Whispers from the Camino—Day 13

Villafranca Montes de Oca to Orbanejo Riopico 24 km

September 17

Leaving before dawn

If I was trying to develop a strategy to hold onto my house in Portland with my mental musings yesterday, today I went the complete opposite direction. Maybe it was reading the sign that said, “Lose your mind. Find your soul” that pitched my contemplations into a new direction.

I first met Seth on the trail and we walked a few kilometers together. Seth grew up in a Mennonite family and was the grandson of a Mennonite pastor grandfather. The tradition ran deep in his family and he felt very much the product of his family and upbringing. But now as a young adult he had more distance from his childhood. Some people outright reject their childhood experiences and try to get as far as they can away from them. Seth seemed to have a healthy relationship with his family and tradition saying, “I appreciate the tradition of my family, but it just doesn’t work for me personally.”

Rain on the way!

Seth represented so many people I met on the Camino. The Camino has traditionally been a Catholic pilgrimage dating back to 814 C.E. (A.D.) after the apparent discovery of the tomb of the apostle Saint James in Santiago de Compostela. In recent decades, the Camino has seen a dramatic growth of non-Catholic, even non-Christian people, who walk it for either transformational or recreational purposes. On the trail I met just as many people who told me they were working through changes in their lives such as divorces, deaths and retirements as those for whom this was the ultimate religious experience as a devout Catholic.

I don’t know exactly what shifted my musing from strategies to create that feeling of home to simply acting on my internal loves and passions. Maybe it was the “mind/soul” quote reminder or Saint Preux’s reminder that maybe I was asking the wrong question. Maybe the honesty and authenticity of Seth put me in touch with my own authenticity. Whatever it was I found myself throwing off all financial concerns while I imagined what a life would be like if I simply followed my own pure passion.

The Peace Pilgrim came to mind. On January 1, 1953 Mildred Norman gave up her name and became the Peace Pilgrim. A spiritual teacher, mystic, pacifist and vegetarian and peace activist, she spent the next 28 years crossing both the U.S.A. and Canada by foot relying on handouts from strangers while she spread her message of peace.

The Camino isn’t serious all the time!

As I walked I imagined a life where I would cycle or walk across America relying on churches and their members to host me and feed me while I promoted the idea of creating a “Camino-like” infrastructure on American soil where people could take advantage of the many historical routes in America for their own personal pilgrimages and stay in churches, many of whom are looking for a new way to serve the community. I would write, I would speak, I would play guitar and write songs. In a word, my life would become my message. No more thinking about strategies where I could create the support for a life. The life would have to come first. The support would have to follow.

I arrived in Orbanejo Riopico. In 24 hours I had swung from one end of the continuum to the other—making myself crazy trying to create a strategy to create the feeling of home to an almost manic commitment to throw off all financial and societal restraints in a “Jesus did it. I can do it” kind of radical commitment.

I called my son back in Portland. It was good to connect with something that was real. Whatever my future held it would need to honor the commitments and life I already had with the inner calling I have to be a creative and innovative force for good in our society.