Call of the Camino

by Suzanne Redfearn

But here in Spain, old people are still part of things. They know one another, and I imagine they have since childhood, when they came to this same dusty square to play while their grandmothers and grandfathers watched exactly as they do now.

Carlos lifts his sangria. “To beginning, and to getting it done!”

I accept the stories of the Bible as just that, tales meant to teach people the lessons God wants us to understand. I do not take the stories literally 139and no longer take everything the church or the Bible says as absolute truth. My faith is deep and personal

the key to essence is presence.”

“There is no fear in love,” he said plainly. “You say Peter loves you, which means you cannot protect him because it’s already happened. The spell has been cast. So now all that’s left is to allow him to help.”

Uncle David explained 200that according to the Bible, the way to salvation is to take the things plaguing or weighing you down and to turn them over to Jesus. “It’s when you stop trying to fight or conquer them yourself that you find peace. You grip a stone tight and let it absorb the sorrow and grief you want to unload, then leave it at his feet. Stones can take it. It’s why they’re so hard.”

“Sempre seràs la meva obra mestra,” she says. You will always be my masterpiece.

My eyes catch on a small cyclone of orange and yellow 237leaves in front of a headstone a few meters in, and I read the words engraved on it: 1814 I was once what you are now. You will one day be what I am now.

But as my aunt has always said, you can’t live your life based on someone else’s happiness.

Every morning we are born again, and it’s what we do today that matters most.’ It’s a Buddhist quote,

“Não é porque o passarinho está na gaiola que o impede de cantar.” The literal translation is, Just because the bird is in a cage, doesn’t mean it doesn’t sing, which means, even if your circumstances are not what you hoped, you can learn to be content with what you have.

there’s no right path; there’s only the path you’re on and the single step in front of you.”

The purpose of a pilgrimage is to allow time and space away from the familiar, so old ideas and beliefs can fall away and new higher perspectives can arise, and the profoundness of the effect varies.