Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Thursday, December 22, 2011
The Camino Begins
Monday, November 14, 2011, 2:41 PM
I stopped in at Bookman's a picked up a copy of Shirley MacLaine’s book The Camino: a Journey of the Spirit. While having lunch at a local, inexpensive, Mexican Restaurant I began to read. Spoke to my daughter who is giving me much frustration and had to just let go of attempting to control the situation. She is a grown woman who in my estimation is not making very good choices right now. But, she is making them and all I can do is tell her what I think, then sit and worry about the outcome. I am fearful that something will happen to her which I cannot stand to think about. She is flying across the country to see a man/boy she is obsessed with calling it love. I don’t trust him, nor like him because of his behaviors toward her which have caused her great distress. Even so she is off and all I can to is wait for her to return, hopefully alive and well.
The Camino starts here in Flagstaff, AZ.
Read more: http://blog.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/cookecarl/1/1323629666/tpod.html#ixzz1hInwaA45
I stopped in at Bookman's a picked up a copy of Shirley MacLaine’s book The Camino: a Journey of the Spirit. While having lunch at a local, inexpensive, Mexican Restaurant I began to read. Spoke to my daughter who is giving me much frustration and had to just let go of attempting to control the situation. She is a grown woman who in my estimation is not making very good choices right now. But, she is making them and all I can do is tell her what I think, then sit and worry about the outcome. I am fearful that something will happen to her which I cannot stand to think about. She is flying across the country to see a man/boy she is obsessed with calling it love. I don’t trust him, nor like him because of his behaviors toward her which have caused her great distress. Even so she is off and all I can to is wait for her to return, hopefully alive and well.
The Camino starts here in Flagstaff, AZ.
Read more: http://blog.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/cookecarl/1/1323629666/tpod.html#ixzz1hInwaA45
June 15, 2011, 12:40 pm
Flight 145 Heathrow to Boston
Well did not get to Austria, or France, or Ireland, or Scotland or even Liverpool this year. And now I'm heading home early which feels like the right thing to be doing at this point. Not having almost unlimited funds as I’ve had for the past two years is part or the reason. Needing to get back and take care of a number to things having to do with getting ready for next year’s tax season. Also feeling like I’m needing to be with my son on his birthday and Father’s day. This year there was no mother for my daughter’s birthday, or to celebrate Mother’s day or her birthday in May and now no mother at his birthday. So rather than spend any more money and dealing with not so nice weather I’m heading home.
Several things have come to mind this year as I traveled that will apply to my trip next year. The first it that my previous trips all had some goal attached to them. All those goals have been reached which is one of the reasons I floundered around this year attempting to find some purpose. Next I felt stuck, gee there’s a new one, by not doing better planning on the events I volunteered at during the Festival. The time between them required me to spend more time in Salisbury than ever before. There was really no need to wait for a special order tire, which if I had paid more attention/focus just by looking at the one good tire already on the bike. Focus or the lack there of was probably the biggest problem. Then the weather was the worst I’ve run into since coming over here. In the past I’ve had lots of rain which was not a problem because it was warm and there was little wind.
This year was much colder and windier than any previous year. Wind blowing so hard that it almost stopped me from going forward while riding. Almost daily wind, rain, and cooler temperatures then on prior trips caused my bones to ache. This along with a lack of direction or focus, my mind more back in the states then here left me unsmiling. Not all the time, but a good deal of it I checked in on myself and found no smile or wonderment on my face. I found that even the birds, which sang me to sleep and woke me up in the past, went unheard. Each of my previous trips ended being a spiritual renewal that seemed not to be possible this year. A thought that kept running through my head was To much death this year, to many lives cut short and mind goes on. Where is my gratitude?
So I found on line this site that talks about the process of a Pilgrimage. A pilgrimage is most likely what my previous trips turned out to be. So the following are the steps:
1. Feeling what it means to be a pilgrim.
2. Reading the signs along the way as the journey takes on a life of its own.
3. Awareness of companions along the way and why are they there.
4. History of the story we witness as we journey: Spiritual, historical, and political.
5. As you travel you become part to the story, no longer an observer.
6. Seeing where heaven and earth touch, seeing with the eye of you spirit
7. Affirmation. Opening up to what needs to be confronted or what is revealed.
In retrospect the pilgrimage this year did not reveal itself until I made the decision to return home early. Then and only then did the bigger pilgrimage I’ve been on become visible from the smaller. Gary and I talk often about things happening when they are supposed to not necessarily in tune with when we think they should. People, time and time again, ask me what drove me to do this bike riding in England. Each time I answer them only I miss the answer. I’m saying I dreamed of doing this for a long time yet only just found a way to do it. Which seems to say that other things had more priority then doing this so it could not have been a very important dream could it? What I really mean is in my mind was a hope that this would come to pass when it was mean to. Not after doing it I’d which I’d done it sooner because it would have meant the same.
The first trip happened at a time when it was most needed. Subsequent trips happened because the first did not give me enough time to complete the pilgrimage, not that it is completed now. The bigger pilgrimage, my life, will not be finished until I die. The smaller pilgrimages which create the bigger one are by no means over either. The England Pilgrimage may be over, or needs to be looked at in a different context. So it will become, at this point, England Pilgrimage II, because I think England Pilgrimage I has been complete thus this years feeling of being lost may be the beginning of England Pilgrimage II.
Step One: Feeling what it means to be a pilgrim.
I think back to Gary and I talking about his Pilgrimage to Spain and Walking the Camino Santi Ago(?).
Read more: http://blog.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/cookecarl/1/1323633518/tpod.html#ixzz1hIgaRdjB
Flight 145 Heathrow to Boston
Well did not get to Austria, or France, or Ireland, or Scotland or even Liverpool this year. And now I'm heading home early which feels like the right thing to be doing at this point. Not having almost unlimited funds as I’ve had for the past two years is part or the reason. Needing to get back and take care of a number to things having to do with getting ready for next year’s tax season. Also feeling like I’m needing to be with my son on his birthday and Father’s day. This year there was no mother for my daughter’s birthday, or to celebrate Mother’s day or her birthday in May and now no mother at his birthday. So rather than spend any more money and dealing with not so nice weather I’m heading home.
Several things have come to mind this year as I traveled that will apply to my trip next year. The first it that my previous trips all had some goal attached to them. All those goals have been reached which is one of the reasons I floundered around this year attempting to find some purpose. Next I felt stuck, gee there’s a new one, by not doing better planning on the events I volunteered at during the Festival. The time between them required me to spend more time in Salisbury than ever before. There was really no need to wait for a special order tire, which if I had paid more attention/focus just by looking at the one good tire already on the bike. Focus or the lack there of was probably the biggest problem. Then the weather was the worst I’ve run into since coming over here. In the past I’ve had lots of rain which was not a problem because it was warm and there was little wind.
This year was much colder and windier than any previous year. Wind blowing so hard that it almost stopped me from going forward while riding. Almost daily wind, rain, and cooler temperatures then on prior trips caused my bones to ache. This along with a lack of direction or focus, my mind more back in the states then here left me unsmiling. Not all the time, but a good deal of it I checked in on myself and found no smile or wonderment on my face. I found that even the birds, which sang me to sleep and woke me up in the past, went unheard. Each of my previous trips ended being a spiritual renewal that seemed not to be possible this year. A thought that kept running through my head was To much death this year, to many lives cut short and mind goes on. Where is my gratitude?
So I found on line this site that talks about the process of a Pilgrimage. A pilgrimage is most likely what my previous trips turned out to be. So the following are the steps:
1. Feeling what it means to be a pilgrim.
2. Reading the signs along the way as the journey takes on a life of its own.
3. Awareness of companions along the way and why are they there.
4. History of the story we witness as we journey: Spiritual, historical, and political.
5. As you travel you become part to the story, no longer an observer.
6. Seeing where heaven and earth touch, seeing with the eye of you spirit
7. Affirmation. Opening up to what needs to be confronted or what is revealed.
In retrospect the pilgrimage this year did not reveal itself until I made the decision to return home early. Then and only then did the bigger pilgrimage I’ve been on become visible from the smaller. Gary and I talk often about things happening when they are supposed to not necessarily in tune with when we think they should. People, time and time again, ask me what drove me to do this bike riding in England. Each time I answer them only I miss the answer. I’m saying I dreamed of doing this for a long time yet only just found a way to do it. Which seems to say that other things had more priority then doing this so it could not have been a very important dream could it? What I really mean is in my mind was a hope that this would come to pass when it was mean to. Not after doing it I’d which I’d done it sooner because it would have meant the same.
The first trip happened at a time when it was most needed. Subsequent trips happened because the first did not give me enough time to complete the pilgrimage, not that it is completed now. The bigger pilgrimage, my life, will not be finished until I die. The smaller pilgrimages which create the bigger one are by no means over either. The England Pilgrimage may be over, or needs to be looked at in a different context. So it will become, at this point, England Pilgrimage II, because I think England Pilgrimage I has been complete thus this years feeling of being lost may be the beginning of England Pilgrimage II.
Step One: Feeling what it means to be a pilgrim.
I think back to Gary and I talking about his Pilgrimage to Spain and Walking the Camino Santi Ago(?).
Read more: http://blog.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/cookecarl/1/1323633518/tpod.html#ixzz1hIgaRdjB
Monday, November 28, 2011
Sunday, November 13, 2011
The Camino de Santiago de Compostela (The Way of St James)
The Camino de Santiago de Compostela (The Way of St James)
Wednesday, November 09, 2011, 3:44 PM
In 2004 my friend G stated he was going to Spain to walk The Camino de Santiago de Compostela and would be gone for 2 or 4 months. At the mention of the Camino Shirley McLain’s book Out on a Limb flashed through my brain. It came out in 1983 and I remembered reading it because I have always loved Shirley, and it was on the NY Times best seller list. But, I could not remember much about the book as we talked. It passed from my mind, other than the remembrance of things I use to believe. Of all the books I’d read during the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s before I became a counselor and left that world mostly behind.
Gary had been talking about doing this for a while now, so I was surprised that he was really going to do it. We discussed his fears and his wondering if he recent strip of lost items were an omen. He was gone and since he had no computer or SKYPE I did not hear from him for four months. Now, I thought this was an interesting journey, but nothing I’d be interested in on two counts. First I don’t like the idea for carrying stuff on my back like a mule; second Spain just did not call to me. G returned home with tales of his travels along the Camino which sounded absolutely wonderful; for him. The Camino slowly slipped into the background and our lives went on until 2005 when went to the emergency room and was diagnosed with cancer.
This event brought about my excitation of a dream I had for a very long time. My dream was to travel to England follow the path of King Arthur and find my family. In 2006 I made my trip to England which turned out to be a very spiritual adventure. I found my family in England, then in Austria, travel the roads of King Arthur, and found the air field my father flew out of during WWII, traveled to France and continued to do so for the next six years. Last year I found my trip lacking, no spiritual insight, that was until I boarded the plane home. It was when I found the spiritual part of this year’s trip. I began to understand that although I had completed almost all the things my soul requested I search for there was more to do.
Up on return the Camino began to show up again. Gary, from time to time, mentioned his wanting to walk it again. I had met Ainhoa my first year in England and she asks from time to time when I’m coming to Basque Country. I have just written her on Facebook to let her know I’m thinking of coming. That’s not the truth I’m being drawn to ride the Camino. Recently a new move was released called The Way. It is about walking the Camino and is a wonderful movie.
This year will be my seventh year to travel to England and Europe. Last year I was left with a feeling that had accomplished all that I had wished, yet there was still this pull in me to return. And, return I will with a new adventure in mind and as before there will be not planning, no training, no nothing but the DOING! This is the beginning of my 2012 travel journal and my road to traveling The Camino de Santiago de Compostela (The Way of St James).
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