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- Dzień 47
- poniedziałek, 3 czerwca 2024
- ☀️ 24 °C
- Wysokość: 59 m
HiszpaniaPanchés42°51’20” N 9°7’59” W
... and home-coming

Day 47
One last BIG step took me back to Kimpton: home again …
… smile! And … sigh …
... re-orbitting can be tricky, wouldn't you agree? It is beautiful here in this home, village, country, and world where I live, and ‘my’ people are super super people (this is you!). But like the aeroplane’s touchdown at Stansted last Monday afternoon, which left me feeling jarred and upsy-downsy for quite a while, this home-landing has its bumpy moments, and (let me be honest) my belly is churning with ‘and now … who what how?’ and all sorts of other unanswerables.
I have had SUCH a special time - or what word suits better to describe the now 7 weeks that lie behind me? Amazing, awesome, fabulous, wonderful, beautiful, happy, delightful, super, lovely ... or just plain 'nice'? No word and no words will convey to you truly what this experience has been like for me, my pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela.
Of course, I realise that no words will adequately tell what has been going on in your life either. One thought that has returned to me again and again is that whilst I live at the centre of my own universe, so too do you; and so each tree, each cat, each splash of each wave, each stone on each footpath. Not exactly profound, is it? Yet how often I find myself thinking that it would surely be better if [x other person] should see things, do things, decide things MY way. Or that this flower is mine for the picking, this dog mine to pet, this view mine, this experience mine. Mine. About me! In each of us lies such complexity and beauty that it is unimaginable by any other, a story lived and a world inhabited only by one individual in all of history. Can I see and love what I experience without needing to claim it, influence it?
This unattached, unjudging attitude might just be the birthplace of awe. Awe draws me. Oh for more moments of awe!!
I kinda hope to find a space inside of me where the freedom and happiness I've been - how to express the feeling? - I've been ... bathing in for these weeks can stay safe; not guarded, not held onto, but just 'there'. Available. I want to remember again and again that 'this is what it feels like to be me'. Not needing to reminisce, however lovely the memories are, and not pining to return even if I might love to (with you, perhaps?). It's that I've so enjoyed my own company, and I really don't want to lose touch!
Sometimes we permit other people a glimpse behind our well-constructed, well-conserved outer shell; sometimes it's cathartic to share our story; sometimes it feels like a gift, to be 'invited in'. With a few words and a few pictures I have told some of the story of my Camino, but it's hardly been a deep dive. For that you are most welcome to come for a face-to-face heart-to-heart! (And will you reciprocate?)
The Camino is a microcosm of all of the rest of life. You will have perhaps perceived from my daily reports that although I only took a small amount of physical kit on my back, the ‘stuff’ that I carry with me at home came with me: the concerns, loves, fears, delights, anxieties: my own particular ways-of-being-me. And I don’t want my Camino de la Vida to stop! The path that is my life, that is, much more significant than a few weeks of trekking in Spain. I’m sure my reflections on my experiences of the last 7 weeks will continue, and it might be a long time before I understand all of what has happened and what might have changed in me. I hope that you will continue to be a Camino companion along the way. Czytaj więcej