Heading back onto The Way and the trail immediately morphs back into a repeat of this morning’s extremely thin and extremely slippery-sticky mud trail. There is no neighboring roadway to traverse as an alternative, so I am forced to painfully take longer diagonal strides to place my feet into the tall, soaked grasses on the […]
No sooner do I shrug my shoulders & smile at the difficulty of the day’s walking — choosing to just keep bumbling along while humbly accepting the day’s quite painful fate – than the path shifts once more; this time in far more foot-friendly directions – first to a still-muddy but much wider trail, then […]
The city of Lectoure is finally seen in the distance; a city that was hopefully going to be my final stop on what had been a most grueling of days, and a city that offered me a well-timed gift of floral beauty at its initial outskirts, after a day that had been heavily ladled with […]
I make it without incident up into the center of town and all the way to the city’s primary church (a cathedral dedicated to Saint Gervais & saint Protais – twin brothers who were both martyred for their beliefs. They are both considered to be the patron saints of haymakers; and both are invoked upon […]
Beautifully reminiscent of Michaelangelo’s Pieta (still on display in St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican City), this particular sculpture in the Lectoure cathedral caught both my eye and my heart – more so for its gentle revelations than its more obvious artistic majesty. There was simple something so powerful about the way Mary is holding […]
It was an odd entry into the Lectoure hostel that evening, to say the least – with fellow pilgrims more raucous than reverent, and hospitaleras more stern (almost disapproving, even) than serving. I remained humbly appreciative of the shelter, nonetheless, of course, and maintained an even-keeled faith that my message of selfless Love & bold […]
One of the more gentle amusements of the Camino is how certain pilgrims from our path’s past tend to resurface sporadically at seemingly random way-stations, and such was the case tonight with Pascal – a n overtly gruff fellow whose similarly-soft interior was not nearly as deeply buried under his callous tone and stern scowl […]
There was one particular hospitalera (I don’t think I ever caught her name) who was especially appreciative of my Walk and my personal devotion thereto, and she ended up inviting me down into the lower enclaves of the hostel, where I was allowed to send a few prayers of humble gratitude skyward from the nuns’ […]
I woke very early this morning (the usual on this Walk) and went down to enjoy a solitudinous early breakfast – sitting alone at the long dining hall table with only my cereal for company. I packed up smoothly, offered a fond farewell to that morning’s hospitaleras, and headed back out onto The Way – […]
It was hard to notice upon arriving in town last night (partly due to the gathering gloom, partly due to the sloping landscape, and mostly due to my fixation on “making it” to that night’s place of rest) and yet it turned out that Lectoure was a partially walled city that rested upon a relatively […]
The Path is difficult again this morning – with thick wet mud coating its center and thick stinging nettles lining its sides … “This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little […]
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