Well this is Day One of my Novena to St. James. We should arrive in Santiago de Compostela in 9 days! (May turn into a Decima if we add a day) and our next 3 days could be extremely difficult – our hardest climbs since our first day – but we were so “fresh” then! We didn’t know what we were doing! A fellow pilgrim described the first day from St Jean to Roncesvalles as a “slap in the face.” Well now we are stronger. And we know what we have to do. Take it very slowly and “poco a poco se va lejos!”
Our novena prayer talks about answering Jesus’ call and following Him in our various states of life…”with integrity and perseverance.” I had to define “integrity” last year for my students. I said it was when your “actions match your words.” Let me be a better example of that!
I walked today for a very dear friend of many years. She has seen much pain in the last few years. She is one of the most authentic people I know. She holds no pretense and is totally genuine. In this way, she reminds me of most of the pilgrims here: everyone is totally honest and holds little pretense. But unlike my friend who is completely transparent about herself, most of the pilgrims are quite anonymous! Very little, usually, is shared about their background story. But we are totally comfortable with each other because we’re all walking around in the same clothes day after day, all the same air-dried hair styles, no make-up, same fears and frustrations, same silly tan lines and dusty, dirty…everything! It’s a strange combination. We are sharing something very personal, yet we are anonymous to each other in large part.
The Camino got crowded today! This can happen, we’ve heard, on weekends. But it will continue as we get closer to the 100km mark. So we have seen many new faces. We miss “our” pilgrims! The ones we started with. We actually found a small group today and had such a nice reunion. They felt the same as us!
We saw this flyer at our B&B today. A Playmobile exposition of the Camino de Santiago at a local museum. Is this really a thing? We’re going to check it out after dinner.
Later: What an amazing dinner/lunch! (We are combining the two again) Croquetas – my favorite Spanish meal of all time!
And yes, it is a thing!
Oh no! This is where we’re headed! This does not look good…
Pilgrim down! Pilgrim down!