It was still quite dark when I set forth that morning, and my walking was commensurately slow and measured, at least until a group of three Spanish pilgrims wearing headlamps cruised past, whereupon I settled in behind them at a respectful distance; using the bobbing of their lights up ahead to lead my own Way […]
It was shortly thereafter that I entered the small village of Maneru, and it was shortly after that entrance that I came upon The Way’s next sleeping saint – a fellow mendicant pilgrim taking sonorous refuge under the pavilion of the town’s central square. I wondered what dreams he was dreaming that morning, as well […]
I looked over and the adjacent road-sign said only 2 kilometers to the village of Cirauqui, and I was pleasantly surprised to realize – as I turned my head towards the path’s upcoming horizon – that the human eye can indeed see at least that far … “Walking has something in it which animates and […]
Distance and time do funny things on pilgrimages. And so it was at this particular stretch of The Road that it seemed that I could get no closer to Cirauqui, no matter how long or how smoothly I happened to walk thereto … How fortunate I was to have abandoned all plans & goals on […]
In a truth most metaphoric, it was often intriguing to feel how The Way was so often lost in larger cities, and yet always so clearly known in smaller towns … “In the great cities we see so little of the world, pulled almost incessantly into our own tinier minorities. And yet in the world’s […]
“Only yesterday I was no different than them, and yet I was somehow saved. I am explaining to you the way of life of a people who say every sort of wicked thing about me because I sacrificed their company to reawaken my own Soul. I left the darker paths of their greed & duplicity […]
And then it was that I came across the Olive Gardzen, an oasis of peace seemingly in the middle of nowhere – an refuge for pilgrims that was built for their mobile community and mosttly maintained by the same … “Perhaps the second most important thing we can ever bring to another person is the […]
“If I have found my journey to be a maddening tangle of wandering ‘rabbit-trails,’ a labyrinth of incessantly circular passages leading ever to nowhere and back and a plethora of assorted ‘dead-ends’ fraudulently disguised as paths of great promise, it can only be because I have mindlessly exchanged God’s compass of loving service for my […]
I flowed steadily onward, all the way into the town of Lorca, where the snugly town square offered not only deliciously refreshing fountain of cool water, but an equally revitalizing effusion of camaraderie from fellow pilgrims Mate (from Hungary, with whom if would walk a sizable portion of my Spanish Camino), Julio (from Paraguay, who […]
“Perhaps the itinerant monks were especially responsible for promoting the view of the human condition being like eternal strangers. For they journeyed ceaselessly from monastery to monastery, with no fixed abode, and they haven’t quite disappeared, even to this day. They walk for their entire lives – on narrow mountain paths and broad city streets, […]
I then entered the town of Villatuerta and once more found both respite & solace in the open church I found there … “There is no hope for the man who hopes to obtain a virtue in the abstract, just as there can be no salvation for the man who prays for the same for […]
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