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)
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.
