I don’t know how the time has flown by so fast, but our Creative Camino is drawing to a close. Tomorrow we will walk into Santiago—kilometer zero—the destination of all the Caminos. After that, we’ll have one more day together as a group, and the morning after that, just a few days from now, we’ll all be going our separate ways.
This morning, as we ate breakfast and got ready for the day, I listened to the chatter in the group. People were talking about how hard it would be to leave each other, how much they wanted to “just keep walking,” and at the same time, they were talking more about the people and circumstances they’d be returning to at home.
I caught my mind veering off into the future, too, thinking about what I’ll be doing when I leave the group on Tuesday—flying to Egypt to visit my daughter, Eliza, and her partner, Essam. When I realized that I, too, was thinking about what was around the corner, instead of what was right in front of me, I knew I had to address this with the group, as I have at each group retreat that I’ve led.
At 9 am, we loaded our luggage into the van that transports our bags to our next hotel, and shouldered our packs, full of everything we needed to carry for the day.
We gathered into a loose circle out on the lawn, and Kathy, one of the most fun-loving members of our group, and a long-time yoga teacher, led us in some stretches, this time holding our hiking poles aloft.
Then I passed around the small blue bag with white stars that holds our “quote of the day” and had everyone pick out a small slip of paper with something inspirational to carry them into the day, and later, paste in their journals. Then, I read our morning poem. Today, the poet was John Roedel:
what you give
to the world is who you are
we are not here
to hoard the light
we are here to reflect it
our souls don’t
have pockets
everything we fought to gather
will one day slip through our
unclenched translucent hands
nobody will remember
how safe we were with
our gifts and heart
they will remember how
recklessly we gave of ourselves
we aren’t here to
turn our lives into
a bank vault
we are here to be
a gateless park
oh, my love,
I wasted so many
years before I learned
that
we are not what we take
from this world
we are defined by what we
give back to it
After I shared the poem, Brenda led us out through the stone wall of our hotel out onto the street. Before we started walking, I called everyone together into a second circle and said: “I just have one more thing I want to tell you before we begin today. We’re moving closer to the end of our retreat—we all know it and can feel it. It’s easy to start thinking about your life back at home, your work, your family, the complexities you’ll face upon your return. But I’m going to ask you to not plane your attention off into the future. Every time you find yourself thinking about going home or leaving this group, bring your attention and focus back to today, to your feet walking on the earth, the beauty of what’s around us, to the Camino, and to each other. Don’t leave our pilgrimage before it’s over. Don’t pull away from each other until we actually have to part. Live fully into each moment we have together.”
I promised that in our closing circle we’d talk about helpful strategies for re-entry—what it’s like to go home after a powerful individual and group experience like this.
And then we started to walk: through cornfields and farms lands, watching the kilometer numbers on the Camino signposts get lower and lower. Please take a look at the travelogue of our day. And definitely turn up your sound—there’s music involved.
Our sacred solitary time in silence ended when these Mexican pilgrims rode up behind us on their bikes, singing. They were wonderful. We were delighted and just started laughing. You never know what will be around the bend on the Camino. I caught up with them around the corner and encouraged them to sing for us again! Turn up your sound if you haven’t already.
