Books Motivations, and the Camino

[Felipe Sanchez]

To Maria Schell:
Your recent posting restored a portion of the faith I had lost in the
rationality of homo sapiens.  I thank you for it.  I happened  upon a wheat
field cloven by a crimson march of poppies the beauty of which held me
in the moment. A line of poetry spontaneously occurred to me as I stood
exhalting in the swatched beauty of the green field:  "As if the blood were
oozing from a breast of the earth where the plow had placed its kind meant
cut."
I still distinctly recall the euphoria I felt as I came as close to
apotheosis as
I will ever be.  And there were other moments of great beauty:  the fox in a
vineyard; an eagle soaring on vertical currents with a jet's contrail in the
background, my former life contrasted with my present at Alto de Perdon;
lying awake, timorous, unsure, while listening to the susurrous sleep murmur
in the
crowded monastery at Roncevalles; a two hour embrace in Santiago from a
young woman who could not bear to part from the Camino.  There were many
more such moments, all simple and direct to be shared by pilgrims and
caminantes alike.  One day in the Spring of last year I went for a long walk
in Northern Spain and in so doing found myself.....Felipe Sanchez