16 posts tagged “camino”

Well, I thought I'd post a few photos that I think sums up my hopes for my work in Spain, both the retreat and the interivews.  Also, the opportunity I had to spend a few days with folks who run albergues on the way - to share notes and ideas.  I'm ever so grateful to have reflected on my role as a deacon this first month since my ordination by taking time to attempt both practice for and research on hospitality to pilgrims.

They speak to my own sense of lingering.

I think I may already have posted one or two.  The third and fourth I've left unblogged.

One is of pilgrims at mile (or click) zero, just in front of the Cathedral.  Next, the blessed opportunity to wash the feet of those who have walked in faith.  Third, a picture of a threshold I took soon after my arrival in Spain, but that speaks to me also of my leaving and the sense of having stood near the Holy while sitting next to pilgrims (perhaps like a veil, as I contemplate my Uncle's journey through death's dark veil to the City of Light Eternal.  Finally, a photo from standing in the same spot, with a shift in perspective, because holy lingering is in part about taking time to see things from different perspectives.

Hospitality also, I think, is liberal in its effect, but conservative in its sustainability

.  You have to learn how to reduce, reuse and recycle (like taking old roof tiles and using them as light-fixtures).  You have to learn to get the most of food, because what you throw away might have been exactly enough for the pilgrim that shows up at 10:00pm that night famished!     And you start to see beauty in old rusty things, like bent nails or chicken-coop wiring.  You start to be creative about using everything, wasting little.

Many years ago, when I first dreamed of opening a hostel, I talked at length with a friend who shared her interests in “self-sustaining,” which I’ve changed to sustainable-stewardship, in an effort to think beyond the self, and acknowledge gratitude for and dependence on the Creator.  I’ve not done a great job of weaving that into my life (trying), but have woven it into my draem – and my ideal albergue would require living a little closer to the land (so thanks to Rebekah, I can add a chicken run to my vision!).

Hospitality in the Peaceable Kingdom looks like hospitality toward the earth, in grateful response to the earth’s hospitality of us!  And the chirp of birds and the bark of dogs and rustling of leaves under the flight of a lizard become sacramental reminders of the responsibility to dive more deeply into our sense of expanding outwards, our ever expanding sense of  beyond-the-self, and beyond the merely human to embrace the fullness of creation that exists in the heart of God, of God’s own most passionate love.

Like God, we have to give some freedom, as we give hospitality – the freedom for those with us to leave, and this can be hard, I think.  Hospitality requires being able to give to God the relationships we have, especially those we form as we open our doors,

At Moratinos, I was introduced to some wonderful old technology, that I find quite impressive in sophistication – a thresher.  It was made of beautiful wood, boards bent to a curve at the end to look like a giant sled.  Embedded in these boards were flint or granite – rocks carved and sharpened like arrow-heads we used to find as children in the wilds of Mississippi’s farmlands and forests.  Hundreds of these pockmarked the boards.  At harvest of the wheat, a farmer would run this across the wheat to break it open, and as it did, the chaff would turn to a slight dust and rise into the air and blow away.  Jesus used this metaphor when talking about the false dichotomies we make when we say that there are “good people” and “bad people.”  I think what Jesu

s was trying to say was we need to invite God to come into our hearts to break it open where it has become like stone, and to allow the weeds that grow in our divisive places to be blown away like chaff in the wind.  Who knows, maybe practicing hospitality will be like a thrasher, cracking open the good so that it might be transformed into the most essential life; and practicing hospitality will provide a thrashing floor for others, where they encounter an opportunity to be cracked open, too.  

"Batter my heart, Three-Personed God!"

!

I'm spending my last few days in Santiago wrapping up the retreat ministry with the last of interviews.  I'm focusing on interviewing pilgrims who have recently arrived, but did not participate in the retreat ministry, so I can see how differently people experience and talk about their experience of Santiago.

  

I of course took pictures of that field.  None of the purple shows up, but I´ll always remember it as a field of purple, though to most it would like like a field of hay.
   So holy lingering, then, doesn't´t mean we stop our pilgrimage.  It means we pilgrimage in a way, or at least at moments, that are different from the normal rhythm or our pilgrimage.  We syncopate, to borrow from jazz!
   It means we pilgrimage in a way that frees us (for joyful obedience!), from the agenda we bring with us or develop as we peregrinate.  It allows us to be open to the experiences in store for us, not just those we expect, far beyond the experienced we hoped for or imagined, that we dreamed of, so that our sense of pilgrimage and our sense of home are ever-expanding.
   The daily walk around a city at the end of each day´s walk, a tour of some of it´s special places, these are things many pilgrims do on the camino when they stop to rest, as if grounding them in the place where they will be for the night.  Why would we do any less... take time to "walk off" the day, in a significant way when we get to Santiago?  The daily practice of lingering is teaching us one of the patterns, one of the syncopations of life in the pilgrimge center, along with eating a communal meal, taking a shower, and washing clothes... all of these seemingly mundane things are rituals of our pilgrimage, just as rest....  Just as holy lingering.
And now, for something completely different... or rather, completely random stream:
   More than a ritual for the pilgrimage center, it is a ritual for life.  How often do we take time, or fail to take time, to linger with friends - or strangers?  The Christian faith places Christ on the plumb, square and level in the heart of others (both friends and strangers), and we need to take time to linger together.  Community is part of pilgrimage too.

I keep trying this phrase out, I like it.  As one friend said, not in the most flatering way, "it´s sexy,".  But, I continue to like it, and will struggle to keep fleshing out meaning for it until I find it has none left, and then move on.

For now, I´ve been taking to walking 2km over to the next village and back each day, usually at a rather slow pace.  In part for heat and part because once I start reflecting and musing, I start slowing down, or I stop to write in my pocket notebook.  I also stop to take pictures of flowers.  I´ve noticed the bright yellows, and the red of the poppies,

and even the variety of purples along the sides of the road, but had neglected a full field of purple that I passed each day for a week.

One day, I just looked up and hidden ever so slightly, like colors in a Van Gogh, were hints of purples dotting throughout this golden field that reminds me of California.

My imediate thought was, and this is obvious to those who know my favorite movie and book is The Color Purple, by Alice Walker, was the quote below. Thanks to IMDB, I can give you the quotes in a little more context:

Shug: More than anything God love admiration.
Celie: You saying God is vain?
Shug: No, not vain, just wanting to share a good thing. I think it pisses God off when you walk by the colour purple in a field and don't notice it.
Celie: You saying it just wanna be loved like it say in the bible?
Shug: Yeah, Celie. Everything wanna be loved. Us sing and dance, and holla just wanting to be loved. Look at them trees. Notice how the trees do everything people do to get attention... except walk?
[they laugh]
Shug: Oh, yeah, this field feels like singing!

I´ve discovered the joy of google reader, which gives me an aggregate of all the blogs I like to read in a quickly readable format.

   I decided to add to my blog list all of the blogs by bishops who are at Lambeth, which thankfully is not all 650 of them!  I´m appaled at some of them, and delighted in others, but mostly from a position of theological-opinion.

   On the whole, however, I must say that I am a little concerned at the extent to which bishops are seemingly offering stream of consciousness theology, aren´t they running the risk of backing themselves into corners, or saying something that will be tacken as directive, or doctrine, that could merly have been an emotional response to a heated argument over cocktails at the bishop´s palace?

   Hardly the thoughtful, well-inked carta´s of the early church writers!

   There are some things that have been written that are obviously pensive, nuanced and thought out.  Others are clearly emotional, personal, and in some ways indicative of an unwillingness to enter into a spirit of true dialogue.  Some just seem like diatribes - the kind of bland, generalizations that show little thought into the readership or theology of their writing, not to change minds, but to harden them.  It would be easy for me to say this is one sided, but I raise the question in general, because regardless of one´s theological stance on certain issues, i.e., LGBT persons, the access and insight into the minds of bishops is great, but at the same time, a little frightening.

   Turning this back on my writing in Spain, I am conscious as I write my blog, that I have to be considerate of a number of factors.  As this work is in part for my doctoral research, I must be careful with the data that I give, preserving confidentiality as needed.  To be further responsible, not coming to hasty to an interpretation, to assuming a meaning.  As much as this work has given time for personal reflection and my own spiritual development, there is still much to learn, and I will be doing so for many months and years ahead.  So the real fruits of my labors are to be seen in the harvest, not the planting.

   This is why you are reading less about the goings on in the personal lives of people with whom I have worked, why this blog is a little more about me - it´s an opportunity to own up to what is going on inside of me, so that as I do the work of ministry with others, I can be more present and open to what I have to learn, while being a little more self awaer (thank goodness for journals, too!).  This is also why you see less face pictures of people who have been retreating with me - unless I have very clear consent, you won´t see any photos of them at all, and when I have placed pics up, I´ve avoided using face photos to the extent possible, even when I have consent.

   So, that should explain a little bit more about what´s been going on in my blog, and the shape that it is taking!

   More on what I feel I have learned in the next post.

... which is to say, reading from the first entry to the most recent, rather than the most recent backwards.

   Is this old for you, it´s awefully new to me, but what we are reading when we read a blog is a book-backwards.  We are starting with the last chapter, which has not yet been written, and reading ourselves backwards through a stream of consciousness.

   I think that the turning around and returning home of pilgrimage is a little bit like this - not entirely, but a little bit; and spiritual reflection can be like that if one wants it to be; if that is what works.  Starting where we are, adding new chapters, and those who come along and read are reading the moment, not the history.  I think that is why I keep struggling for a way to talk about this "holy lingering," this taking time to pause and go back and get the full story, so we can really understand why we are where we are, to make some sense of where we might be going.  Or even choose a new path.

   Found a lovely quote on getting and being lost as being alive, but I want you to discover a blog I´ve enjoyed, so you have to follow the link to it ;)

   Big Fun in a Tiny Pueblo

 

Look for the June 20th blog, and the poem by José Gasset y Ortega, from "Revolt of the Masses¨"

   Both in the retreat-time and in these week of volunteering in a refugio, I have thought often about Mary and Martha, and Jesus' clear preference for the via negativa of Mary, rather than the activity of Martha.  Perhaps I am a little more confused about the matter, have seen the urgency - if you will - of the rather mundance, even having felt closer to saints and the Holy through some of these activities: preparing beds, washing laundry, feeding, cleaning up after pilgrims leave.  I think perhaps what Jesus was saying, and this is a shift for me from prior thinking, was not that the activity of Martha was in and of itself bad: Jesus himself did a lot to take care of the physical needs of people, like feeding, providing wine from water, healing and restoring sight.  He even took time from his preaching to feed a hungry crowd!

   I think what Jesus is saying is be discerning.  Perhaps, coming from an eschatological perspective, he is also saying ´Be prepared!´

   While attention to activity can be a form of love, it can be a form of avoidance, or even self-serving.  Be discerning - when do I need to get chores done (if we are watching because we do not know the hour, we will have our lamps trimmed and burning...)?  For some pilgrims, it may be a healing touch is needed, for others, perhaps a listening ear.

   C & L, my refugio permenants, are normally in the kitchen once pilgrims arrive, preparing dinner.  And isn´t that just what they need after a long day of walking uphill?  Afterwards, pilgrims are heading to bed, and need less.  But sometimes they need a listening ear - and being in the kitchen, that is impossible for them (and often for me).

   Surely there is a way to get the chores done, and also be available to folks who really need a listening ear.  I´ve often said that ministry takes two, it takes companionship (the disciples were sent in pairs).  Perhaps it takes three.  Regardless, there are a lot of chores to get done, and most pilgrims need the physical attention.  How do we meet the need of the occasional pilgrim who needs just to talk - who is carrying a problem?

  C & L have a book pilgrims can write in, and most write a line or two of thanks.  They always get glowing remarks for their hospitality, and since I am usually in the kitchen, my presence is a little less obvious.  The few times I have been mentioned by name, I have noticed, are the folks with whom I spent a little time visiting before or after dinner, who needed someone to pay a little attention to them, and hear their story.  I think this makes me a little more uncomfortable, as I try to navigate a world obsessed with details and activity, while being able to take the time needed to do a little more.  At what cost will I let details go in order to be a listening ear?