More Thoughts about the Path

I received some new pictures of the camino this week from Elena, pictures that clearly show it as a path. Once again, I was trying to figure out why it feels to good to have completed this walk (a second time). I think it cleared my mind of junk and left it clearer to see what I really value. I feel I'm a stronger person though maybe a little more eccentric as well. This walk made me happy. It made the world seem like a bigger place.

Here's a Woman Who Really Takes a Run

I saw a photo similar to this a few weeks ago in the South Bend Tribune (this from WNDU website). This is Rosie Swale Pope of Wales, and she is running around the world. In the last four years she has traveled 2,100 miles while pulling the cart that becomes her shelter at night. Her husband Clive died of cancer in 2002, and according to the Tribune, Pope "wanted to do something special to remember him. 'I looked at a map and thought... Hmm, I'll run across the world.'"

So, on July 5, she was in South Bend. A little later, she was at the Goshen Center for Cancer Care waiting for the results of a test for breast cancer (benign). Also, while in the Goshen area, she had some repairs done on her carriage by an Amish buggy maker. She plans to run from here to New York and then fly back home to finish in Wales. Go Rosie!

Cruz de Ferro/Letting Go

One of the spots on the Camino de Santiago is the Cruz de Ferro (Iron Cross). I had read about it beforehand and expected a larger cross. However, what I had read said bring a stone from home to put at the foot of the cross. This stone is to symbolize something you want to leave behind. I gather most people are like me; they forget to bring a stone and pick one up along the way to symbolize the stone from home that is to symbolize what they want to give up. I arrived at the cross, tossed my stone on the pile, and told it good bye. I was going to leave behind my habit of worrying what people think of me.

Obviously, an act like this is worthless unless you do it with a certain attitude. Symbolic rituals, I have discovered can be rather powerful when the act and the intention are just right for the time and place. This tossing of my stone has helped me when I find myself with some trivial worry about what others think. Today I have a disappointment at work. It feels like I threw away my stone and have received back an end-of-the-course test. What charming karma . Perfect I guess.

Camino Photos

I've been working on this online album: http://pictures.aol.com/galleries/mhardy6262. I've afraid I'm not clear as to how to do it. When I try to view slide show, it goes backward. Slide 54 is actually the first picture and slide 1 is the last. I still have a few more slides to add. Above is a view of the cathedral from a park outside the old tourist section. Even away from the Cathedral of St. James, it remains a visual anchor.

my infinite minutes of fame

Jamie, my yoga instructor, read this poem at the end of class last week. "It's my favorite," he said. My favorite too I believe.


Famous
By Naomi Shihab Nye

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anybody said so.

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse.

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.
The idea you carry close to your bosom
is famous to your bosom.

The boot is famous to the earth,
more famous than the dress shoe,
which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it
and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.

I want to be famous to shuffling men
who smile while crossing streets,
sticky children in grocery lines,
famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.

“Famous” from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (Portland, Oregon: Far Corner Books, 1995). Copyright © 1995 by Naomi Shihab Nye. Used by permission of the author.
Naomi Shihab Nye’s (1952—) mixed heritage—her father is Palestinian, her mother is American—shapes the subjects of her poetry....