Camino Daze May 2017 – Day 7

Day 7 – A Day of Hell’s Challenges Transformed by Heaven’s Infinite Grace

Again another year of personal and global challenges as well as many grand adventures and divinely blessed events have spun me into another new year (2020) since I last wrote about my Camino Daze of 2017.  Even as I look back on the year 2019, just on a personal experience level, with its many times of chaos and pain equally interspersed with great joys and celebrations, I feel an instant and profound connection to my longest, most challenging – and most rewarding – 24 hour stretch on the Camino Frances.  Almost three years ago now, I can still remember and feel the vast extremes of physical, emotional, mental and spiritual lessons and gifts bestowed upon me that day, as though it only happened last week!  So here is the somewhat condensed version of my Dark Night of the Soul during the Camino Daze of 2017.

This day, Friday May 12, 2017, started much the same as our other days thus far on the Camino, with a pre-dawn departure.  All three of us, myself, my sister Marcia, and our friend Debbie, spent a restless night in the bunkhouse-like accommodations of the massive stone Monasterio de Benedictinas – we each kept waking up throughout the night wondering if it was time to get up, pack up, and make our way down to the León plaza to catch our 6:15 a.m. bus to the outskirts of the city where we would begin walking the longest day since we started the Camino.  We finally got up at the appropriate hour, packed up as quietly as we could in the pitch dark, grabbed a quick bite of toast, juice and coffee before rushing out the door.  Marcia had noticed some hand painted “blessing stones” on a desk on our way out, and called my attention to the one made especially for me – “Gracia” means Grace in Spanish, so I took it as a good omen and snapped a picture before we hurried on out the door to catch our bus.  We made it to the bus stop with five or ten minutes to spare and it was starting to rain.  I began sorting through my pack to pull out my rain coat, just as the bus was pulling up, and I discovered (to my horror) that in the dark I had apparently missed getting my rain coat packed.  I literally ran the 3-4 blocks back to the Monasterio (Marcia and Debbie stood guard over my pack) and retrieved it right where I’d left it, making it back to the bus stop in time for us all to catch the 6:45 bus instead.  As it turned out this was the rainiest, most wet weather we had had on the Camino to date (except for maybe the day before when we were all snug and warm on the bus), so I would have been one really miserable cat had I not discovered my missing rain gear until too late.  My guardian angels were already looking after me, although there were far too many times for me to count when I felt completely alone in my body, heart and mind pain and discomfort that day!

Not only was this our longest day in miles, but there seemed to be no good rest stops or places where we could buy a snack or a meal (we only located one vending machine on a street corner with some sugary treats if you had the right change).  With no apparent cafes or bars along our route this day, this also meant no water bottle refills or restroom facilities (which spelled disaster for me in my weakened digestion state).  Walking along side a road, in a constant drizzling rain, with very few bushes or trees for that whole 16-mile stretch, I became absolutely despondent.  By early afternoon, Marcia and Debbie were well ahead of me by over an hour, and having not seen them for some time, I was truly beginning to feel utterly alone in my dreary misery.

I will let this excerpt from my journal detail the rest of my “Hell to Heaven” experience on the Camino that day:

Friday, May 12, 2017 – León -> Hospital de Orbigo (~16 mi) … I struggled a lot with my pack and the miles today – plus it was raining most of the time we were walking, my feet, legs and back aching, and increasingly uncomfortable digestive issues, made the day even longer for me.  I really thought I was not going to make it to the selected accommodations in Hospital de Órbigo, but Debbie came through again with the Albergue Verde.  [Debbie and Marcia had both come back to offer to help me with my pack, as I had dropped over an hour behind them throughout the day’s trek!]. There was a downpour of rain just as we came into town and then the sun came out shining on one of the most beautiful Roman-built bridges – making the cobblestones shimmer like gold.  We found the entrance to our albergue by following a sidewalk lined with multi-colored iris and white cala lilies.  We were warmly welcomed by an American couple [hosts of the albergue] and offered hot tea (from a selection of garden grown herbs), and invited to get out of our wet clothes, take a hot shower, and settle into our bunks before they needed us to sign in and pay our donativo fees.  I treated myself (after much cajoling from Marcia and Debbie) to a massage from Alejandro (a volunteer at the albergue, from Italy).  I experienced another spiritual breakthrough and attunement under his very skilled and intuitive Shiatsu treatment.  After my session (downstairs in the yoga room), I noticed what looked like a small painting of Amachi [one of India’s Divine Mothers, known as the Hugging Saint] on his altar (along with an “om” symbol and some Buddha images and statues). 

I had somewhat of a spiritual meltdown, and felt overcome with Spirit in that moment – it felt like the prayer I had been chanting most of the day (to keep me moving one foot in front of the other) had been heard and amazingly answered – “Be Still and Know I Am God – I Am Here – I Am Home All-ways!”  As I confirmed with Alejandro that it was indeed Amma, I hugged him and excitedly shared my connection with Amma [she has a well-established community in Santa Fe, NM, where I first met her].  Later, before our wonderful vegetarian dinner was served, Alejandro led several of us in a yoga qigong movement stretch.  Dinner was served, and accompanied by one of our other hosts, playing guitar and singing a Camino song he had written; then a Buddhist prayer of gratitude (Tich Nat Han) for the food, plants, animals, and human beings that brought the food from land to table; and finally gratitude to The Universe – All Is Well!  Dinner consisted of fresh tomatoes and beets, creamy lentil soup, hearty dark brown bread, and a wonderful stuffed (mushrooms and zucchini) flakey torte pastry.  A heavenly raisin ginger sunflower-seed bread was served for dessert.  Definitely sleeping well tonight!  Lots of emotional and physical releases during my Shiatsu session today. 

Also had a vision during my treatment with Alejandro:  an expanding, very dark fingered void seemed to be opening out into the Light and calling me inward at the same time – not frightening, though requiring courage on my part to enter The Great Void.

 

 

THOUGHT FOR TODAY: 

Even in my darkest hours, times of greatest challenge in my physical, emotional, mental human experience, I am never alone.  I often forget to ask specifically for help from the Source of all Love and Life, always and everywhere Present.  But this does not mean that I have ever been, or could ever be, abandoned by my Beloved Creator.  My Beloved shows up in many forms and many faces of my friends and family, as well as in the eyes and helping hands and hearts of every stranger I meet along this amazing Camino Journey of Life!  I have found that this Divine Grace is not limited to any particular race, culture, religion, tradition, nor by time and space.  I thank Heaven and the Loving Source of my Being this is SO!

 

What gifts did your Camino bring you TODAY?