Iona Community Prayers on the Camino 3. Peace

Posted on December 19, 2013 by John

Iona Community Prayers on the Camino 3. Peace

Gloaming over the Sound of Iona.

The Iona Community is a dispersed Christian ecumenical community working for peace and social justice, rebuilding of community and the renewal of worship. “Gathered and scattered” is how it sees its members and friends, for, indeed, the Community has members in many parts of the world. Members and associate members pray daily for each other and for the community and I have found these prayers a constant source of invigoration while on the Camino, especially on the parts where I am walking alone for week after week.

An affirmation for the Camino.

Iona prayer of affirmation.

I don’t think there is a single day in which I don’t want to shout aloud that middle statement.

With people everywhere, I affirm God’s goodness at the heart of humanity, planted more deeply than all that is wrong.

So many people I meet live in fear. Almost everything can serve as a source of fear in life and especially other people. For me, this affirmation announces the fundamental truth: Other people are good. Yes, things go wrong, but, at heart, humanity is good, overwhelmingly good. One morning while walking I began to give thanks for those who had helped me at some point in my life and by the end of the day I was still naming people. Those who have been bad for me are very few, like Movistar or a French bureaucrat, but even then I learn from the encounter. How tragic it is to think that we always have to be on the look-out for criminals and cheats, bullies and thieves, conspiracists and politicians; fearing aggression and attack from all corners. (The most frequent attacks come from much nearer to home anyway.)

I remember taking one of my children to Morocco before I knew that place very well. I had heard stories about the dangers of being cheated or mugged or used as a drug courier without my knowing it.

“Dangerous” Moroccan street. Full of muggers round every corner.

In those days I had not learned to affirm the goodness of at the heart of humanity. I pointed out the “baddies” to my son as we dodged through the souk: dangers males (always male in Morocco) huddled in conversation in shadowy spots. Later on, walking in Morocco helped me see that innate distrust is the real enemy and that with trust the world is not so threatening. I found Morocco is an exceptionally welcoming country. Young people today travel the whole world and the real risks are few, statistically speaking. The Camino de Santiago confirms emphatically the truth about goodness at the heart of humanity: here there is a constant encounter with different people in village after village, in the fields and in the cities, with fellow pilgrims and the army of volunteers who give help and welcome all along the way. This affirmation is liberating and self-fulfilling, just as people who fear most seem to make real what they fear.

We celebrate the miracle and wonder of life, the unfolding purposes of God, forever at work in ourselves and the world.

The miracle and wonder of life, Via de La Plata

This phrase thrills me, reminds me to be thrilled at life itself, to breathe and know I am breathing, to look and know I am seeing. It is a celebration of awareness. I like the phrase “unfolding purposes” as if God, Him/Herself does not quite know what is coming next, just as, on the camino, I have no idea what is coming next but trust it will be a part of this celebration of creation: it will be good, even if it hurts, or is uncomfortable or tires me. This is because there is something more important going on, deeper within me, invariably when I walk the Camino. It comes from letting-go of all the daily invasions of life in today’s society. So many Camino blogs list these noises which we leave behind.

Peace, the cloisters in the Abbey, Iona

Peace

The camino, step by step, empties. I find that concerns drop away with each footstep until I am left with the most basic such as where will I find a shop or where to go to the loo. These, too, become wrapped up in a peace, a renunciation of planning, a trust that the goodness at the heart of humanity is also God’s goodness for me. I can trust my body, listen to it and take care of it without fuss.

peace prayer

I am confirmed by this prayer for peace which is the Camino: A journey from death to life, from fear to trust, from whatever is harming me to whatever is good for me. Peace, peace, peace. As I walk with others, or alone, peace makes a home in me. I meet others and feel their peace; their peace spreads over me, within me. Peace grows peace. Also when I meet pilgrims who are distressed I know that a peaceful heart can absorb some of the pain which bleeds from wounds. On the Camino I have met many people of peace and felt this power to heal just by their being peaceful. We don’t have to fight for peace, it is better to emit peacefulness. Silence and solitude is the seedbed for peace and I have found these plentiful on my Caminos.

Day 2. Camino de Madrid, from Colmenar Viejo. Leaving noise behind.

Posted in Pilgrimage and Prayer, The Camino de Santiago | Tagged Colmenar Viejo, Dangerous Moroccan, Iona Community, Morocco | Comments Off

Camino moments: Meandering themes between Qunitanarraya to Santo Domingo de Silos.

Posted on December 17, 2013 by John

Hermita, Huerta de Rey.
A breakfast spot at first seat after Qunitanarraya.

Camino moments: Qunitanarraya to Santo Domingo de Silos.

The revival of the Camino de Santiago at the end of the 20th Century has meant that pilgrims today are much less likely to be considered loonies than they were 30 or 40 years ago. This is unfair: it is still pretty nutty to set off from a comfortable home to walk for a month or so with only what you have in your rucksack: to walk day after day in whatever the weather, taking pot-luck on where you might sleep at night and on the conditions in which you sleep.

The albergue, Quintanarraya. No heating, no hot water, and very empty, but a place to sleep in the pouring rain.

Strange behaviour.

So, if the Camino is, in itself, a strange behaviour it is not surprising that pilgrims have some eccentric habits. “Out of the box” has become a current expression which denotes the gift of being able to think in a way which is creative and brain storming. Ideas which are unusual and come from removing the limits we impose on our thinking are usually like the brainwaves we have when asleep (pretty useless) but, once in a while, they may point to the opening of a new paradigm. This is what “eccentric” means, “out of the box”. The Camino is “out of the box”. I much prefer the term “eccentric” because, geometrically, a centre can be anywhere. It does not need to start in a box which is rather limiting when the intention of the prase is to achieve thinking which is liberated. Perhaps this is a digression.

Cowslips near Silos.

A Love poem.

However, one of the eccentric behaviours on the camino is just the sort of lapse which happened in the last paragraph. As I walk, even if I intend to be contemplative, my thoughts wander and produce eccentric ideas. For instance, I was thinking of Robert Burns’ poem, “My love is like a red, red rose….” and began to wonder how that might be translated for the Dutch. So I try to hum, “My love is like a big, big tulip…” eventually this forms into a little poem.

My love is like a Tulip

Ah, Mogens, my tulip, cooling cold

Such heat of love

You melt the clogs in my heart

Which help me run with windmill-whirring feet.

Free-falling like red Edams in Apeldoorn.

Into the greenhouse of your arms –

My Coffee House of Dreams, sweet as capsicum.

I am your Zuiderzee, and you, my dyke:

Elegant and straight, a fortress against the oceans

Of desire in my canals which long for your black petals.

I offer you this bulb of love, dear Mogens.

Tell me soon you will ride my bike along the towpaths of our lives.

The fountain on leaving Huerta de Rey

Compassion

This, then, is the context, random and unrestrained, in which my intention to remain in contemplative prayer finds itself on a Camino. Part of the practice of such prayer is to notice what is going on in my mind and refocus it, rather than put a stop to it. In a case like this my refocusing would certainly be on Love itself which I would just let sink into my heart, creating more freedom still but with a gentle nudge towards maintaining a sense of God’s presence.

Compassion has been a recurring theme on my Caminos and on the day I left the albergue in Quintanarraya I’d been reading John’s gospel, the one I’d found in a park. Possibly I’d been reading the story of the Healing at Bethesda (John 5: 1-24). This is the story where the paralysed man has been waiting for 38 years to be cured. Many read the story as one which demonstrates Jesus’ compassion since he picks out this man who has been there so long and asks him if he wants to be healed. My Camino mind, the one which translates Burns into Dutch, read the “Do you want to be healed?” as “Do you really want to be healed. Do you remember why you first came here? Have you accepted your paralysis and are still here doing nothing more about it than being resigned to sit around every day?” So the man, hearing this question as a rebuke offers the excuse that nobody helps him. Jesus replies, “Well, help yourself. Pick up that bed of yours and walk.”

The beautiful approach through a canyon heading to Santo Domingo de Silos.

Discontinuous thinking – a Camino luxury.

Sudden pauses in thinking, resuming somewhere else only vaguely related, are often interpreted as a sign of senility. They are, in fact, part of our life at all stages but we are trained to think in continuous lines and, probably straight, logical lines. The Camino is a place where time becomes suspended and so does the need to discipline our thinking (or our emotions). On this walk to Silos I was hit by one of those Camino moments when I think I have had an insight. Following my reflection on Jesus’ attitude towards the paralytic at the pool in Bethesda, I jumped to the gospel teaching on wealth, which is hardly mentioned in John’s gospel which was my Camino reading. I moved from thoughts in my head to that place in my centre where movements stir my spirit, where there is an energy to change and a desire not to sit still. I was filled with a compassion for those who have no food and no money while in some way, not visualising, but being present with the One who cannot move and is paralysed by want: by want of the minimum to be, to be as those of us who are free to think of other things and do, in freedom, what we choose. this One is many, maybe most of us. I began to hurt with this compassion and knew, as I still know, the complete lie, the fundamental untruth of Christianity in Europe and in the North of America which sleeps comfortably with its reserves of wealth while preaching love and compassion. If we have 100’s of euros stored for our future we cannot have compassion. We cannot have money to spare and let others die for lack of it. That is the gospel which we squirm around to justify and defend our right to our standard of living which we make the sole criteria by which we judge the effectiveness of our governments. I have a small amount of capital. I decided that day to aim for zero capital.

The sculpture in Manzanares Park, Madrid, which shows discontinous eccentric thinking. I think it is a woman.

The sculpture in Manzanares Park, Madrid, which shows discontinuous eccentric thinking. I think it is a woman.

Of course, now that I have returned from the Camino, I find it hard to recapture the force of that moment. My environment prefers me to think in its patterns and makes life very awkward for me if I don’t. The comforts I was happy without on the Camino become necessities, the “letting go” which I had learned in not planning for food or shelter is replaced by routines of shopping, regular meals, television, central heating and a car. “Well, to be realistic, you have to be realistic, you can’t live like that all the time.” But in my loony Camino, loose moments I connect with that compassion which hurt and know the lie I live, knowing that most human beings have no choice: and no financial savings at all.

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Posted in Pilgrimage and Prayer, Ruta de La Lana | Tagged Europe, Manzanares Park, Robert Burns, Santo Domingo | Comments Off

Rio Tera, a valley of peace on the Camino Sanabrés

Posted on December 12, 2013 by John

Rio Tera, a valley of peace on the Camino Sanabrés

Rio Tera

On the Camino Sanabrés before entering Galicia, through a labyrinth of mountains, the camino passes through the valley of the Rio Tera and alongside the Embalse de Cernadilla, which has been created by damming the river. The pilgrim arrives first at Santa Croya de Tera with two albergues, one being private and with a good reputation. I chose, though, to cross the river to Santa Marta de Tera where the local authority offer a basic room with beds and blankets and where I was alone. In Santa Martathere is a church with one of the oldest statues of St James, the pilgrim-apostle, outside the South porch.

The oldest statue of St. James as a pilgrim., Santa Marta de Tera.

Another curiosity about this church is that on the spring and autumn equinox the sun enters the east window above the altar and falls directly upon a carving of the Virgin on one of the pillars. I happened to be there on 20st March and, as I was leaving the albergue, people were heading for the Church and insisted I go with them to see this special event. A small group watched in silence as the sun’s rays reliably, at 10 am on the dot, fully set light upon the statue. [10 am BST+1 in winter. I have no idea why this should be significant] I had slept well and alone in the municipal albergue so I expressed great wonder at this spectacle. It was followed by a Mass as the sun got on with its job of heading westwards, although I believe we now think it is we, on the earth, who move and not the sun. However, watching the sun’s rays climb up the pillar to the statue, I can forgive the architects for imagining otherwise and wonder how much worse off we would be if we still believed this.

Spring equinox, 2011, Santa Marta de Tera

Spring equinox, 2011, 10 am Santa Marta de Tera

The valley is a gentle walk accompanied by the river. Each day was crisp, dry and sunny like spring on the East coast of Scotland can be with some luck. It was a joy to walk and my only care in the world was to avoid having to sleep in the same room as an Austrian man whose snoring had driven me to flit to the kitchen floor for the night in the albergue in Tabará two nights before. He had stayed in the posh German run albergue in Santa Croya while I had continued to Santa Martha. As always when we harbour fears we somehow engineer, by an as yet un-named subconscious strategy, to bring about exactly what we have been dreading. When I arrived at Rionegro del Puente on this uplifting equinox, Herr Grünter was already established in the albergue which has two rooms. Even better, one was upstairs. Delighted, I set up my sleeping bag in the empty upstairs room and showered. When I returned from the bathroom my fellow pilgrim had decided to keep me company upstairs and had installed himself in a bed opposite mine. “I don’t really like sleeping in these big rooms alone,” he said. Feebly I replied, “I don’t mind.” My intention was to convey that I don’t mind sleeping alone in an aircraft hangar. I had utterly failed to convey that I minded very much. The next day I bought some ear plugs.

In summer this must be a tourist spot. Rio Tera.

This was the Camino on which I was learning about praying all the time. These days by the river Tera were ideal and, apart from my Austrian friend at night, were full of silence. The camino was well-marked and easy to follow with snow capped mountains beckoning ahead. This business of praying all the time is about trying to focus constantly on the presence of God within. The less I am carrying in terms of reactions such as resentments, or worries such as where I can buy some food or fears about not having a quiet night, the more empty I am. Walking the Camino simplifies life to a few basics, and any problems I carry with me from the “world” in the first few days of a camino soon fade. Of course, thunderbolts happen, like Movistar phones me with threats for not paying them. When I feel cheated by mobile phone companies I’m hardly empty enough to dwell on God’s presence within me. Movistar and sorting my fight with them takes first place – until I can put it all in perspective.

embalse de Cernadilla, Sanabria

The desire to pray constantly means working on perspective. It amazes me how many day to day niggles are put into perspective by walking long distances immersed in the beauty of nature. One of the most practical uses of religion is to help us stand back and see the trivia, that is most of life, with which we become obsessed. The raw nature in which I can spend months on a Camino opens horizons one after the other. Putting the trivia in its place gives me freedom for what is left. What is there, mostly, is peace, love and light(ness). There is also the sigh, compassion and a sense of unity with all creation. All of this speaks of the divine within me. My Catholicism gives me images, stories, poetry and music with which I can externalise my prayer so that I can connect with others who share the same religious/cultural context, It can be rich and colourful when God is present: when He is not there, there is anticipation of his return, trust, faith and waiting. Altogether, praying all the time is nearly possible and my first attempts have been helped by isolation in deserted places.

Casas en Entrepeñas.

I was not to be spared distractions from prayer that evening. My last night in this valley was spent in a brand new albergue in Asturianos which was attached to a brand new and huge sports pavillion with seating for 250 and it’s own bar, all of which must serve the local population of 267 well, especially the 62% of them who have to make do on their pension. They have the possibility of playing football, volleyball and basketball as well as pelota. For the pilgrim, I felt that the double sized hydro-massage showers were more than we deserve: yet there were only three of these even though the albergue could accommodate six people. What wonderful facilities Spain constructed for the few in such remote spots during its economic boom, the one before the economic BOOM!! My thoughts overran my inner silence and kept returning to Spain’s massive public spending with a mixture of disbelief and scorn which could easily have become for me the pleasure of justified disgust at the comfort I was enjoying. How much better it would have been to sleep under the stars had it not been for the generous heating in the bedroom and showers. As if in compensation for my being distracted from my contemplative prayer, the albergue had been built just far enough off the camino, and up a hill, to put off some pilgrims, which meant I was alone. My Austrian friend must have found other company.

Posted in Camino Sanabrés, Pilgrimage and Prayer, The Camino de Santiago | Tagged Camino Sanabr, Rio Tera, Santa Croya, Santa Marta | Comments Off

A Pilgrimage of Reconciliation

Posted on December 10, 2013 by John

A Pilgrimage of Reconciliation

The sound of Iona.

Divorce

What happens to our humanity when a family breaks up, when parents who are no longer able to live together, divorce? What pain is lurking in the hearts of the children? They suffer an agonising loss of which they cannot speak. The voice they once had, in the security of the home they had once known, is silenced because that home has been destroyed? The war between parents leaves orphans, not literally, but in the sense that strife between parents is necessarily prioritised. What stories do parents need to write to justify their failure, what excuses do they offer to their children?

I ask these questions as one such parent, not as a guilt-trip, but because I know that my own pain dulled my sensitivity to my children’s suffering. Moreover, I sought distractions to anaesthetise me and was of no use in helping the children to grieve the death of the family: a grieving which is necessary in their lives to overcome their loss and to flourish. Added to this, in my case, was the abandonment they endured through years of alcoholism.

Divorce, a bolt of lightening for the family.

This blog is about a personal journey, a spiritual journey and also a pilgrimage which began in earnest almost 10 years after my divorce. The pilgrimage paths to Santiago and to Iona map the progress of this journey for me and are a simple backdrop which helps me to focus on a process of personal change. Perhaps anyone reading this blog will identify with bits of it and not be too distracted by the pilgrimage side. We are all called to transformation and my intention is to witness to the transforming power of prayer which I fell into more or less by chance. The questions I have asked at the start about a family suffering through divorce are questions about destruction and death. I want to tell of how prayer, within Christianity, can take us through pain and suffering, destruction and death to resurrection.

Drawn into prayer.

By the time I began my fist Camino I had found sufficient distraction not to look backwards or inwards to the pain of the divorce. ( By this time I was sober, having stopped drinking two years before the divorce.) I was involved in enough projects to be able to ignore, superficially, my own hurt and that of my former wife and my children, as well as the larger family, the socio-ecological body in which our little unit had been born. Perhaps we can distract ourselves until we die or kill ourselves in doing so. In my case, just as I reached my 60th birthday, I began to feel drawn into prayer.

I had started going to Mass from time to time in the little mountain villages near where I lived in Spain, in the Sierra de Gata in Caceres. This is a mountain range tucked away in the middle of the Iberian peninsula huddling against Portugal. Going to Mass felt very comfortable. I think it may have been due to all the fur coats which Spanish women still wear. I used to love burying myself inside my mother’s fur coat as we waited for buses in the Glasgow winds when I was 3 and 4 years old. One Sunday, in the chilly village of Acebo, I was at Mass surrounded by fur coats. Here I had the first of a number of “moments” which are not easy to describe, but fall I suppose into the category of “spiritual experiences”, even though they have important physical elements.

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When it came to the Creed and everyone said that they believed in the Communion of Saints I was aware of the presence of the saints: this is not just the super-hero famous saints but all our ancestors, all the good people who have died. It was a powerful experience and, as I have said, the first of several “moments” which mark my spiritual journey. The common thread with later “experiences” of this sort is that it came unexpectedly and related to a concept or part of the Church tradition to which I had not paid much attention or I had discarded as past its sell by date. What happened was not an insight so much as a becoming, becoming associated with those who have died, even though I have no specific beliefs about life after death. I had a sense of belonging, along with those who have died, as well as the living in their fur coats, to the Body of Christ, in a unity outside of time. Catholicism is rich in analogies and images which help when something word-free happens. This sensitivity to the Communion of Saints was a gift.

This sort of grace appeared in my first year or so of prayer which was usually sweet and rewarding. It fitted very well with walking in the mountains, which I was just discovering, and with the peace of the natural world: blissful yet healthy. One day I was walking up past the hermitage in Gata to the Puerto de Salamanca, a pass reached by a roman road. I had discovered the joy of saying the rosary while walking. As I reached one of the many Hail Mary’s and said “Pray for us now and at the hour of our death”, all fear of death left me. I don’t think I’ve been really scared of dying but this was an actual looking forward to death, not in a morbid way, nor through an ennui with life, but a simple acceptance that death is a wonderful step which I will welcome when it comes, hopefully. This acceptance of death has stayed with me.

A pilgrimage of reconciliation

While walking from Valencia to Santiago in 2011 the idea grew within me, as I prayed, to keep on walking to Iona. The island of Iona represents “home” to me: it is the cradle of Christianity in Scotland with its Protestantism and Catholicism once at war, now reconciled and reconciling. It was a place of exile for Columba, exile from Ireland, in the sixth century. For all of my adult life I have been a Scottish exile and have felt myself an exile from many of my family. I’m also a sort of exile in the Catholic Church, being divorced and canonically excluded. I soon realised that I wanted to make my own pilgrimage of reconciliation and walk back to Scotland, to Iona.

Arriving on Iona: the Abbey.

The work of a pilgrimage of reconciliation, as I saw it at the time, was to clear out of myself all resentments, blame, grievances and anger of a lifetime. I wanted to restore good relationships with my family although I recognised that this desire depended on others who may not want to establish peace with me and I respect their choices. I could, however, forgive. Forgiveness is independent of others: some find it strange that forgiveness is about self and not others. However, the only obstacles to forgiveness are in ourselves. The task was to rid myself of all rancour and anything else which was preventing me from drawing upon the love within me, especially those insistent warning voices which tell me to limit my love, use it sparingly and don’t let it shine upon those who ignore me, or speak badly of me, or whom I imagine want to damage me. Walking the Camino, or rather having my prayers on the Camino for help answered, constantly and gently, had already enabled me to empty myself of much of this baggage stuffed with resentment. Yet there was still a legacy of recurring gripes which I was not finding easy to shift. [Pilar often tells me that the dishes I have just washed are still encrusted with bits of food.]

Faith, humility, compassion, love and trust.

I asked constantly for these five gifts which I had become aware were essential vitamins deficient in my spiritual life. My faith is always being pestered by logic and nihilism. Trust I’m quite good at but tend to have my own plans and solutions already in place before I’ve even thought of placing my projects, let alone my life, in God’s hands; the God I can be dubious about anyway. Humility is the nuclear arsenal of the spiritual life, a weapon against all my defences, justifications and excuses which don’t let me say “sorry” and prevent me from acknowledging the things I have done which, in the light of day and of love, make me cringe. I had not understood Compassion for most of my life so I prayed for it. Compassion, I learned, is a link to all the suffering of humanity. At first my compassion was for people sufficiently far removed from my life to let me see that this special gift, which opens the heart to a tremendous love, is quite different from “feeling sorry” for others or for myself. Little by little, I glimpsed my children with this compassion and my former wife, as well as others who had suffered through the divorce. I had, of course, not ceased to love each of my family and had missed very much those with whom all contact had been lost: but the channels in which I could express this love were silted up in the breakdown of relationships and I had shut tight some flood-gates as well. Compassion is stimulating: it moves to action, actions which seek to clean out the toxic debris of wars which have destroyed relationships, to repair, to heal and to reconstruct. So I prayed every day for these five gifts and I still do.

Only 12 miles to go.

I concluded the walking part of my pilgrimage of reconciliation to Iona in early September 2011. There was no sudden and miraculous change in my family situation at the end of the pilgrimage. What did happen, over the months and years is that the journey continues slowly as I learn how to say “sorry” and listen as others begin to speak to me, often after years of silence and hurt, masked by anger. I have been able to write to each acknowledging my failings as dad or as husband, to accept that I have caused great pain and with compassion see this pain. Compassion is like a laser which loosens and removes the debris which blocks the light. Emptied of this sediment of my own hurts, angers, aggressions and grudges, all that remains is love.

Gradually I have met up with some of my family who have not spoken to me for years. These reunions are full of joy but difficult. They are meetings of reconciliation when, at last, I am able to listen and to say “sorry”. It is hard for each of us to accept that there is no undoing what happened: a broken family is like a smashed egg. Love, however, transforms and can turn out good omelettes.

Love

This pilgrimage of reconciliation grew out of the Camino I had begun in Valencia in early February, 2011. In those first, frosty days among the orange groves I had felt St. Thérèse of Lisieux urging me to “pray all the time”. Like the moment at Mass in Acebo when I sensed a complete union within the Communion of Saints a doctrine which meant little to me, St. Thérèse had not been in the list of my most admired saints. Yet when moved deeply by the Spirit of God, these popular and traditional “pictures” seem to precede the words I need to have some hold on the experience.

When walking through England I awoke one morning filled with an immense love and an image of the Sacred Heart. At the time I simply absorbed this love which made everything else within me unimportant: it filled me completely and was completely fulfilling. Everything lit up with rays of light as I lay on my sleeping mat overwhelmed. Peace. Nothing else mattered anymore. I had an awareness of the triviality of all my preoccupations which in the perspective of this love diminished into nothingness, while love which absorbed me.

The image of the Sacred Heart which came to me was a common Spanish portrayal of this representation of Jesus triumphing over all human suffering through his passion, death and resurrection.

Spanish Sacred Heart with lots of coloured rays of light.

The devotion to the Sacred Heart began in France in the 17th Century with St Margaret-Mary having visions of Jesus which portrayed his total love and compassion for humanity. I didn’t have a vision but a sense of infinite love and compassion which washed over me which, I suppose, recalled to my mind this picture of the Sacred Heart. I imagine this experience is associated with a personal love of Jesus. People who talk of loving Jesus just baffle me. I really don’t know what it means but this experience of absolute Love must be close to it. My reluctance to embrace the devotion itself has diminished considerably.

Whenever I am tempted, or carried away by anger, insecurity or one of my hurts re-opening, to enter into conflict of any sort I try to return to that moment in a field in England when I woke up wrapped in this great Love and a sleeping bag. Often a blending of compassion and love sweep away my resistance and my defensiveness which can readily become an attack. Sometimes I need space and quiet for this. In general, I have grown to seek quiet, times of solitude and silence because these take me closer to this Love in which my own heart can beat in a prayer of love.

My Camino continues and so does the pilgrimage of reconciliation which is far from complete. The walking has taken me far. It has taken me into a world in which everything is reversed. In this New World, pain is not to be avoided but is used to transform and clean out cancers, failure disempowers self-promotion and all the losses and deaths in life strip away barriers to love. In this love nothing matters, not even doctrines, or devotions or rituals or theologies, let alone the daily arguments over trivia which, in the end, lead to destruction, as in my divorce. In this New World the senselessness of human conflict, of striving in life only to die and the unexplained agonies of physical and emotional pain all become one with the Love of a personal God who knows human suffering intimately and at first hand. I began walking and, in silence, God was speaking to me. He gave me the grace of compassion and broke down my resistance to saying “sorry” from a place where I can say, “Yes, I destroyed the family I love”. I can say this to myself and to God as well and still live. Moreover, I live in Peace. That is how the Camino, my path of prayer, has changed me………so far.

Posted in Camino de Levante, Pilgrimage and Prayer, Pilgrimage to Iona from Loyola., Uncategorized | Tagged Although Ignatius, England, Europe, New World, One Sunday, Open Secret, Portugal, Sacred Heart, Scotland, Spain, Spiritual Exercises, Tony Parson | Comments Off

A Happy Ending in Santiago: just like Hollywood.

Posted on December 3, 2013 by John

A Happy Ending in Santiago: just like Hollywood.

Santiago de Compostella

Not the Camino I had imagined.

Earlier this year I walked the Ruta de La Lana hoping for solitude and silence. I wanted a period for uninterrupted prayer which I often find in quiet places alone. The Camino through the least populated provinces of central Spain did indeed offer everything I had expected in terms of solitude and quiet with many bonuses such as the canyons and the castles, mountains and forests and rivers, eagles, hares, deer and wild boar; paths lined with rosemary in flower, starlit skies and the great horizons opening out in succession at every mountain pass as I left behind me wave after wave of sierra.

Wave after wave of sierra. Early morning near Cuenca.

What I hadn’t imagined was that with all the beauty and solitude in the world, away from the noises of the city and with a camino well-marked with yellow arrows, I would find prayer difficult and my inner silence weighing heavily upon me. I did have an inner silence and I had little on my mind, especially when I stopped planning which was my main distraction in prayer. Yet, the joy of prayer in solitude which I had experienced on the Camino de Levante two years before was absent and all that remained was a heavy dullness. I didn’t lack peace. Peace accompanied me in every step even though my physical condition was often painful. What I missed were the stirrings of joy within me and the sense of oneness with God and his creation: a state of wonder at the goodness of life and of humanity and an alertness to being alive.

I walked without much spring in my step.

Uplifted by music.

Fairly early on in my Camino I began to pray, “Lord teach me how to give you glory and how to live in joy”. The first part was answered quickly but I really was not full of joy as I had imagined I would be in such perfect conditions for silence. I do not walk listening to music but have five songs or hymns on my voice recorder. I have an inertia when it comes to listening to music even when I feel I need it to help change my mood. It took me two weeks of inner dullness to switch the recorder to “play”. I did so on the way to Alatoz when I was physically weary but inspired by the new life bursting out on the fruit trees in the little valley I was walking through which opened out onto the huge plain of the Rio Jucár.

approaching Alatoz, looking over the Jucár plain.

I selected the “Salve Regina” and played it over and over.

The plea to Mary from this “vale of tears” to pay attention to our prayers was very appropriate and after a kilometre or so I was walking more lightly. The reprieve was temporary but got me to Alatoz where Miguel from the Amigos del Camino was waiting to welcome me.

Another tune which I played is “Llama de Amor Viva” the poem of John of the Cross. The words in Spanish harmonised with my melancholy although I could only pick out phrases here and there and from time to time, enough to strike deeply. English translations don’t help me at all.

The Lord is the Spirit: the Spirit gives Life. Dominus Deus es. This prayer, in Latin, sung by the Taizé community also suited my mood with its repetitive chant. My voice recorder doesn’t have a loop to keep repeating the music. Had it had one I might, some days, have put this on in the morning and stayed with it all day.

Then the day I reached O Cebreiro the tune which came into my head as I was propelled up the mountain was the traditional Lourdes hymn, “Ave, Ave, Ave Maria.” I sang this myself since I didn’t have it recorded.

Cowslips near Silos: muted percussion, silently praising the springtime.

Santo Domingo de Silos.

For the May holiday, Pilar came to meet me in Santo Domingo de Silos. I had spent a night in the very comfortable albergue offered by the monks in this renown Benedictine monastery. When she arrived we stayed in the Hotel Arco San Juan. When I had reached Santo Domingo by camino in mud and rain, after a precarious descent down a rocky slope, the owner of this hotel had invited me in to warm up and take off my jacket and trousers which left a dirty puddle on his floor. The surprise of this good hotel was its restaurant. The menu looks very simple but the price is high, about 20 euros. When we eventually did eat there it was outstanding and I have since seen comments from locals saying it is the best place in the Province of Burgos to eat roast lamb.

Benedictine monk, Silos.

These were a few memorable days when Pilar and I walked together, returning to the hotel each night and attending vespers in the Abbey. The singing of the monks of Silos is famous but did little to lift my inner deflation: nor did the roast lamb. I appreciated both the chanting and the dinner but I still repeated my prayer, “Show me how to live in joy” with a longing for just a spark of what I had known on my first Caminos.

Pilar in Mecerreyes, Burgos

The last day of the May holiday we listened as usual to Rezandovoy (Pray-as-you-go in the uk). This daily prayer webcast included that morning the simple hymn, “Here am I, Lord, I’ve come to do your will”. More then the monks’ Gregorian chant this little tune stayed with me to Santiago and I sang it often on the quiet stretches of the Camino which still lay ahead. At Silos I was well aware that my days of total solitude were over, for the day Pilar left I walked on to Burgos and met the flow of the Camino Francés. After that there were no nights alone and only in the afternoons was the camino deserted. I wondered why I had felt called to walk this route when, [apart from a few miracles, like my finding the Gospel of John,; my gratitude to the friends of the camino for all their help and the pleasure of walking such a magnificent route through the heart of Spain], nothing had happened, I felt, within my spirit. So this little refrain “Here am I, Lord, I’ve come to do your will” sung to this tune, was my offering of myself as well as an acceptance that my lack of any spectacularly wonderful spiritual experience was, in itself, the experience I was meant to have.

Santiago de Compostella

When I arrived in Santiago a miracle or two later I had the pleasure of meeting Johnnie-Walker in the pilgrims’ office and of a Mass with the botafumiero. The Camino Francés had reminded me of many of the needs of others. I will not easily forget the Australian couple I met in a Hostal just before Léon. One of the women had lost her husband and had come with her friend hoping the pilgrimage would help her grieving, but her sadness had stayed and grown in every cell in her body and all she could say was, “This has been a waste of time.” Others were struggling with work-related problems and others with unemployment. I had had magic moments like when a woman, more elderly than me sat beside me in a coffee stop and we almost instantly discovered that we were both Associates of the Iona Community, she living in Switzerland and I in Spain and carrying the same Iona Community prayers.

From the old Seminary albergue

Yet still my prayer was, “Well I’ve done what I had believed I was to do. What was all that about?” “Here I am, Lord, I’ve come to do your will.”

I went back to the Cathedral before leaving and visited the chapel of adoration to say a prayer for all those who had asked me to pray for them on this and other Caminos. I rarely remember names but recall occasions quite well. When I was sitting there with people coming and going I was filled with a lightness which rushed physically through my veins reaching every part of my body and I knew then, with complete certainty, that this camino had done all it was meant to do. There was no point in trying to make sense or find great meaning in this Camino. For this moment everything was complete. It was a divine reassurance which has freed me from looking any further a “purpose” or for anything else in this Camino.

Iona Abbey from Dun I

This might have been the happy ending in itself but as if to say, “Well, if you’re wanting to write a Hollywood script for your spiritual life, try this.” A week later I flew to Scotland to spend six days on Iona. There I had days, “Living in joy”, praying, laughing and sharing with others making up the Community for that week. Iona is usually a peaceful retreat for me but this year it was a lesson in how to live in Joy, exactly what I had been praying for. Thank you, God, for answering my prayer and have mercy on all those who want Hollywood endings and sentences with full stops

Posted in Pilgrimage and Prayer, Ruta de La Lana | Tagged Camino Franc, Iona Community, Santo Domingo, Spain | Comments Off

Wanting to help others. Picking up and falling down.

Posted on November 29, 2013 by John

Wanting to help others. Picking up and falling down.

Looking over the sound of Iona towards Mull from the Abbey.

The Iona Pilgrimage

Every Tuesday on the little Scottish island of Iona a group of visitors set off on a pilgrimage around the island. This year on my visit to Iona a woman in front of me slipped as we were crossing the golf course. (Original Scottish golf courses are ecological, the greens kept trim by sheep and the bunkers are natural sand pits. The grass is watered by rain and golfers walk carrying their own clubs.)

The golf course, Iona.

The woman was in agony and many wanted to help. The pilgrimage leaders called the doctor who came immediately by boat from the neighbouring island of Mull. The doctor called the helicopter which came from Oban and the woman, who had a broken shoulder was flown off to the mainland. When our falling down is public people rush to our aid.

Wanting to help others.

I became interested in the world of therapy after I had fallen down in my life, both literally and metaphorically. I was very grateful for all the help I had received to recover, to grow up and to move on. Like many, my recovery was helped by little things I did to help others who were suffering as I had suffered. This is how self-help, or better described, mutual-help, works and it is present globally in a huge variety of “survival” groups and victim-help groups: as well as groups of individuals who help each other recover from being trapped in many of the ills of society today such as depressions and addictions.

By the time I set out from Seville on my first Camino de Santiago I felt well-trained and experienced in helping others. I imagined I might be able to do so on the Camino if the opportunity arose. Of course, it was soon the other way round. My blisters, my solid calf muscles and toothaches saw to that. I ditched my “business card” which announced myself as a therapist and listed some qualifications. I felt uncertain about the whole process. Looking back I now see that this was the beginning of the self-emptying which happens on a long pilgrimage and probably for all of us at some point or other when we consider our own journey through life which ends in death. In other words, by walking and walking and walking with silence in my heart, I was meeting the emptiness within me.

The Camino. A chance to hear the deep questioning in our hearts.

Having little to offer and nothing to say.

Pilgrims usually walk with very little baggage. Some walk without any money. We rely on others to keep going: on shops, on bars, on hospitaleros and on yellow arrows. For me, this external simplicity, this “poverty” turned inwards. I had been invited to talk at a conference on Spirituality and Addiction in Italy and I turned it down when I realised that I had nothing at all to say. The phrase “poor in spirit”, from the beatitudes, had, at last, real meaning for me. On these early days on the Via de La Plata one of my prayers was, “Lord, what should I be saying?” In my life this had never been difficult for me since I had mastered everything. Part of me still wanted to have brilliant things I could keep saying.

Pepa and Juan Carlos

Nearing Caceres on the Via de La Plata, the Camino became busy since it was Holy Week. One night in Valdefuentes I shared the floor of a small changing room next to the football pitch with a young Spanish couple from Placencia. We then walked, more or less together for the next few days.

Juan Carlos and Pepa

Juan Carlos and Pepa were very attentive to my welfare. They always arrived at the hostals before me and secured a good bed for me. They shared their food with me which, since they are Spanish, was varied, rich and tasty. My own was usually sardines, bread and fruit. I remember Juan Carlos when we were sitting on rocks above the sparkling waters of the Alcántara dam bemoaning the hardship of being a pilgrim as we shared tapa after tapa, laughed in the sunshine and drank in the magnificent view.

Alcántara, Caceres. View from picnic spot.

Juan Carlos always rushed to help me put on my rucksack, a task I had managed perfectly well before meeting him. However, he was appalled at the weight I was carrying and indeed, the very next day, I shed two kilos which I didn’t ever miss. I was sorry to lose track of this couple after Cañaveral. Everyone who has walked the Camino will recall similar encounters with other pilgrims where little bits of help are so natural. With Juan Carlos and Pepa I received their help with joy and two days later, two kilos lighter, I felt I was really wakening up to my camino. I had not even recognised that I needed this bit of help on my journey. This blindness to self is always a risk for those who feel they are equipped to help others.

A lesson in compassion.

The year following my Camino on the Via de La Plata I set off on the Camino de Levante and was making prayer much more central to my pilgrimage. I had also been praying for compassion. After reaching Santiago and taking an Easter break I set off on a pilgrimage of reconciliation from Loyola in the Basque country, heading for Scotland. Early on this journey, in Bordeaux, I had spontaneously shared in a short healing prayer with my fellow pilgrims since we had been talking about our need for healing. I had met an angel and been working on my prejudices which had led me to experience what it means to find Christ in each person. In other words, a lot of stuff, a lot of religious stuff, spiritual stuff, pilgrimage stuff.

Then I had some meetings in fairly quick succession which taught me more than all my self-help training, my personal therapy or my training as therapist. In each the same thing, more or less, occurred. The first happened the night I stayed in La Celle-Saint-Avant north of Châtellerault.

The mansion in which I stayed in La Celle-Saint-Avant. Indre et Loire.

An elderly couple live in a mansion on a farm which has, alongside, a house in which the family grandmother used to live. They are both historians, academics who taught in the University in Tours. When the grandmother had died they made her house available for pilgrims on Le Chemin St Jacques. The couple were anxious that I should be comfortable which was not difficult in this house with a choice of large luxurious beds and hot water. Before leaving me alone for the night the woman returned with a book for me to read about some apparitions of Mary which had occurred locally in 1947 in which she had much faith. Then she said to me, “I am so glad you have come to stay. We are blessed by your visit.” ” I am delighted,” I said sincerely. “God is with us”, I said, feeling profoundly that it is so. The woman began to cry and cried for some time before saying, “How wonderful”. Then she said goodbye, for I would be leaving early the next day.

Perhaps I would have archived that moment as a special memory but the event was not isolated. When I arrived in Beaumont le Roger in Normandy one evening in June the sky was threatening more rain. I had slept out for two of the previous three nights and been rescued a couple of nights before by a monk who picked me up on the road in torrential rain and take me for the night to his monastery – but that is another story – still to be told .

L'eglise, Beaumont Le Roger, Upper Normandy.

L’église, Beaumont Le Roger,
Upper Normandy.

I was walking up a hill taking me away from this Norman village where William the Conqueror had established a Collegiate in 1080 AD when a car, which I had just passed coming out of its drive, reversed back up the road and stopped beside me. There was a man driving who lowered his window and asked where I was going. I explained I was on a pilgrimage. “Yes,” he said, ” I was curious. Would you like to stay the night with me?” Without hesitating I refused because I was in no way prepared for a social evening. He persisted saying that he had to make a visit but that I could stay in his house and make myself at home. Again I thanked him and said I really wanted to walk a bit further. “As you wish,” he said. “You know I would have liked to welcome you. But I am happy to have met you.” There was a long pause. “My mother is dying, that is why I have to go now, to the hospital. But, just seeing you there, walking up this hill…..well, I feel everything is fine. Something has happened, I feel peace, like never before. Now, I must go.”

The House of the man at peace, taken from Google Earth.

The spot where I met the man at peace beside his house, taken from Google Earth.

No sooner had he gone than I questioned my decision not to stay the night and wondered about waiting for him to return, but I carried on. The meeting had been so unexpected I wanted to walk on in prayer and silence. When I continued walking I recognised my own state of peace, which I had been in for much of this pilgrimage, filled with gratitude for God’s presence. Both this meeting and that with the woman in Celle Saint Avant belonged to a period of uninterrupted prayer.

That night I slept in the grounds of a church and the heavens opened. I awoke with my bivvy bag full of water and at 4am found a bus shelter to pack up all my gear. In spite of the awkwardness of the early morning soaking, I felt that I had been right not to stay the night at the man’s house. I sensed that what had happened for the man was not my doing and, if I’d had a job to do, it was done. I felt I had not said or done anything in the meeting with him. With the woman in Celle Saint Avant I also felt I had done nothing but I had said, “God is with us” , a prayer of sorts. What I did have was compassion, that special clothing of love which I had been praying for since I had left Valencia early in February.

Emptiness is enough.

When I was nearing Dieppe I went into a boulangerie for some bread. My journey through France was coming to an end. It had been filled with surprises and little miracles and my intention to walk in prayer had been a spiritual honeymoon, almost effortless. I felt I had been being taught, taken on a journey of learning from the day I set off with my “business cards” which said who I was, to not even thinking about who I might be. For these days walking through France, I was fine just being where I was with God and his love in my heart. I had interrupted my pilgrimage at one point to attend the funeral of my aunt and met my family. My children are tolerant of my Caminos, mildly curious, pleased I am keeping fit but think I’m not in touch with the “real” world. Maybe what seems real changes with age. This period of tranquillity had become a return to school, or more precisely, a process of unlearning. Earlier, in my Camino de Levante, the process was beginning when I realised I had nothing to say. Then I prayed to know what to say. Now as I headed for the boat to England it was becoming clear that there is nothing for me to say. Being here is enough.

In the boulangerie something very similar happened when I asked for the bread. The woman asked me where I was going. When I said I was on a pilgrimage she said, “You’ll pray for me when you get to your island?” “Yes, of course,” I replied. Then she smiled with tears and said, “I’m so happy you passed by. Excuse me, I am very moved.”

Heading for the coast.

It seems that emptiness, a state of prayerfulness is enough. Something happens without words. I don’t know if these people were helped or not in meeting me. I was in a special place in myself at that time far from where I was when I had wanted to help others and believed I could help others. That desire had dissolved into more general state of compassion, a love which embraces each person in their fallenness and in mine: the Love which is a gift to us all.

When last Wednesday I read what Pope Francis has said in his letter to us about extending God’s Love to all I realised that what had happened to me in France that June was that I had been journeying with “… the personal love of God who became man, who gave himself up for us, who is living and who offers us his salvation and his friendship.” (p.128) With the people I was meeting on this pilgrimage we were each being touched by this Love.

Of course, the Camino continues but it is not that easy to stay always in a state of contemplation, but it is what I would like.

Leaving France behind.

Posted in Pilgrimage and Prayer, Pilgrimage to Iona from Loyola. | Tagged Celle Saint Avant, Every Tuesday, France, Iona Pilgrimage, Juan Carlos, La Plata, Le Chemin | Comments Off

Captured by a monk.

Posted on November 29, 2013 by John

Captured by a monk.

The old railwayline from Alençon to Mortagne-au-Perche.

Three monasteries:

1.The convent of the Poor Claire’s, Alençon.

In June 2011 my pilgrimage from Loyola to Iona took me through Le Perche, a forested region of Lower Normandy where I had lived for 10 years before moving to Spain. This is a part of France which saw a huge emigration to Canada in the early 17th C.. It also is home to the Trappists who founded a monastery in La Trappe over 900 years ago.

My route had taken me up the Chemin St. Jacques from Irun to Tours and from Tours onwards I improvised passing Le Mans and heading for Alençon, the town where Thérèse de Lisieux was born. Earlier that year I had had an “experience” of Thérèse saying to me that I should pray all the time. Each morning I asked her to help me in this and I still do. I was starting a Camino to Santiago when I was surprised by this message from Theresa of Lisieux. I was on the Camino de Levante from Valencia, which was to take me through Avila, so I asked Theresa of Avila to help me out, too, hoping this would add a bit of weight to the petitioning of the Almighty on my behalf. It seemed appropriate to include Theresa of Calcutta as well particularly, I thought, because I wanted to remind myself of the practical, down to earth action which flows from a love for the poor and the marginalised. This trinity of Theresas is an important part of my morning litanies.

While in Alençon I visited the cathedral very early in the morning and encountered two homeless men. They asked me where I had come from and explained that I was walking back to Scotland. One of them put his hand on my arm and said, “That’s a long way. You’ll need some help.” He then dug into his pocket and took out some change, which he pressed into my hand. Then he embraced me and said, “God bless you and be with you on your journey.” I was very moved and kept the money even though I knew I didn’t need it and he, most certainly did.

The side altar of Ste. Thérèse, Alençon cathedral.

Before leaving Alençon I called in at the Convent of the Poor Claire’s. Since my childhood, when my parents took me to Nunraw Abbey in Scotland where the monks baked their own bread and provided quantities of delicious jam, home-made with their own fruit, I have been fascinated by enclosed orders. As a little boy I used to imagine how on earth anyone could go a day without speaking but supposed the great food made up for it. Later on as an adolescent I read Thomas Merton’s autobiography which was published as “Elected Silence” in the UK. [I doubt I would have read it with it’s present title, “The Seven Storey Mountain.”] Although my vocation was to talk and talk and talk, I have always believed that contemplative prayer is the powerhouse which keeps the lights on in our hearts.

I went to the Poor Claire’s to ask them to pray for the intention of my pilgrimage: my reconciliation with my family, my five children, my former wife and my sisters as well as others whom, in my past, had suffered because of me. One of the nuns listened patiently and waited as, at one point, I cried. She assured me that she would ask the community to pray for us all. I recall her reaction of shock when I said “ex-wife” but she clung to my desire for reconciliation within the family. At this stage I couldn’t see what this would require of me and, as the process gradually unfolded, I am sure this visit played a significant part.

The family house of Ste Thérèse in Alençon.

2. The Monastery of La Trappe.

The weather in Normdany was wet. The night after I had been in Alençon I slept out by a river. Waking up in a field is a very different experience to awaking under a roof. I always find it energising and suggestive of great possibilities. Because it is very early morning, and silent, time seems to be unlimited. There is no effort needed to go outside into a colder temperature: I am already there and the air is fresh. When I start walking there is little or no traffic and every sound is music, the birds, the river, the cock crowing. The dew and the rain is a challenge but there is always possibility of finding lodging with a hot shower by the end of the day. This Normandy morning I anticipated staying in the monastery of La Trappe.

[mapsmarker layer=”28″]

Alas when I rang up the monastery they said that they only offered hospitality to those who come to stay for several days, usually in organised groups. When I passed by the Abbey I was told that the chapel is only open at certain hours which would have meant waiting a few hours. So I couldn’t visit it that day.

Nearing the Abbey of La Trappe.

I took the opportunity of carrying on walking and visited some friends nearby. This was an elderly couple who had spent their last 20 years helping people recover from alcohol addiction. Odile had helped her husband recover and the pair had been active in the local group of Vie Libre, an association present throughout France which works with addicts. This elderly lady lives a life of prayer and love, a love which shines from her in her smile and her gentle wisdom and patience.

Odile with her dog who always went to Mass with her.

This couple have been wonderful for me and so I lingered into evening with them before setting off. They offered me a bed but knowing what this would cost them I preferred to continue to the next town which I skirted around without finding anywhere to stay. At night French towns become like graveyards, silent and empty. I continued walking as the rain began to fall heavily bouncing off the road thinking I would maybe find a barn to shelter in for the night.

3. The Syriac Monastery of Our Lady of Mercy in Chandai.

Entrance to Monastery

A car suddenly came to a stop beside me and a man opened a window and shouted through the thudding of the rain, “Get in. I’m going to my monastery. You can stay the night.” I refused firmly saying I was walking and really preferred to walk. He insisted and insisted, so I placed my dripping rucksack in the back of his car. I knew of no monastery in this area, but after only a few kilometres he turned down a narrow country road and drew up outside a farmhouse. He took me inside and there were two real monks inside, wearing their impressive habits. They were at table in an open room which served as refectory, kitchen and sitting room. I was welcomed and given soup with bread while I learned that this was a Syriac Orthodox monastery, one of several in France. The monk who had captured me was a postulant. Later I heard about the strict spiritual training of this group which, in this monastery, had its origins in a number of Latin Mass Catholics from the local town of Verneuil-sur-Avre who, fed up with their bishop, became Syriac-Orthodox which solved many of their difficulties with the Catholics and offered a very rich liturgical experience.

The Chapel in the Monastery of Our Lady of Marcy near L'Aigle.

The Chapel in the Monastery of Our Lady of Mercy near L’Aigle.

I was given a hut in the grounds of this farm, now monastery, for the night and in the morning shared prayer in the chapel which had been converted from a large barn. The experience was rich in ritual and incense and I could understand why many Catholics had chosen this spot for their weekly Mass. Even in such a short stay I lost all sense of strangeness that a corner of Normandy had a living active Syriac-Orthodox following of once discontented Catholics.

After morning prayers was breakfast. For this I was alone for the monks went off to continue with private prayer. Coffee and bread was presented to me by a woman who lived nearby and came every day to housekeep. She asked me about my pilgrimage. For some reason, I explained to her how, in spite of enjoying prayer throughout this journey, I was, from time to time, immersed in doubts about God and the whole spiritual life: that sometimes the sheer irrationality of it all seemed overpowering. “That’s normal,” she said, “Why, Saint Theresa of Lisieux was troubled just the same. And so was Theresa of Avila, and Theresa of Calcutta. You see, these three Theresa’s all had similar doubts.”

I could hardly believe what I was hearing. Astonished I said, “But I pray to those three Theresas every day, to help me pray.” “Yes”, she replied, almost mischievously, “I am not surprised”. Her name was Thérèse.

Posted in Pilgrimage and Prayer, Pilgrimage to Iona from Loyola. | Tagged France, La Trappe, Poor Claire, Syriac Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox | Comments Off

Community on the Camino.

Posted on November 28, 2013 by John

Community on the Camino.

The Credencial.

The pilgrim’s credential is an outward sign of belonging to the Camino community. This is obtained from Cathedrals or from the Amigos del Camino, usually in the place from where you start your camino. With my credential I become a true part of this community as I walk with others where others have walked, being cared for by hospitaleros and, eventually, welcomed by the Pilgrim’s Office in Santiago de Compostella.

Pilgrim identity card.

The destination

Communities form when people come together with a common objective. On the Camino de Santiago many will tell you that your destination is not nearly as important as the Camino: that getting there is not the point of the pilgrimage. This is undoubtedly a sound position yet the aim, to arrive in Santiago or Finisterre, is shared.

Finisterre.

There is also the matter of the Compostella, the Certificate of completion. Queuing up for the Compostella adds to the anticipation and gives me time to reflect on the amazing experience of the Camino, which, for a while, is about to dissolve into “normal” life. The Compostella seals the pilgrimage and I always feel a huge emotional charge, or discharge, I am not sure which, when I receive the certificate. It is like a nail in my coffin, I can now rest in peace. There will be no more extraordinary demands on my body, noisy nights, washing clothes in cold water with a tiny bit of soap kept safely from a night in a real hostel or days walking in torrential rain. These are things I will very soon be pining for, but not just yet. The Compostella is the great symbol of having completed a task. For each pilgrim this task is different, but the Compostella says it has been achieved.

Compostella, certificate of competing the Camino de Santiago.

Compostella, certificates of competing the Camino de Santiago.

I pinch this quote from Johnnie-Walker’s blog of Nov. 18th where you will find more very moving comments from those who hand out the Compostellas in the Pilgrims’ Office in Santiago,

““I will never forget the first Spanish lady who cried on my shoulder. “I prayed that he would live and he lives, he lives” . Or the day a tall British gentleman from Oxford stood in front of me and all I said was “Congratulations” and the tears flowed down his cheeks. He was on his own. I hugged him and he smiled but quickly composed himself and left. I wondered had he talked with anyone or shared with anyone on the Camino. I was glad to have been there for him in that short moment. Two little 15year old boys from Madrid, small fine boned children. They were on their own. “My mother said it would be safe on the Camino.” Blessed are children who have parents that allow them to spread their wings.”

A dispersed and flowing community.

We all leave behind some sort of community to walk the Camino. We may leave family and friends, workmates, parish groups, sport’s clubs or whatever groups form part of our lives in order to join strangers from many parts of the world on a walk together to a remote corner of Spain. Our new companions are rich and poor, old and young, moody, cheerful, teetotal, drinkers, religious, atheist and even cyclists. [I would like to add black and white but I have to say that black Africa is poorly represented on the Camino.] Pilgrims move on each day, at their own pace. Little groups form and reform as some move on and others hang back. Sometimes hospitaleros help bring the group together as in Bercianos del Real Camino where there is a communal meal each night. On the Camino del Norte it was a joy to be treated to a special English teatime in the Confraternity of St James Refugio in Miraz. This was to mark the feast of St. James, 25th July.

Gosia Brykczynska hosting an English teatime in Miraz, 25th July, 2012

Although most of my Caminos have been solitary, even when I am walking day after day without meeting another pilgrim, I know I am part of this community. This is helped by the local people along the way in France and Spain alike. Even off the Camino routes in Spain local people will often ask me if I am on the Camino or presume I am on another pilgrimage, such as to Guadalupe or even Fatima. The Camino community belongs, too, to this wider community which welcomes pilgrims eagerly, and not just for the boost to their economy. Indeed, the generosity in time and energy and simple friendship offered by almost all the locals I have come across is part of the nourishment which enables me to keep going : a wonderful aspect of this community.

This women had time to stop and exchange greetings in Campobecerros in Ourense.

The Spirit of the Camino Community.

The world we leave behind

When we leave our daily communities of town, family and workplace the Camino gives us a new opportunity to be good. One of the difficulties I have with daily life is that the hurt and broken bits within me trouble not only myself but those closest to me. This happens because familiarity, closeness and confidence in those I live with assures me that I will survive if even if I dump my open woundedness on those I love. There is often a pattern of growth associated with this, but it can go wrong and niggly bits of unloving begin to clog up the channels which bring goodness to me from others and block the delivery of my own gifts which I would like to give to those around me. The French expert on relationships in general, Jacques Salomé, charts this out well when he talks about the messages we send as gifts and those which hurt. (links are all in French). Overall, normal life is pretty full of toxicity.

The Camino as opportunity.

Originally the Camino was a pilgrimage; a special event when people tried to earn forgiveness from their sins by undertaking the journey, often in penitential mode.

Scenes like this in the Church in Casar de Caceres helped pilgrims in the past to want to be good.

Today, we have things much easier and don’t believe in Hell although we all know from experience what it is. I know it is what happens to me when I forget about love, get caught up in a rat-race, forget I am alive and cease to taste the food I am eating to excess. The Camino is a great opportunity to get a glimpse of a much better world. Physically, my legs take me there simply by walking a lot. However, it is being with others which can bring out the best in me and let me remember how good it is to give and receive freely and to generously overlook little things that annoy me, like snoring.

Camino Portuguese, Old and young mixing at Cruz dos Peregrinos, Cruz dos Mortos, Cruz dos Franceses (Serra Labruja)

The important difference between being on my best behaviour in normal life and switching to better behaviour on the camino is a result of the manner in which the Camino undoes inauthenticity. The physical effort, the simplicity, the self-emptying and the time to recollect all help to put my life in a new perspective. Sharing a room for the night with three, or twenty, or fifty-three others, using the same loo and showers and sleeping shoulder to shoulder with a stranger not of my choosing tend to make inauthenticity hard work. It is much easier to be myself. Then I find I am receiving, I want to share what I have, to help others with their sore feet, to pay for the coffees, to give someone a hug, to smile. I begin to feel good about feeling secure in a strange environment, I find I can adapt and nothing terrible happens. I can cry suddenly and am not humiliated: somebody listens. I have come on the Camino angry, very angry with someone close (or it may be a loss, a rejection or a bereavement) and my sadnesswhich the anger has been hiding from me pours out received by a fellow pilgrim or an empty church or a Galician glade. I take a step towards reconciliation with myself and the other. The Camino is a process which can heal. The exchanges we have on our brief meetings with each other can become remarkably deep and honest as we reveal our vulnerabilities.

A wonderful spot to mourn in quiet.

I find myself in a community where judgement and blame have no currency and this helps me to be authentic all the more. I meet people who are gentle, humbly knowledgeable, reassuring, affirming and happy because they too are authentic. I become tolerant of those who are not benefitting in this way from the camino if only because I can shake them off with an early coffee or a long lunch, but usually because I know where I myself have come from. I rejoice in the success, the bravery and the perseverance of others.

This rosy picture is actually one to which hundreds of thousands of pilgrims will testify. It is not always the case because this community on the Camino only offers an opportunity to pass time in a real world where we relate to each other as we always should. Not everyone who walks takes the opportunity but in setting off with a credential the possibility of change is there before us. Some people finish the Camino and all that has happened is that they have walked a lot. There are, I am certain, many reasons why people do not have the positive experiences I am writing about but the opportunity is there to be taken, just as the miracles are all around but need to be noticed.

Arzua, a confluence of caminos, with a queue for the albergue. A time to stop and share.

The Camino community is made up of those who walk the Camino. These are the same people you live with in “ordinary” life. People often long to return again soon to The Way, I do and I have done. I believe that each time I return I am a bit kinder, a bit more compassionate, and more loving towards myself and others. The Community of Many Steps has helps me take another little step towards being who I really am, towards my desire to contribute a bit more to a better world and to enjoy being alive among so many good people. I can say with even more conviction those lines of the Credo of the Iona Community Daily Prayers:

I affirm God’s goodness at the heart of humanity, planted more deeply than all that is wrong. With all Creation I celebrate the miracle and wonder of life, the unfolding purposes of God, forever at work in ourselves and the world.

Thank you, Iona Community and the ever walking Community of the Camino de Santiago.

Posted in Camino Francés, Camino Portuguese, Pilgrimage and Prayer, The Camino de Santiago | Tagged Camino Portuguese, Gosia Brykczynska, Iona Community, Jacques Salom, Real Camino, Spain | Comments Off

Evangelii Gaudium Encyclical of Pope Francis

Posted on November 27, 2013 by John

Evangelii Gaudium Encyclical of Pope Francis

evangelii-gaudium-EN

Posted in The Raft of Corks., Uncategorized | Tagged Pope Francis | Comments Off

The Camino which awakens. Via de La Plata towards Caparra.

Posted on November 26, 2013 by John

The Camino which awakens. Via de La Plata, Caparra.

Beginnings: Learning to walk once more.

Easter Monday 2010 the Dehesa on the way to Caparra.

On Easter Monday 2010 I was arriving in the Northern part of Caceres where the South and warmer part of Spain ends and the mountains bordering the colder Northern upper plain, the meseta, begin. Caceres is the province of Spain which is my favourite. It is where I live often and I loved walking through it. It was here in the full splendour of Extremadura that I began to feel comfortable with the Camino.

Less than six months earlier I had rarely walked more than a kilometre in one go in the previous twenty years. In 1991 I fell in our house in France and suffered a compound fracture in my left leg which later became infected. My life changed drastically from that point on and walking was always uncomfortable. I put on a huge amount of weight, so had even less desire to walk.

Then in October 2009 I suggested to Pilar one day that we walk to the local hermitage about 4 km up the mountain from where we were living. This was a huge challenge and I began the climb very slowly concerned about my ability to make it to the shrine.

Staring off to the hermitage of San Blas, October 4th 2009. Pilar well in the lead.

For several years I had wanted to go up this old roman road which used to connect Caceres and Coria with Ciudad Rodrigo in Castilla y Leon. The people of Gata go there once a year for the annual Feast of the Virgin of the Pass. Another few kilometres up from the hermitage is the Pass into Castilla out of Extremadura. Many times I had been urged to take part with locals saying to me, “You can make it: it’s not that far and it’s an easy climb”.

Looking back over the old roman road to the Puerta de Castilla.

I did make it and was surprised to arrive without much difficulty. I felt exhilarated by the climb and was delighted to reach this beautiful church, cared for by a local man who lives there in the quiet most of the year. He tends the grounds and the fountains and is rebuilding the walls which surround the hermitage on his own. There are a few visitors, usually hikers, and he keeps the church open all day.

The Hermitage, San Blas, Gata.

At midnight on 31st December 2009 Spanish Television went live to Santiago de Compsostella where someone with a sledge-hammer was breaking down a door into the Cathedral. I learned that this happens ever Jacobean Year, which is every year in which the feast of St. James (July 25th) falls on a Sunday. I began to wonder about trying this walk. Since my trip with Pilar to the hermitage I had continued to explore the Sierra de Gata and managed to push my comfortable daily distance up to 10 km, which I considered miraculous given that that had been the sum of the distance I had walked in any month up till then.

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Camino Practice

By February, 2010 I had decided to walk the Camino de Santiago and had bought a guide to the Via de La Plata route. Only on reading the web pages of the Amigos del Camino de Sevilla, did I begin to understand that the Camino is more than just a walk. Part of my preparation had been to read works by Gerald W. Hughes S.J. who has written books on his two long walks from the UK; the first to Rome and the second to Jerusalem. Reading these books and the Amigo’s web page inspired to to begin praying while walking. I began to find Gerry Hughes’ suggestions were coming naturally to me and I was, for instance, saying the rosary, a prayer which had gone into disuse in my life in the sixties but now became a good fit to my footsteps.

Looking down on Torre Don Miguel, the next village to Gata, on my way to Hernan Perez.

On January 20th 2010, I was walking to Hernan Perez, a challenging 13 km from Gata, when I became aware of the presence of a former “friend”. I have written this story up elsewhere. This was the first time this “awareness” of someone who has died had come to me and all the more surprising since it was someone I hadn’t known well and had not thought about for 40 years. However, he was a person who was 100% committed to his Camino and this may have helped me gear up to the Via de La Plata as something more than a long hike.

On February 12th, 2010, I set off to walk the Via Verde de La Jara. I was well laden with tent and good provisions for three days. I chose a most beautiful spot to camp for the night overlooking the Rio Tajo, which flows right across the centre of Spain to enter the Atlantic at Lisbon. There is a walkers’ route, well-marked, all along this marvellous and impressive river.

Camp, Via Verde de la Jara in Toledo.

I was awakened in the night by the Guardia Civil who explained to me that camping was forbidden here. Indeed, it is forbidden in all of Spain outside of Approved campsites. You are not even allowed to pitch a tent to sleep in on your own land without permission. They decided I was harmless and left me to sleep in the freezing night. My 0º sleeping bag did not save me from the coldest night of my life. The 0º referred to the death temperature and my tent was in a gale with the outside temperature several degrees below zero. I was undaunted and continued until two days later when the snow came. Then the Guardia Civil told me not to walk anymore. So I did not reach my intended destination of Guadalupe.

Via de La Plata. A Special sort of Joy.

I began walking from Seville on 17th March, 2010. By 5th April I was setting off from the walled town of Galisteo, heading North knowing I had no place to sleep the night. I had abandoned the idea of a tent and opted for a bivvy bag to which the law has much less objection in Spain. It is also much lighter.

Leaving Galisteo

The day’s camino took me through the part of Extremadura where the Via de La Plata passes nearest to Gata, about 60 km to the East. This Easter Monday was a Spring day for artists, poets and lovers to rejoice in. For me, too, it was the moment I began to feel an ease with being a pilgrim. After the little village of Carcaboso the Camino follows an old drove road (Via pecuaria). [These are public rights of way and although many have been eaten up by recent construction, there are thousands of kilometres of these routes which anyone has the right to walk on all over Spain. You can find maps for each Province of Spain here. All the Caminos I have walked use Vias Pecuarias extensively.]

Magnificent rocky formations line the drove road to Caparra.

The blue sky of a coldish day charmed the little flowers to open invitingly: the grass was green for these few weeks before the scorching sun turns it brown until autumn. I was where I wanted to be, doing what I wanted to do, singing when I wanted, loudly or softly or badly as I pleased, because there was nobody around for miles and miles. I was in my present, like a child. When I set out on this Camino I had wondered, in prayer, what this Camino was about and the answer had been that all I had to do was enjoy it. I had survived sleeping outside, and enjoyed it, I had continued through the blister period and the groin strain and the solid calves. I had learned not to take a top bunk if possible and even let go of my business cards and bits of my self-image. I was learning how little I need to be well and at peace, profoundly. Prayer was a natural part of each day; repetitive prayer, prayer for others, and the great prayer of thanksgiving. Prayer was easy!

Copses, magic, secret hide-outs for creatures of the woods.

This lonely path, over the dehesa, along the ancient drove road, is one of the longest parts of the Via de La Plata without a Hostel, unless you deviate some 5km, which many do since the hostel owners offer a pick-up service. For me the joy was not to bother and to sleep on the wonderful grass when night fell. In my morning prayers I was beginning to have an awareness similar to that I described with Christopher Shepherd-Smith. It was as if I were being accompanied by Saints. Sheppy-Smith (100% radical) was with me often and also my mother-in-law who always helps fill me with love for my family. Past civilizations had, perhaps, more awareness of the influence of the dead, our ancestors, on our lives than we do. Indeed, many decry the idea, but I can identify in myself some aspects of a collective subconscious and a memory residual from past generations. As I continued walking the Caminos some of the Saints became very significant for me. At this stage, it was all experimental and a joy, but the Camino was certainly awakening me to senses beyond the usual five which were so stimulated by this part of the Via de La Plata.

The Via passes by many small lagoons, spawning white flowers.

Down to earth in Caparra.

As I approached the ruins of Caparra evening was setting in and I could make out a small group of people. I could also hear them so I knew they were Spaniards. They were too well dressed to be pilgrims, so I imagined them to be tourists.

There is not a lot to see in Caparra, especially when the information centre is closed. There is an archway which stands proudly over the piles of stones which are being slowly examined by teams of archaeologists’ volunteer slaves. As I neared the little group, one of them turned and said, “Look, here’s an Englishman. Ask him.” “Ask me what?,” I wondered. “Tell him. Tell him,” the man who had misidentified me said, “Tell him what this is here.” So cautiously, because I can be profusely knowledgeable with very few facts, I explained that the stones had been an important Roman city on the Via de La Plata. “Ah,” said the man to the group, “There you are. I told you so.” “No, No,” said one of them, “It’s just a ruined cemetery.” Eventually they bowed to the wisdom of the foreigner. The man who had brought the group here for an evening paseo was also a visitor to the area who had passed Holy Week with these friends. His friends lived very near by in Las Hurdes, the remote Sierra made famous by Buñuel in a controversial documentary/film. There are archaeological remains throughout Spain yet to be explored.

Roman arch Caparra with the small group as I approach.

As I moved on night fell rapidly so I chose a spot by the Camino behind some rocks, lay down and fell asleep feeling very much more awake to my pilgrimage than ever. That’s just how Easter should be.

Posted in Pilgrimage and Prayer, The Camino de Santiago, Via de La Plata | Tagged Camino Practice, Easter Monday, Hernan Perez, La Plata, San Blas, Spain | Comments Off

Iona Community Prayers on the Camino 3. Peace

An affirmation for the Camino.

Peace

Camino moments: Qunitanarraya to Santo Domingo de Silos.

Strange behaviour.

A Love poem.

Compassion

Discontinuous thinking – a Camino luxury.

Rio Tera, a valley of peace on the Camino Sanabrés

A Pilgrimage of Reconciliation

Divorce

Drawn into prayer.

A pilgrimage of reconciliation

Faith, humility, compassion, love and trust.

Love

A Happy Ending in Santiago: just like Hollywood.

Not the Camino I had imagined.

Uplifted by music.

Santo Domingo de Silos.

Santiago de Compostella

Wanting to help others. Picking up and falling down.

The Iona Pilgrimage

Wanting to help others.

Having little to offer and nothing to say.

Pepa and Juan Carlos

A lesson in compassion.

Emptiness is enough.

Captured by a monk.

Three monasteries:

1.The convent of the Poor Claire’s, Alençon.

2. The Monastery of La Trappe.

3. The Syriac Monastery of Our Lady of Mercy in Chandai.

Community on the Camino.

The Credencial.

The destination

A dispersed and flowing community.

The Spirit of the Camino Community.

Evangelii Gaudium Encyclical of Pope Francis

The Camino which awakens. Via de La Plata, Caparra.

Beginnings: Learning to walk once more.

Camino Practice

Via de La Plata. A Special sort of Joy.

Down to earth in Caparra.

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