DO YOU REMEMBER…?

Tonight over dinner we talked about the Camino. We played a game I call “Do you remember…?

Do you remember the town where we had dinner with Wynn & Roberta?

Do you remember the young man who fell and screamed a 4 letter word and how I ran to help him?

Do you remember the place we ate where I had that wonderful chorizo stew that the restaurant called “soup”?

Do you remember the blind Frenchman I walked with while you walked with the Australian mechanical engineer?

I have to tell you that I think about the camino every single day. I should thank the ladies I had lunch with at the Two Year Academy for Spiritual Formation who told me stories of the Camino and who suggested that I walk the camino as my second year “project”. I’ve never really thought of myself as being able to produce a document or “project” of any real substance. So I thought…all I have to do is walk. I can walk. Five hundred miles?! Ah, so I might not finish :-}. What the heck, I’ll do it. Easy peasy! Little did I know.

I remember a lot of hard days walking and I remember some easier days. I remember one day that my body was really in the zone and I was striding up hills. I remember some women calling out to me, “Hey you’re not supposed to walk that fast.” Another day I remember getting to the hotel before Glen and falling across the bed unable to move, but unable to sleep either. I was so tired. I did walk the Camino Frances. OK I did take a cab or bus 3 days of the walk. I had a rule of thumb that if my foot (I have a janky ankle, yes, “janky” is a medical term) kept me awake at night I would rest it the next day and catch a ride to the next town. All the rest of it I did walk. What I didn’t know is that the camino would tether itself to my heart in this way. I didn’t know the camino was calling me then, but I sure feel it calling me every day since.

When I wake up in the night and can’t sleep I often think about the camino and it hurts sometimes. I pray that I will again feel the wind on my face, the sun and rain on my back, and that I will walk a new walk with God by my side.

Buen Camino