Camino 22

 Time wanders on.  It is over three weeks since I got back, the knees still ache, the shoulders are not yet talking to me, but the road weariness is lifting.  A small prayer has been answered. Yes, it looks like I get to be Mary and Martha both - we are in touch with a Ukrainian family that will fill our house again with the commotion of life. Undertaking this adventure is no less worrying than setting off from Zamora destination Santiago. Then I knew my knees would swear at me, I knew my shoulders would take offence, but it was a training exercise I felt I needed and wanted to undertake - training in the discipline of trust in his guidance.  Of guidance on the camino I have written. This new adventure too I know will not be easy. We have had the experience of sharing the house with a family of five, a long time ago, when our own family of five included three children under five as did the other family.  I recall the pain of what I still refer to as "teapot trai...

I am home. Looking back, and rubbing my knees thoughtfully, I am again mildly astonished that I had the temerity to attempt the camino. So much could have gone wrong (but didn't), including what I had actually feared most: that I would start walking and discover that I didn't want to be there, that the memories of that first camino that called me back were false, or that I had changed, or that the camino had changed, that the presence that I had felt so close to ten years ago was simply absent.  It was all there, the same joy to be out and walking first thing in the morning, the same transient but deep friendship with others sharing the way, the same sense of walking in that presence, guarded, encouraged, cared for and sheltered. As before, I felt myself not so much walking alone but walking with the silent company of all who had ever walked the way, one with a huge fellowship of people, but not feeling crowded out or intimidated or unwelcome.  My memory was not wrong. I am gl...