The Camino Francés: timeless and eternal.
Tha Camino Francés in La Rioja.
“What’s timeless and eternal is in the ordinary of our lives.”
I came across this phrase while reading this morning. It immediately snapped me out of a post Camino blues aggravated by a return to a cold, disordered house requiring a winter of work to be done on it. Instead of feeling overwhelmed by the amount of jobs to be done and the need to establish a routine of working, shopping, eating, walking, washing and sleeping, I felt a new energy to get on with all of these, the ordinary in my life. I understood in a flash that my downheartedness came from an inability to link life back home with the Camino and I could now see that in the “ordinary” there is not just a bridge but a basic shared identity between now and then. At heart, the ordinary of our lives is also the trinity of interwoven relationships with others and with ourselves: a trinity because in others and in solitude we encounter the timeless and eternal at its most vibrant and also most elusive, in Love itself.
An early morning photo of a simple celtic knot taken as I bagan my last leg of the Camino to Santiago.
The Camino Francés: in touch with the ordinary.
Part of my routine, I hope, will be to write a bit about the Camino Francés which now is part of my own spiritual journey which this blog embodies. Of all my Caminos the Francés is the most populated by far but everyone who wants still finds time for solitude whereas the other Caminos can sometimes offer only solitude. When I read the phrase, “What’s timeless and eternal is in the ordinary of our lives” I immediately saw that the essentials in my life back at home are identical to all that is most wonderful about the Caminos to Santiago.
Pilgrims often talked to me about the simplicity of life on the Way. To begin with, we each walk with as little external baggage as possible. We all comment, with surprise, on how little we need, materially, in order to live and to be happy. Such simplicity highlights the ordinary, the fundamentals which humans need to survive and thrive.
All material needs in a blue rucksack. enough, even, to sleep outdoors on a cold damp night.
The backpack holds the external essentials while the body, mind and spirit are forced together through the most simple of daily routines – of sleeping, eating, washing and walking. The landscape, the birdsong, the sunlight and weather from dawn to dusk, the villages and cities, cathedrals and hovels are embraced and imbibed by all the senses, immanent with my deepest self which, for moments, knows its own integrity. If the ordinary in my life is not taking me here, to the timeless and eternal, it will be because my life is not ordinary enough, insufficiently empty and harbouring forces of disintegration.
The Freedom of the ordinary.
Most pilgrims on the Camino believe that what they are doing is quite extraordinary but often comment that they feel much more in touch with what life is really about. What a statement that makes about the lives we normally live and the extent to which we have pampered to our insecurities, to our lack of trust in ourselves, in others and in Goodness in all that is! We seek security, approval, “success” and love in all the wrong ways and all the wrong places and box ourselves in with junk so we cannot move. We cherish our falsest of beliefs in a life of illusion thinking that cars take us places to which only our hearts and our limbs and the humble parts of our minds can lead us.
Sometimes the Camino juxtaposes the habitual in our world with the truly ordinary.
The freedom of the ordinary can been seen in the way that pilgrims do not compete to have all the best gear, to dress better than others or to hide their difficulties in walking or sleeping or feeling fine. Walking alongside a busy road, I become aware of some drivers’ need for speed, of seemingly huge and shiny 4x4s which never leave a tarmac road; and I become sensitive to how encapsulating cars are, like little mobile prisons. The exposure of the pilgrim in his/her ordinariness spills over into a willingness to help, to share and to listen to others until a spirit of giving becomes the norm: and then we notice how naturally many others, not walking the Camino, also share and help and listen. The pointers in the ordinary show us the Way to the timeless and eternal.
Peace, deep peace.
Peace
In many ways the ordinary in the Camino leads us deeper into who we really are. While this journey inwards can mirror the many discomforts of the Camino we are drawn further along the way by a voice which says that this is the only way we will ever be at peace, that this is where our true happiness lies. The ordinary is often uncomfortable at first for those of us used to comfort. Learning to share food when arriving in an albergue with no shops or bars, for example, or sleeping in huge busy dormitories, are a couple of common experiences on the Camino which move us bit by bit into that trinity of interwoven relationships at the heart of the ordinary in our lives: the relationships with ourselves and with others held together by Love. It is here that we catch moments of a very deep peace and, yes, it seems far away from everyday life but it is right beside the ordinary in our lives where we find the timeless and eternal.
