Fumbling
By sheer coincidence, or by the fortunes of the Camino, I noticed that Linda had a book on her stand about one woman's journey along the Camino Frances. I asked to borrow the book and soon became engrossed in Kerry's journey of self-discovery and forgiveness.
As I read along, parts of her journey sounded new to me (had not had that experience) and others moved me deeply as I felt a common bond with her.
With apologies, I put just a few quotes from her book here - ones that struck me so powerfully that I felt the need to share with you.
A Pilgrimage Tale of Love, Grief and Spiritual Renewal on the Camino de Santiago
by Kerry Egan
Doubleday (c) 2004
Fumbling ... 2
Pilgrimages's emotional center is hope. One journeys perhaps out of devotion, or a longing for adventure, or, in my case, a confused and even desperate searching, but at the emotional heart of all those things is the idea that things can change for the better if one is willing to go somewhere else, a place where other people have gone with great hope, too, and been changed. But while I knew that I thought of myself as a pilgrim, journeying somewhere in search of something, I couldn't tell you what the something was.
Fumbling ... 4
Is what makes the place sacred in the land itself, in the air, in the water, present since the earth was formed? Or is it all those prayers, millions of prayers, soaking into the dirt, into the rivers, into the plants, into the people who live along the way?
Walking ... 10
The act of walking is at the heart of the motion, falling. You pick one foot up off the floor and then must shift the bulk of your weight and center of gravity to that foot before it ever hits the ground, before it has landed on a secure footing. The crux of walking, the action that actually propels you forward, is a precarious one, an action in which you must move with faith that your leading foot will land on solid and even ground, else you might fall. For a second in every step, you are completely off-balance. Physical therapists tell patients who have to learn to walk again that it is a "controlled fall".
The most effective way of moving depends on falling. A controlled fall, yes, but still a momentary loss of control - powerlessness, nonetheless. This can be frightening and damaging, no doubt - the fall that makes someone break her hip, or the fall into realizing the world cannot be explained with the tidy, neat explanations you have carried around. The fall into not-knowing, into realizing how little you know and how much more mysterious the world is than you thought. The fall into insecurity. The fall into regret, sorrow, despair, desperation, these are all frightening, terrifying, and yet they can still be moving forward. Or they can be falling down in the mud. But without taking the chance, you can't move at all.
Listening ... 19
When walking becomes what you do, all that you do, when that meditation becomes a natural part of the rhythm of your day, you become very good at listening. I listened to my feet hit the ground, to my hands brushing alongside my shorts, to my breathing, to my heart beating, to the fluid whirring in my ears, and to the wheat rustling in a breeze I could not feel. I got very good at listening to what goes on inside me and outside me, very good at listening to sounds and words in my head and in my body. After awhile, you being to realize that not all thoughts necessarily sound like your own, that there are subtle, fleeting emotions that usually get overlooked, and longings and desires you didn't even know you had. You begin to see that many events in your life are not as random as they first appear. You begin to suspect and then to be sure, when you listen intently for so long, that something you did not notice before exists in you, in your mind, in your heart.
