Buen Camino!

It's New Year's Eve; it's been quite a year - with high points like the Camino in September and a yet a major valley where conversely I have rarely felt God more present.

I'm still reading Buen Camino! by Natasha & Peter Murtagh and apart from enjoying their descriptions of some of the places that I have been myself, like Puente La Reina and Estella, I particularly liked this meditation by a Jesuit Jose Antonio Garcia Monje which Peter Murtagh picked up in the church of St. Stephen in Zalbadica. I think it sums up the Camino experience:

 

"The journey makes you a pilgrim. Because the way to Santiago is not only a track to be walked in order to get somewhere, nor is it a test to reach any reward. El Camino de Santiago is a parable and a reality at once because it is done both within and outside in the specific time that [it] takes to walk each stage and long the entire life if only you allow the Camino to get into you and to make [you] a pilgrim.

 

 

The Camino makes you simpler, because the lighter the backpack, the less strain to your back and the more you will experience how little you need to be alive.

 

 

The Camino makes you brother / sister. Whatever you have you must be ready to share because even if you started on your own, you will meet companions. The Camino breeds community: community that greets the other, that takes interest in how the walk is going for the other, that takes and shares with the other.

 

 

The Camino demands of you. You must get up even before the sun in spite of tiredness or blisters; you must walk in the darkness of the night while dawn is growing; you must just get the rest that will keep you going.

 

The Camino calls you to contemplate, to be amazed, to welcome, to interiorise, to stop, to be quiet, to listen, to admire, to bless...Nature, our companions on the journey, our own selves, God.