A Chipped Rock

So I guess Spanish hostels don't like shower curtains anymore. That was liberating. Also, all the beds are pushed together. You get to know those snoring Italians pretty well pretty fast.

This is late, and I know it. I have so many aspiring blog posts, but when I've finished walking everyday I die a short death of about forty five minutes before I even begin to think about food or laundry, so blogging seems like a far off luxury. It's something I wish I had the energy for every day. There are notes scribbled in my journal and on napkin corners and in mini notepads that will probably never be read... But they are there, and every scribble and scratch is a part of me. I can imagine when I'm older, when I have a pink rose bush and a blooming plum tree and an overstuffed armchair with a hole in the seams from a history of good conversations; there will be kids with scraped knees and dirty fingers that will run into my house when the air starts to bite their noses when it gets cold in the evenings. They will wonder at all my books and trinkets from my travels and will sit on my lap and eat fresh cookies from my oven. And then they will ask for stories, and I will slowly stand, leaning on the worn armrests of my chair to pull down my journal and blow off the dust... and I will read them my mistakes and glories and they will feel the pains and joys with me. I will tell them what little children are willing to hear, but what adults are too busy to listen to. I think Jesus had it right when He said to have faith like children do... to let the children come to Him. 

But something I can't put away on a shelf is my rock. It started with the Meseta.

I started to notice the hilly vineyards turn to flat fields of grain, the villages grow more sparse and the air turn hotter. While researching I found that 40% of Spain's terrain is located on a high central plateau called the Meseta with mountains running through the middle and bordering the edges. I've been told by other pilgrims that the first third of the Camino is physically hard, the second third is mentally challenging and the last third is spiritually growing. When I entered the Meseta, I found this to be accurate in my Camino so far. The flat plains caused me to think deeply and they forced me to begin to overcome things I struggle with mentally, to capture my thoughts because I was left alone with them. It's said that thoughts are half the battle, and I think this geography has proven that. I think the geography has effected the history, culture and people of the Meseta much more intensely than any other region's geography has effected them because it forces people to expose things to themselves that can be easily covered. The culture was more unique than anything I had experienced. It made me feel like I was walking through a country foreign from everything I was familiar with. The houses were made from adobe and their ruins were left to crumble. I noticed oversized nests taking over the pinnacles of gothic buildings and the darting of hundreds of birds in the early morning that chirped in the same air I breathed as I cinched my pack tighter and started another day.

A few days out of the Meseta, we came to Cruz de Ferro. This is a historic place where people leave a rock from their home at the base of a cross. There are many interpretations as to what this symbolizes. My rock is from Gaviota Beach. I picked it after my last training hike, two days before I left. I had put off choosing a rock because I thought I needed to find something incredible, something that would perfectly represent who I was. But when I took a moment to step back from my own air ball of perfectionism I realized that God didn't choose perfect people to represented Himself. That He actually chose the most crippled of them all. So, I went to the most ordinary beach and chose the most ordinary rock I could find, because I want the thing that represents me to be ordinary, to be broken, so that if anything good comes from it people will know it's not from me.

As I was walking the five miles to this monument, I thought. I thought about what this rock was going to symbolize. I thought I needed some huge epiphany to make this pinnacle point of the Camino the pinnacle point of my Camino. But then I caught myself. I was trying to force meaning into a rock. I was freaking out about the very thing I was trying to give up. So then I gave myself permission to not have an epiphany and I simply told God that I wanted this to mean something, I just didn't know what.

I got to the monument and swung my pack from my back and dug out my rock. I cradled it in my chapped hands... I mulled it over, studied it, searching for some kind of meaning in its splits and rifts and fractures and chips. But it didn't speak to me. So I decided to set it down and open my Bible to where I last left off, in Matthew chapter 26. At the crucifixion of Jesus. But I noticed something I hadn't before, that the story of the woman who poured oil on Jesus was included in the same chapter as His death. The disciples thought her gift was a waste of money, that it was silly... but Jesus' words caught me:

"For she has done a beautiful thing to Me."

The chapter goes on to tell about one of Jesus' best friends stabbing Him in the back, about the last time He shared a meal with the people He loved. About how He begged God to spare Him the pain He was about to go through. But those words stuck to my bones, they clung in my throat and pulsed through my wrists and brain. "For she has done a beautiful thing to Me." I realized my rock wasn't an epiphany or a huge enlightenment... it wasn't even slightly expensive. But I left it at the base of the cross, and I can only hope that God will someday say that about my life, despite my splits and rifts and fractures and chips. I want the reason of my life to be what Jesus said about that unnamed woman in Matthew chapter 26, "for she has done a beautiful thing to Me."

Peterrrrr

I saw a man bandaging his blisters as I walked to the patio of the alberge. I gave a sympathetic look and he smiled. He said they looked worse than they were. But I don't know how a blackened toenail and the blisters that had eaten three of his toes and heel with a growing appitite can look worse than it feels. "What is your name?" I asked. He answered with "Peter," first the English way, then rolling his "r"s. I tried to say it and he smiled with his eyes. I asked why he was doing the Camino, he sighed, seeming overwhelmed with the question. "For many reasons... one, two, three... many.." He said he was from Poland. That he was a priest. That he was doing the Camino for his 25th priesthood anniversary. "I am fifty" he said, "I am very old." He told me about how he had looked up to the men who had been priests for five or seven years and that he wanted wisdom like that, and now he was fifty years old. I told him how muched I loved the respect Catholisism has for God... that I can sense their love for God through the ornate cathedral walls and I can feel their reverance during mass. He smiled with hazel eyes that had a dark blue ring on the outside and he asked what I was studying. I told him about creative writing and art. About learning Spanish and how bad I was. About general ed and studying abroad. He lit up when I talked about art. I showed him the postcards of the watercolor artist I had just bought on the path today. Art Manton Lowe. I gave him the one of Molina Seca. The one with a building with mountains and rivers. I gave it to him because it was the one his fingers lingered on and the one that made his eyes dance. He liked the postcard of the praying hands too. As his eyes rested on it I thought about hands, about how they are beautiful things, that hands tell a story. They show pain and joy with those little wrinkles that act as smile lines, or as wrinkles that look like crevices.

But the thing that mesmorized me about Peter is that he is the director of men and boys' Gregorian chant choirs. That's when I sat down next to him and took out my notebook and asked him to write down suggestions of chants to look up. He wrote down the chant Dum Pater Familias. He said that he sings it when he walks, it's what helps get him through. So I shook his hand, I smiled back into his blue rimmed hazel eyes, and I thanked him. I continued to the patio and put in my earphones, blocking out Ruby Tuesday and the Red Hot Chili Peppers and listened to it: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=33jeQutO58o and it was beautiful. The funny thing is that I almost passed it all by. He was almost just the man in the red shirt with the blue eyes that was bandaging his black toe nails. But now I know he is Peter, he is Peterrrrrrrrr, the priest from Poland who directs Gregorian chants and loves art and God and travel. We shared words. We shared a postcard. But we shared a bit of ourselves, and I think that is beautiful.

Counting Cats

There is something about a cat. There's something about a cat's fur when you brush over it, the way it can stand up or stiffly caress your calloused fingers, your white nails, your dirty nails, the kind of dirt from walking sticks and from zipping up weathered rain jackets and putting on faded, turquoise trucker caps. There's something about a cat that's missing an eye, that has a broken leg, all deformed and curled up, that flicks around when it tries to scratch it's ear. Ignacio knelt down beside me, his hand on its head, the cat leaning into his palm. "Where are you from?" I asked. He smiled as he looked up and told me about Madrid in perfect English. I told him about my week there. He told me about his American school and how many of his friends are from California and how he wanted to visit. We walked into a church, our words hushed by the ornate Catholic gold cascading in front of the eldery wooden pews. He told me what the old Spanish ladies were saying as they arranged the flowers and I told him how good his English was. I thought it was the last I would see him. It wasn't. I saw him again in San Juan de Ortega when we stayed the night at the same hostel. He smiled when the wind blew my hair into my eyelashes as I cradled my hammock while I sized up the trees rationalizing themselves as planter decorations. "El gato!" I half laughed, half sputtered through my hammock thoughts when I saw him. We started to talk about the Camino and spirituality and traveling and life pursuits. Of guitars and favorite animals and about learning in college that we actually don't know anything. He laughed when I over-pronounced his last name, trying to say it correctly. We left the last shards of sunset as we ran inside when we saw the nuns locking the doors for the night. Ignacio and I are the same age. He is the first pilgrim I've met who is in the same place in life as I am. Meeting him was a visual reminder that while I am living in my self-absorbed life at home, people just like me are living in Spain, in France, in God-knows-where in Iceland. They are living with the same aspirations that are staring at them just as straight in the face as me. My conversation with him was like looking in a mirror but seeing the background behind the tiny spek of a face I so often can't see past.

In my experiences in hostels I've only found one universal language: snoring. It can actually be beautiful... the different pitched choruses sighing together...  It's like being suffocated in a room of multi-cultured murmers with no breath of silence. The earplugs I stole from the library have helped a bit. The headphones from the plane have been nice too. Who knew public facilities and transportation systems could actually be useful? The other day I sat under the stairwell of a hostel run by nuns. Ha. Run by nuns. Nuns on the run. I hadn't seen a real live nun before this trip. I guess they don't like the idea of massages, or being asked if they want one. I never thought I would participate in a nun sing along, but I found myself facing them sitting indian style wearing a grey beanie I found. It was incredible. The room was chorused with the accented voices of Germans and Dutchmen and Spaniards and Californians. We sang songs in each of our languages, one of the nuns passionately strumming an old Classical guitar. It was Amazing Grace that got to me. Some people didn't even know English, but they sang anyway, reading the words off their crumpled song sheets marred by their sweaty, dirty hands. I love how God can see past our sweat and dirt and language barrier to give us that Amazing Grace. The nuns were leading strangers in songs they didn't know to put the focus back on the thing they've committed their entire life to... that Amazing Grace. Nuns are some of the most beautiful people I know.

A few days ago I was listening to Counting Song by Denae Templeton. I tried to look it up on YouTube to post the link, but I guess it's just too hipster. So, here's some lyrics.

I was busy counting 1, 2, 3. 

I forgot, forgot, forgot, forget to see. 

Remember, remember, remember, I forgot to remember...  

God above I know You love me,

God of love You're closer than above me.

We walk but we don't run one step then two steps three four not three nine ten and we

glory in each one two three four five six seven eight nine then

we forget to count, make me forget to count, to count, cause You're the fountain.

I was busy playing games for three and four and keeping score

oh when will my heart be silent?

Holding up my fingers once more, 

You ask why and said there's no game and there's no score, 

just You love me.

It's one thing to listen to music with the intention of escaping from the world, but it's another to listen to it with the intention of making the world seem more picturesque. I don't either are bad, but walking with the second mindset was like living in a movie or like getting to be an artist's brush stroke in a painting. Milage and hours have no relevance or power in my life anymore. I have been freed from society's conception of time... of keeping score. I forgot to remember that time and the trap of sizing myself up to my surroundings was actually only me creating barriers for myself. I tell myself I'm too busy to spend time with God or pursue Him further but I'm only limiting myself to human's conceptions of how life should be. Please don't misread this, I definitely think the conception of time and calculating it correctly is crucial to maintain an organized society, but when it becomes an excuse to not revolve our day around the things we deem important, I believe it has started to control our lives.