[Camino Poem No. 37] The Truelove

This is the 37th of 42 posts about the poems which carried me along the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route in Aug-Sep 2016. On this, the 37th day, I walked 20km from Perdouzo to Santiago.

"and you want to live and you / want to love and you will / walk across any territory / and any darkness / however fluid and however / dangerous to take the / one hand you know / belongs in yours"

After five hundred miles of walking, arriving in Santiago felt anti-climactic. There were no cheering crowds, I did not know whose hand belonged in mine, and I had an argument with the person I was walking with.

Mid morning, I had stopped in a cafe to read the poem of the day. There was much that I enjoyed in it. In particular: it captured (and captures) the sense in which faith, and love, are active choices: they are a stepping out, a saying yes, a taking of an outstretched hand.

There were also parts of it that I was less sure about. Is anyone 'rightfully yours'? And can a single person provide salvation from years of struggle? Why not start offering a hand, rather than waiting for a hand to be held out?

Over dinner I met a pilgrim from Texas. I recounted the story of the poem What You Loved, and told him a few of the things that my father loved. After listening keenly, he looked at me and added, 'and one of the things that he loved was you.'

The next day I left to start the 90km journey to the ocean. That too was one of the things that he loved.

The Truelove (David Whyte)

There is a faith in loving fiercely

the one who is rightfully yours

especially if you have

waited years and especially

if part of you never believed

you could deserve this

loved and beckoning hand

held out to you this way.

I am thinking of faith now

and the testaments of loneliness

and what we feel we are

worthy of in this world.

Years ago in the Hebrides

I remember an old man

who walked every morning

on the grey stones

to the shore of baying seals

who would press his hat

to his chest in the blustering

salt wind and say his prayer

to the turbulent Jesus

hidden in the water

and I think of the story

of the storm and everyone

waking and seeing

the distant

yet familiar figure

far across the water

calling to them

and how we are all

preparing for that

abrupt waking,

and that calling,

and that moment

we have to say yes,

except it will

not come so grandly

so Biblically

but more subtly

and intimately in the face

of the one you know

you have to love

so that when

we finally step out of the boat

toward them, we find

everything holds

us, and everything confirms

our courage, and if you wanted

to drown you could,

but you don't

because finally

after all this struggle

and all these years

you don't want to any more

you've simply had enough

of drowning

and you want to live and you

want to love and you will

walk across any territory

and any darkness

however fluid and however

dangerous to take the

one hand you know

belongs in yours.

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[Camino Poem No. 36] The Lord's Prayer

This is the 36th of 42 posts about the poems which carried me along the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route in Aug-Sep 2016. On this, the 36th day, I walked 34km from Melide to Pedrouzo.

The camino was still offering me ample opportunity for reflection. I spent the morning walking with a father who told me how he enjoys connecting with his teenage son. Later, I talked with a man who taught philosophy in a secondary school.

I was also, after days of walking in company, craving the stillness of being alone. Santiago was now only one day away, and I did not feel ready to finish.

Sitting in a cafe by a busy road, with lorries rumbling past at regular intervals, the father chose the poem for the day.

The Lord's Prayer (An Alternative Translation)

Oh heavenly source of all radiance. Soften the ground of our being and carve out a space within us where your Presence can abide. Fill us with your creativity so that we may be empowered to bear the fruit of your mission. Let each of our actions bear fruit in accordance with our desire. Endow us with the wisdom to produce and share what each being needs to grow and flourish. Untie the tangled threads of destiny that bind us as we release others from the entanglement of past mistakes. Protect us from being seduced by that which would divert us from our true purpose, but illuminate the redemptive opportunities of each passing moment. For you are the ground and the fruitful vision, the creative power and fulfillment, as all is gathered and made whole once again.

[Camino Poem No. 35] Having loved enough

This is the 35th of 42 posts about the poems which carried me along the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route in Aug-Sep 2016. On this, the 35th day, I walked 40km from Portomarin to Melide.

By now, the walking had become routine. What was not routine was the emotional closeness I was developing with my walking companion. When you walk hundreds of kilometers with someone, it gives you a lot of time to talk (and also, to play twenty questions).

Most of my life, I have been good at hiding from the pain that I feel. The aliveness and depth of our conversations was not giving me much room to hide.

In the months after my father died (when I was eleven), I found ways to cut off the part of myself that felt grief, rage and fear. By now, that part had been alone for nearly twenty years - so it also felt lonely, abandoned, and shamed.

That evening, I spent time writing to that part of me. I pictured him as an eleven year old boy lost on the moors, shivering in some ditch somewhere. I apologized to him. I asked him where he wanted to be  (by a warm fire, in a house full of loving people, with plenty of other children to play with). I said I was here to listen to his pain.

He liked the poem that day -

Having loved enough (Mark Nepo)

Having loved enough and lost enough,

I’m no longer searching

just opening,

no longer trying to make sense of pain

but trying to be a soft and sturdy home

in which real things can land.

These are the irritations

that rub into a pearl.

So we can talk for a while

but then we must listen,

the way rocks listen to the sea.

And we can churn at all that goes wrong

but then we must lay all distractions

down and water every living seed.

And yes, on nights like tonight

I too feel alone. But seldom do I

face it squarely enough

to see that it’s a door

into the endless breath

that has no breather,

into the surf that human

shells call God.

[Camino Poem No. 34] Kindness

This is the 34th of 42 posts about the poems which carried me along the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route in Aug-Sep 2016. On this, the 34th day, I walked 30km from Furela to Portomarin.

Some days open you right up to where it hurts.

I miss you, Dad.

Kindness - Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
     purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.

[Camino Poem No. 33] Working Together

This is the 33rd of of 42 posts about the poems which carried me along the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route in Aug-Sep 2016. On this, the 33rd day, I walked 22km from Alto de Poio to Furela.

After a very late and somewhat hungover start we stopped for breakfast after a few kilometres, and were delighted to run in to the mid-aged French pilgrim that we had shared dinner with the night before. My notes describe her simply as 'wonderful' and 'very philosophical'.

She chose my poem for the day - number fifteen. It was (and is) a poem written by David Whyte for (wait for it) .....  The Boeing Company. More specifically, it was to celebrate the introduction of a new passenger jet.

Somehow, Whyte finds soul food in the aerodynamics of a plane wing. Just as the wing is crafted to give a hulk of metal miraculous lift, by receiving the power of invisible flows of air, so too are we to shape ourselves to take advantage of the unseen forces in our lives.

Applied to a camino, the poem's implications may seem straightforward enough: don't be rigid in your planning, and instead develop a flexibility that allows you take advantage of the diverse places, people and lessons that will miraculously spring up in your path.

We ended the day with my second stay at Al Chemista (the art cafe). A place of rock crystal mosaics, hearty paella, and 'great intangibles'.


Working Together - David Whyte

We shape our self
to fit this world

and by the world
are shaped again.

The visible
and the invisible

working together
in common cause,

to produce 
the miraculous.

I am thinking of the    way
the intangible air

passed at speed
round a shaped wing

easily
holds our weight.

So may we, in this life
trust

to those elements
we have yet to see

or imagine,
and look for the true

shape of our own self,
by forming it well

to the great 
intangibles about us.

[Camino Poem No. 32] Intimations of Immortality

This is the 32nd of of 42 posts about the poems which carried me along the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route in Aug-Sep 2016. On this, the 32nd day, I walked 32km from Villafranca to Alto de Poio.

The first time I read this poem through, I was squatting on the curb in a dusty car park which also serves as Villafranca's intercity bus station. I wasn't even sure that she was coming. But sure enough, when the Alsa bus arrived at 9am, she appeared.