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."
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