Camino

A few months ago while I was in hospital I picked up a copy of Julie Kirkpatrick’s book, The Camino Letters , in which she recounts her experience of walking the pilgrim trail of the Camino De Santiago De Compostela. Filled with soul-searching and self-reflection, it seemed an apt title to read since I was doing similar soul-searching and self-reflection.  However, as one thing led to another, I didn’t read it and have only returned to it in the past couple of weeks. Interestingly, “The Camino” has been very present in my life over that last little while – not just in finally reading Kirkpatrick’s book, but in film (we recently saw Emilio Estevez’s “The Way”, based on the Camino pilgrimage) and in music (listening to Oliver Schroer’s recording, Camino).

There is something very inspiring and appealing about the notion of the pilgrim road: the cleansing of it, the discipline, the journey. Perhaps it is the resonance between these things and my own recent health and family issues that is the key to my being drawn to it. Certainly the past year has been full of great change, loss, fear and uncertainty. Yet, there were also many  valuable “big lessons” in the midst of all this – the silver lining, as it were – about the essential ingredients in life and how we so often neglect them (to borrow a phrase from my friend David).

It seems that the challenge of undertaking/undergoing a pilgrimage, whether physically as in the case of walking the Camino or interiorly from a hospital bed, is not just to complete the journey but to integrate the “big lessons” into the life that follows the pilgrimage. Not losing the insights or whatever you’ve learned, but finding a way to let them continue to work their transformation in you. This is something which I am finding to be a challenge. I notice that my mind is unconsciously distancing itself from my health crisis as it strives to return to a sense of normalcy. Unfortunately, as that distancing occurs the immediacy of the big lessons fades and it requires more work to maintain the felt sense of urgency that impels transformation.

In the coming months I will have to find a way to maintain that felt sense of urgency and to continue to reflect and prioritize those things that are most important to me, based on my big lessons. I will have to find a way to balance my goals and activities with the physical changes my health situation has created. I will have to find a way to live more slowly, yet at the same time, more deeply.

Perhaps, as Kirkpatrick noted at the end of her book,  this is the lesson of the pilgrim road: “Paso por paso. Step by step.” Walk mindfully. Be fully present to the journey. Be gentle; don’t be afraid.

Peace & Blessings,

J.

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