Day 084f: The center of San Domingo … (July 07, 2019)
What a difference a decade makes! Eleven years ago Santo Domingo was a veritable oasis of peace along my Camino – a rest-stop filled with the friendliness of fellow pilgrims and the sacred gentleness of chanting friars. Today that same locale – for whatever reasons (in all probability a combination of shifts in my own consciousness, the zeitgeist of the 2019 pilgrim community, and maybe even the tone of the town itself) – proved to be a source of far sterner stuff. The dusty outskirts of the city seemed to stretch interminably before me as it took a sizable portion of forever to get to the city’s center. Most of the town’s buildings were coldly closed & shuttered when I got there, and even the fellow pilgrims I encountered glaringly radiated gruffer thoughts and harsher worries. No matter, of course, as I simply smiled upon it all, paused briefly in the only open chapel I could find (where I was blessed to engage in a conversation of surprising passion & depth regarding biblical scripture – and the omni-availability of its more loving, Jesus-appreciative interpretations – with a pseudo-autistic town resident), and then flowed onward – out onto The Way and thereby out of town …
“Modern life has been set up to almost ensure our loneliness by having us continually strive to never be alone. Of course, the more strenuously we push aloneness away, the less are we able to cope with the same, the more terrifying it gets, and the more dysfunctionally self-isolating attitudes & behaviors we adopt to cope with the same. It is true that we all live essentially orphaned on a tiny, water-soaked rock soaring through the vastness of space, with not even the smallest hint of even the simplest form of life anywhere around us for billions upon billions of miles. In truth, at least from a current cosmological perspective, our species is alone beyond all imagining. And maybe that is why so many of us can seem so unkind; why so many of us live so locked in our own heads that we never fully recognize the worth of the others ever nearby. Yes, it is true that even if we’re surrounded by the sociological comforts family and friends, we all journey into death completely alone. That said, what makes that journey worthwhile is the ability we all have in every moment to deeply engage with others – the ability we all have to treat every stranger like a friend and welcome him or her into our family thereby.” ~ inspired by Michael Finkel
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