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Camino de Santiago No. 13: Four days In a Strange Paradise

Last off, I was spending a feverish night in the care of the folks at the Hospital de San Nicholas, a refuge that is run by the Italian Confraternity.

In the morning, over big cups of steaming hot coffee and as much bread and jam as we could eat, I spent some time getting to know about the Confraternity. They are an amazing group of people, who volunteer their time, their vacations, to come work at the refuge and be in the service of pilgrims. The refuge truly was the the spirit of the Camino.

My ankle was still not much improved, and we decided that they would drrive me to the next village, where they had some friends that ran a private refuge where I could stay as long as I liked.

The refuge turned out to be in Boadilla del Camino, and was run by a Brazilian family, who took me in like a bird with a broken wing (albiet, a large bird!).

The refuge was located on the edge of town, and stood under the shadow of an enormous, fortress like church. Inside the refuge walls, there was a beautiful garden..endless cuips of coffee..pilgrims basking in the sun…

While outside the refuge lay the somewhat ominous and somewhat deserted town of Boadilla del Camino. I got tired of laying around in paradise (it happens), so I decided to poke my head around in the village and see the sights.

There were none.

The church was locked, and only open on Sunday, for a brief 40 minutes when a priest visited to hold the mass.

The streets were empty, no little old ladies walking around with little dogs; no sheepherders; no mothers with their children; no cars, even. There were no shops, no bars, and no businesses of any kind.

The houses were caving in, abandoned, broken down, everyone had moved out or away.

All this at first glance. As other pilgrims came and went, they all said pretty much the same thing-that the place was deserted.

I started taking more walks everyday, and as the ankle improved, so did my impressions of what actually was in the town.

In fact, it kind of..came to life.

There began to be many things that I had not noticed on first glance.

A lace curtain fluttering in  a window. The sound of soft opera music coming from behind a doorway. A peek of a huge vegetable garden from in between the slats of a fence. And, I realized, that the town, in it´s own quiet way, was alive-and that people were there, living as they had always lived, behind tall adobe walls and gates and shutters.

The entire community seemed to be living a very private life, away from the eyes of the pilgrims walking thru their streets. I began to see the residents of the town, now and again, as they would show up in the street for a moment and then disappear around the corner. Every evening I would take a stroll, and see the same man sitting on top of a round adobe pigeon house, facing the sunset. I saw the women come out of their houses when the fruit truck arrived, or when the fish man came, all clustered together, sitting on park benches and waiting their turn.

The pilgrims who came into the refuge would say to me that there was nothing to see…but, there was.

It is too bad that the part of our culture that rushes thru life and demands on being entertained has carried over into something like the Camino; because here, for the first time in many people´s lives, is the chance to slow down, to savor, to see life differently.

I stayed for so long in Boadilla de Camino, that the staff began to make jokes that I was just there for the food(particially true!).

 However, another reason that I stayed on, is that it just seemd like..the right thing to do at the time. Everyday, different pilgrims would start talking to me about their lives-sad stories, stories of heartache, stories of hurt, stories of greatness, stories of every kind. I felt as if each of these people were supposed to have met me, and for some reason, share with me these intimate details of their lives.

I happened to be in the village on a Sunday, and so was able to go to the Mass with the villagers. To be inside the church was wonderous-it was extraordinarily beautiful. There were only about 20 or so villagers and me(and the priest), and the Sunday happened to fall on Corpus Christi, which made the service  particularly beautiful-it included a procession and much singing of hymns that they apparently do not normally sing.

Unfortunately, the service was interrrupted by a busload of tourists, who came in, talked, and actually took photos of the preist and of the villagers in the pews! This was terrible, and I sank in my seat, with embarrassment, I was so ashamed of the tourists. (I think they were pilgrims, actually, but they were behaving like tourists so I will use that word here..) The priest, the villagers, they said nothing, but kept on with the service, but you could tell they were very uncomfortable.

After the service, the priest quickly ushered everyone outside and locked the door. the villagers-a few of them-gave me a quick nod and then went back to their houses,behind the high walls, with the locked gates.

One very old man stayed behind. ¨Do you see why we keep our church locked?¨, he asked me.¨

¨Yes.¨, I said. ¨I do.¨

I walked back to the refuge, glad I had not taken any photos of the inside of the church.

It seemed to me that the church-the whole town in fact-belonged to the people who lived there, just them, as it always had.

 I understood in that moment their secrecy, their need for privacy, their need for this beautiful-one of the most beautiful on the Camino-churches to be just for them.

gigi



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9 responses to “Camino de Santiago No. 13: Four days In a Strange Paradise”

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