Fiction or humility

[Gabrielle Milanich]

I don't consider sentiments urging us to reserve our judgments and to respect
differing opinions as adverse to constructive dialogue.  The society in which
some of us live may be lacking in "cooey cooey, nicey-nicey stuff", but I for
one, always believed that life and our society is what we ourselves make of
it.  It continues to baffle me how two books addressing a life-changing path
that most of us have walked, or will walk in the near future, can cause so
much derision.  I commented earlier that I read both MacLaine's and Coelho's
book and was inspired to walk the Camino.  Not because of what was written,
claimed, or fabricated, but because it alerted me to the very fact that the
Camino existed.  When I walked, I heard a great many times the phrase, "walk
your own Camino".  For a while, I struggled to understand what exactly that
meant.  Did it mean to walk by yourself?  Did it mean to walk with religious
fervor and devotion?  Did it mean to walk to or away from something?  Or, did
it simply mean to walk with intention - one's own intention, in which case
all of the above would be correct.

I met so many people who walked without pain and helped others and many who
walked with pain and accepted aid form others.  I found barriers I had built
up over a lifetime of distrust and disregard falling away at an alarming
rate.  Talk about your life-chainging experience.  What astounds me is that
in this virtual community, this albuergue as some have called it, I continue
to hear so many biting comments.  I have to wonder how we would be if
suddenly we were all back on that path.  Maybe one who felt MacLaine's book
to be hogwash would find themselves hungry and exhausted to the point of
having hallucinations, or dare I say it, visions.  Or maybe one of us would
be moved to write a fabulous story of how we discovered that ley lines
actually were present and provable.  Maybe those who are disdainful of
Coelho's supposed fictitious account can also be made aware that we have an
accomplished author in our midst who wrote not only a factual account of the
pilgrimage, but a mystery which took place on the Camino as well.  If
someone, who had never heard of the Camino, were to read Elyn Aviva's book
"Dead End on the Camino" and discover that the Camino actually existed, with
all of its mysteries and labyrinths, and be moved to walk, would we tell that
potential pilgrim "oh, don't be led by that book, it's a mystery"?  Would
that person's experience or motivation be any less pertinent than our own?
Really, honestly, who would dissuade a would-be pilgrim from walking just
because they had been exposed to the Camino through ways that challenged our
boundaries?

Coelho's book is fiction, proclaimed so by the author himself.  Why is it
necessary to disregard his words?

And it matters not if someone holds Shirley MacLaine to be the antichrist, or
simply a wacky new-ager, or a pilgrim who walked only a portion of the
pilgrimage.  The fact is, she has provided millions of people with an
alternative view and maybe a reconnection to their spirituality.  That view
may be judged harshly or untruthful by many of our mainstream religions, but
if it has given just one person a sense of peace, hope, joy, a renewed
awareness of their own soul or worth, who are we to judge its validity.  I
fear my words may be perceived as mere hyperbole or sentimental, or maybe
even sympathetic to those who would challenge this system of belief we have
going that states there is only one way... "my" way (although isn't it
interesting that, as we have experienced on the Camino, there are, in truth,
many ways).  What does concern me is how our words may be interpreted by
future pilgrims, of which there are several on this list, who have yet to
walk.  I would be hard-pressed to believe that any one of us, while we
followed the thousands of other footsteps on the Camino, did so with some of
the attitudes I have heard expressed here.  If I am wrong, please do correct
me by standing up and confessing to have walked in anger, hatred, resentment
or jealousy.

Judgment in itself isn't wrong.  One's opinions, whether they are different
from my own or not, are sacred in my eyes (and if that statement sounds like
a "coo", so be it).  But with that there comes a certain responsibility.  I
should be saddened to hear that something I uttered in heartfelt
determination influenced a pilgrim to not walk, to not experience the Camino.
 From what we have going here, I would be a little afraid of walking,
wondering if I would encounter the same segregation and anger.  I feel myself
blessed that I did not experience the Camino in that light.  My Camino was
filled with support, laughter, tears, friendship and a complete willingness
to realize and actualize the facts that I am not the only person on the
planet and a person who has as much importance to the whole of it.  That, in
my humble opinion, is called waking up.

With regard,
Gabrielle
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