true life planet

Ok, ok.

The fact is, I´ve run terribly behind in the blog. So, what I´ve decided to do is this: tell you what happened in the last 20 villages in this one entry:

So, I:

Got robbed of: most of my underwear, a bra, my toiletries, and cash

Ran out of money, bank card stopped working for some reason

Got really depressed

Cried alot

Slept alot in a cold room in a convent, prayed alot

Was pretty hungry

Bank card worked again

Ate alot

Talked with a man who was doing the Camino for his mother, who had recently died, and was very angry at the greed of his brothers and sisters about the way they handled her possessions(his point of view). I suggested that perhaps he could let go of the idea that he will get anything of his mothers, and perhaps just let go. He cried, and we went off and shared a bottle of very nice wine.

Talked to a very nice man from Israel, we also shared a bottle of wine on  a park bench.

Talked to another man who wanted to leave his wife, even though he was in love with her he did not find it so interesting. I told him how I thought love was the only thing that made my life interesting.Wine was shared…he called his wife, while I sat there. It had a very happy ending.

Decided I was drinking too much wine(although this is a hard one, becasue I am in Spain, and that is what they do here. you go into a bar/cafe at 9 am, and the mother who just took the kids to school is drinking a glass of wine!)

Walked thru alot of villages

Looked at alot of falling down adobe structures

Looked at alot of falling down adobe structures some more

Visited tons of churches

Talked and walked with many pilgrims, some I liked a lot, others, not so much. Decided walking alone is the best.

Hurt a Don Juan in the groin, which was very effective

Ordered a salad and it came with more meat than I have ever been served in one sitting in my entire life, and I decided right then and there that I really, really need to be a vegetarian

Got chased by two dogs

Ran out of water and got pretty dehydrated on the Meseta-some prayer here, too

Had lunch with a farmer and his family: a lovely lunch of asparagus and strawberries from their garden

Got a tour of a secret underground tunnel in a village leading to the church

Decided that I miss white mens underwear and boxers after being faced with night after night of looking at men, usually over 60, and for some reason, mostly German, walking around in black bikini briefs for hours on end(someone explain this phenomenon, please). This may become an obsession unless someone can send in an answer. The particular issue is a cause for many interesting conversations over pilgrim dinners-someone is always bringing it up…

Didn´t sleep for nights on end due to snorers and very annoying people who insist on getting out the door at 6 am in the refuges

Gave up doing any laundry in the refuges, as it was raining and raining and raining and nothing would dry anyway

Got my first blister(not bad, it took awhile)

Spent alot of time thinking about God.

Spent alot of time thinking about how I haven´t done the things I wanted to do in my life-in the past-because I was (a) worried what other people would think about it; (b) worried that I would lose someone I loved over it

Spent alot of time thinking about the nature of love, what it is, and what it means to love

Spent an entire week thinking about adopting a special needs child sometime in the next 5 years, in spite of fears over (a) what people would think about it and (b) fears of losing someone over it (c) what my family would think about it and how they would handle it or what they might say or advise about it…and decided that this idea of adoption would be a good expression of love. Decided I would be a good parent. Left the idea there, in the back of my mind, to develop a bit more.

Realized that I can do many things at once: in spite of the fact that our Western culture teaches us differnetly on this subject.  We learn that you can have this-but if you do, then you can´t have that, or if you have both one will suffer. But it is possible to have many things at once..and have a relaxing, tranquil life at the same time.

Stopped worrying entirely about what anyone thinks about anything I do. Pretty much have stopped worrying. If I do it with love, it´s simple.

Arrived in Leon, exhausted, with my feet not responding to commands anymore-and therefore, I decided to stay in a cheap hotel, which has been a wonderful, relaxing experience. An actual bathtub!

And now, the blog is up to date!

gigi

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

I showed up in Caseljeriz in the late afternnoon, and my ankle was needing a rest-a long one. I walked into the village knowing I would have to spend at least a two or three days there(am I on ... [Continue reading this entry]