Leaving Roncevalles on A Camino of the Heart.
6.30am, setting off on my first Camino Francés, in the dark. Too much movement in the dormitory for me to stay in bed.
To say that I was beginning this Camino with a broken heart would cover, more or less, my emotional and physical state as I set off. It would not, however, suggest the much deeper brokenness, sense of failure and inability to pick myself up off the floor which had submerged me in near paralysis. I had been living 2014 with too much pressure to work, too little meaning in what I was doing, too keen to maintain the approval of others and too many times ignoring my own inner voices longing for silence and prayer. My heart arrhythmias shouted loudly enough at me in the end; I acknowledged the imbalance in my life and the need for “Agere Contra“. I changed course at the end of August, spent a week in Iona and then decided to walk a Camino.
I took my first steps towards Santiago de Composotella on a Friday morning, the first Friday in October, 2014. Less than two days before that, on the Wednesday evening, the first day of October I had taken the decision to walk the Camino Francés. I threw some clothes into a rucksack together with my sleeping bag – and bivvy bag, just in case I needed to sleep in a field and headed across Spain to the Pyrenees.
Only later did I discover that I was carrying two pairs of swimming trunks and two ground sheets. I had also left home wearing the 10 euro sandals which had already covered 5000km of pilgrimage and this was my only footwear.
The Sandals – and the feet.
I believed deeply that the Camino would help me heart find its true rhythm. Since May I had been having regular bouts of heart arrhythmias which, during the summer, had become daily and almost constant. I had a heart specialist appointment the following Wednesday and decided I would walk for the weekend at least. If things did not improve I’d return back across Spain for the appointment, otherwise I would cancel it. These arrhythmias are not usually life-threatening but I did have a risk of fainting. Indeed, on the previous Monday I had passed out very briefly at a cash machine and came round clinging on to it not knowing what it was.
The descent from Roncevalles.
I had decided, because of my heart, not to start from St. Jean-Pied-de Port. Many I met spoke of the climb being hard but marvellous. I would have loved to have climbed the pass over the Pyrenees: as it was I was setting off against all normally sound judgement. The descent was also hard and, in some places, dangerous for the lame.
No easy bridge for the hobbling.
The way down was often steep and, as the sun rose, I began to be passed by other pilgrims who seemed steadier on their legs than I. Autumn was beginning and I soon began to inhale the prospect of this season of fullness. My heart was beating too fast and I tried to calm it with deep, regular breathing, in and out,p but it was a phrase from a prayer of Mother Theresa of Calcutta which I say every morning in Spanish which first brought back a steady, regular heart beat:
que estoy exactamente donde tengo que estar
In English this simply says, “I’m here where I am meant to be.” Each morning I know I am just where I should be! On this early October morning I had nothing to do but be here, up in the Pyrenees on the Camino de Santiago.
que estoy exactamente donde tengo que estar
So often, in the following 34 days, I would repeat this phrase and let go of many trivial preoccupations. I walked – just being, just being where I was: with each step being where I am, here and now. In torrential rains I would look downwards watching the stony path conveying itself away beneath and behind me as I moved my legs: but I was standing still as the Earth rotated at my feet, being just where I should be. Still walking late in a long day, I would feel my rucksack squeezing my body like a concertina and rejoice because this was just where I should be, under that weight, and that made the weight just fine. When I came to a steep hill, and there were some very steep hills when I reached the Camino de Invierno, my steps would shorten in an instinctive gear change. Each hill came to me exactly where it should have been for me and not once was I out of breath through climbing.
Here, near Belesar on the Camino de Invierno, was the steepest down and up of my Camino, with the Rio Minho below.
que estoy exactamente donde tengo que estar
A Camino of the Heart.
Bit by bit over the first few days my arrhythmias became less frequent and Mother Theresa’s morning prayer confirmed my view that my heart disorder was a physical sign of something more deeply wrong with my life. If praying the phrase “que estoy exactamente donde tengo que estar” could still my tempestuous heart the physical organ itself was not seriously disordered: it was picking up on a more profound malaise which I need to leave in God’s hands. From this first day I knew this would be my Camino of the Heart – and so it turned out to be.
8 kilometres into the Camino of my Heart
Postscript. I continued my caminos in 2015 and 2016 but in the end the arrhythmias made walking any distance impossible. In February, 2019 I had a coronary ablation. I know my heart a bit better now in both the physical and the spiritual sense. Not entirely, though.
I’m back walking five months after that operation, optimistic that I can continue walking contemplatively, healed and healing, immersed and at one with nature and opening my whole being to the God of compassion and love who lives in us all and through all of us.
On Tuesday 18th June, I should reach Assisi. I will have been on that journey for over 3 years. Estoy exactamente donde tengo que estar.