[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. 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.