Sudarium

[Austin Repath]

Dorothy Imundi wrote:
>
> Dear Judy,
> I went to Oviedo this Sept  14 ... In the Cathedral, at that time at least,
> there is a display all about the
> Sudarium and studies made on it.  I would recommend this side trip to anyone
> on the Camino.  For centuries pilgrims on the French route have done just
> that, going over to the Northern route to venerate the famous relic.

My wife and I have just come back from doing the French route(see below)
and
hope to do the Northern route next year. Have you walked this route. I
would like to talk with someone who has.

Austin Repath

The Camino

  Let’s begin by being completely honest.
  It was a hard trip.
  Heat, blisters, colds, muscle fatigue.
  worries about having enough time to complete the journey
  and the nagging feeling of being plagued by forces
  beyond our control.

  Our every attempt to achieve a little continuity
  - even three days of continuous walking -
  to develop a little momentum
  sabotaged by yet another ailment.
  Only a mutual stubborn refusal to be taken down by some unknown
 Gollum that stalked us day and night, and a determination to fight
back,
  kept us going, and out of this grew a fierce adamantine strength of
 will,
  unspoken between us, that we would go the distance.

  Also let it be said that there were happy moments:
  drinking wine in the late afternoon sun,
  unexpectedly coming upon enchanting villages,
  looking around us at breathtaking vistas
  of mountains and seeing below us deep valleys.
  Knowing pridefully that we had scaled heights
  far beyond anything we had ever imagined.
  Such times were intoxicating, awesome, delightful,
  joyful as any we could recall from childhood.

  And there was the honest work of a day’s walking
  with a pack on one’s back, and in front of us
  a seemingly endless uphill path as far as the eye could see.
  Not to mention the felling heat of midday, the chilling rains of fall,
  the why-am-I-doing-this angst of a midnight waking.
  Have I left anything out?

  That final never-thought-it-would-arrive moment of entering Santiago
  44 days after starting out, with that unexpected feeling of sadness
  that it was coming to an end.
  The pilgrims’ mass in the cathedral, our names being read out,
  the unexpected swinging of the incenser, the exalting chords
  from the full-throated, wide-open pipes of the organ,
  tears of joy as we embraced one another, full in the knowledge
  that we had overcome.
  We had won through to the journey’s end.

  Returning home washed in remembrance of a pilgrimage
  beyond time and place, as unspeakable and private
  and special as a night of passion between lovers who would
  if they could, but unable to find words or means to convey
  the painful ecstasy of their tryst, simply smile knowingly
  at each other and tell them we’d had a good time