I know you’re tired but come, this is the way.–Rumi

Today I mostly walked by myself, except for a few miles with Andrea, a young woman and her parents from Espania, and for a while with a woman from Brazil.

I think I was the last peregrino to leave Navarrete–slept in a tad longer. Finally, after 10 days, I’m learning to walk my own Camino and not try to keep up with the thundering herd. It was a strange feeling, starting out solo and alone. I found myself looking over my shoulder, wondering where everyone was. And since it is Domingo, the town and roads are deserted.

Until the wanna-be Tour de Espania racers come whisking by in their peloton, in full club regalia. That’s all I need: to get clobbered by a speeding cyclist.

Once the Camino left the roadway they disappeared–only to be replaced by peregrinos on mountain bikes. Slower, but they can’t ride a very straight line.

Walking alone was meditative. It helped me enter the Silence and try to not think, but rather feel–feel the ground beneath me, feel the air, feel the oh so pure pain in my leg and ankle, feel the wonderful joy of being alive and healthy and able to walk this path that thousands before me have walked for hundreds of years. It is a humble experience. I am but one rock on the road to Santiago. But that one rock makes me a small part of the whole.

I am walking the Camino for a couple of reasons: the main one is to make good on a promise I made to God 21 years ago. Another is to find my spirit. I seem to have lost it over the last couple of years.

So Silence is important to me for it will help me listen to what comes forth…

In my Dialogue workshops we go out early one morning in the desert to sit in silence and watch the sun rise over the Catalina mountains. Each time I do a little meditatio. Part of it goes something like this:

For years the Master told his followers the importance of Silence and how Silence alone can bring about peace and enlightenment.

     When his followers ask him how to arrive at that Silence he said,

     “Listen when all is seemingly quiet, look when there is apparently nothing to see.”

That is my mantra on my Camino.

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Sorry, no photos–photos aren’t downloading. Either a slow server here or I need to find a way to compress photos in iPhone. Stay tuned, I’ll figure it out, but wanted to get this posted as my goal is to post every day…