Camino Subtexts

[Kathy Gower]

I think we're at an interesting time of the season for the camino lists:  there's a wonderful bunch of "new kids on the block" asking questions pertinent to them and there's a core of old-timers that have had questions regarding things as juicy and esoteric as underground streams under the cathedral similar to Chartres, the alchemist routes, the routes of St. Francis and even some of the celtic christian origins in medieval Spain.

I for one have benefited greatly from those discussions and oftentimes initiated them, but as those inquiries have been answered, well, I don't ask them anymore.

What is of utmost importance to me is how we integrate that experience of the camino:  the liminal space, the miracles, the slowdown of time and the instant (almost) communitas of the journey...as well as the deep pain that some experience when they are "home" and can't discuss those things with their family and colleagues because these just aren't shared experiences.

Should it be another listserve?...the camino-deprived support group?

It was a trip to go to the Musee de Cluny after the camino and walk through some of the rooms filled with similar era art, see the tombstone of Nicholas Flamel who supposedly rec'd the alchemical secrets on his way home from his camino, and to sit for awhile under the Tour St. Jacques.  It was also incredibley enlightening to read more about the symbols carved into the capital at San Juan de la Pena, a reported site connected to the Grail legend.  Other "thrills" came when a member asked about certain hermitages and their origin originally from Ireland, through parts of what is now Italy, to small villages west of the Pyranees.  And what about the Basques and their part in the history of the Camino...and Juana La Loca, the mad daughter of Camino patron Ferdinand and Isabella who dragged her dead husband's body from monastery to monastery?  I just read that before Isabella conceived her son (who died tragically), she visited the priests and prayed at the statue of the Virgin !
at!
 San Juan de Ortega to become fertile.

I'd love to discuss any of the above topics, but truly don't know where to begin.

p.s. to Michael Wyatt...thank you for your inquiry that started me thinking.  My kids played the Royal Game of Goose when they were small.  The authors of the Cadagon Guide to Northern Spain wrote about the plaza in Logrono with the granite pictures of the game on it.  If I could read Spanish (I'm working on it), I could translate a spanish book about it.  I'll get back to you off-line about it when I find it again.