Dreaming While Walking: Last blog’s thoughts on a news article about dreams was still in mind when I sat down in the chair in the kitchen next to our basket of books, old magazines, the Bible, and last week's NYTimes (you have such a place, no doubt -- a creative corner). My creative moments seem to be the connection of ideas and geography, literally: I remembered something interesting, and looked for it in the geography of the book basket. It was a book about the Camino de Santiago brought back as a gift by newlyweds Mitch and Vanesa from their honeymoon in Spain.
That set me looking for another book: "Walk in a Relaxed Manner: Life Lessons From the Camino," in which geography and ideas and dreams are connected as one walks the flat expanses of the medieval Camino pilgrimage. The route is called the "Camino de Santiago de Compostela" ~ "The Way of St. James," sometimes referred to simply as "The Compostela." The "compo" in Compostela is the flat plane (field) near the
pilgrimage destination city of Santiago. "Stela" = "stars," so clear in the early morning sky along the way.
That set me looking for another book: "Walk in a Relaxed Manner: Life Lessons From the Camino," in which geography and ideas and dreams are connected as one walks the flat expanses of the medieval Camino pilgrimage. The route is called the "Camino de Santiago de Compostela" ~ "The Way of St. James," sometimes referred to simply as "The Compostela." The "compo" in Compostela is the flat plane (field) near the
pilgrimage destination city of Santiago. "Stela" = "stars," so clear in the early morning sky along the way. Why mention the stars? Not just because they're pretty, but because they put the pilgrim in mind of the religious dimension of the pilgrimage? A look at the awesome majesty of God? Which raises the questions A) Why go on pilgrimage, and, if we’re intent on walking the distance, B) shouldn’t we be looking at the ground, and not up at stars?
Journeys through fields are dreamlike a recent movie reminds us, and dreams are drawn from emotional experience. Pilgrims then and now may go on the Camino for a particular reason: to work through the death of a spouse, the end of a vocation, the beginning of parenthood. Sometimes walking the Camino was a penance, or some other effort to make a new start. The walk was and is a walk on a mystical path. The Compostella is a walk through a field of dreams.
In "Walk in a Relaxed Manner," life lessons are drawn from the total experience of putting one foot in front of the other across a day. One chapter is about different people one meets along the way. Different groups form for a day or more. My wife and daughter (who walked the 500 miles 8 years ago) spent several days with a group of singing, joking, dancing young men who turned out to be Franciscan novices. Another chapter says the Camino teaches us to acknowledge the kindness of strangers. A doctor walks around the huespedes (hostel) at night attending to anyone’s blisters. We are humbled by weakness; we learn we have sources of renewal and strength just when we’re most tired, and so on.
Fields of dreams stretch between our front yard and the neighbor’s, a half mile away, and across greater distances of time and geography. A walk in the morning before work, with the dog, changes the way we both live the rest of the day. Movements of the body teach us to reach for stars. We walk through the day; our day can be a pilgrimage, for the purpose of knowing and loving God more, and working on those things in our lives that glancing up at the stars will help. GKS
Fields of dreams stretch between our front yard and the neighbor’s, a half mile away, and across greater distances of time and geography. A walk in the morning before work, with the dog, changes the way we both live the rest of the day. Movements of the body teach us to reach for stars. We walk through the day; our day can be a pilgrimage, for the purpose of knowing and loving God more, and working on those things in our lives that glancing up at the stars will help. GKS
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