit in its lovely pathside church; realizing while I did so that the hyper-materialization of this final stretch of the Camino might well mean that I will receive little to no offers of food sustenance for the final 83km until […]
I deeply adored most of the stained-glass windows I encountered in many of the churches along my Walk, and yet there was something especially Beauty-full (and deeply Meaning-full* as well) about those I saw here in Palas de Rei … “Half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions are […]
Shortly thereafter I saw Nicole from Fuente del Peregrino on my way out of town. She told me that she had been thinking deeply about our earlier conversation – about the stark differences between the humbly caring & delightfully selfless Way of Christ and the arrogantly judgmental & blatantly self-absorbing Path of Paul – and […]
The walking is once again smoother thereafter, and I made it quite fluifldy into the lovely hamlet of St. Xulian, where I stopped in at the wayside Albergue O’Abrigaderiro to thank the current proprietors there for the kindness their predecessors had shown me some eleven years prior (during my last Camino pilgrimage). And it turned […]
True to local form, the St. Xulian pathside church (Igrexa de San Xiao do Camiño) was all aglow on this day as well, and I received just as much respite & solace from its peaceful confines as I did later while sitting on its stone bench outside … “Much of religion is about trying to […]
“At first with a nagging suspicion that I was living in an alien land – and then later with a growing knowledge that in truth there was no such place, I repeatedly took to the road; at first in search of places grander and more astounding, and yet in the end continually rediscovering places where […]
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