Mendes remarks

[Rosina Lila]

Hello,
Regardless of one's wishes, the Camino is not shielded, nor separate, from
current realities.
All throughout the Via de la Plata, over the last month, in little  and
larger cities I have heard, repeatedly, priests  at Mass, nuns in convents and
monks and monasteries  pray that Christianity move from the lips of men in power
to their hearts; I have also heard sermons about the real and present danger to
the survival of humanity  that blind ambition coupled with unchecked military
power  poses.
The inferences are inescapable.
More than once I've heard sermons about "hubris" and how such exaggerated
national pride and self-confidence brought down the  Greeks,  the Romans and
other superpowers of yore, and how it took centuries for the human race to recover
from the attending destruction and mayhem.
Pilgrims who understand Spanish and who go to the pilgrims' masses (there are
two every day this year, at noon and at 6:00 p.m.) will hear many allusion to
St. Augustine's fourth century admonition that "great wrongs happen when good
people do nothing". Even Santayana's warning that "those who forget history
will repeat it" has been cited often in homilies.
I'll be going home next Sunday.... I don't want to, not at all.... But I m
ust.
To paraphrase that lovely poem: 'the woods are calm, and the waters deep...
but there are miles to go before I sleep'.
(A priest  in Ourense repeated that old adage that "power corrupts,... and
absolute power corrupts absolutely".... I wonder what 'super-power' does).
Much as it would be nice to wake up and walk among the daisies, and spend the
day cuddled  in the warmth of rosy pursuits... ominous clouds cannot be
avoided, ...not even in the Camino, where the tone of most pilgrims and local
people is noticeably more guarded and less free, even amidst the multitudes of this
Xacobean year.... and multitudes they are.

Because time seems to have flown by, and there is so much  that I could not
do owing to the huge  number of pilgrims and tourists, I'll be coming back in
Thanksgiving; hopefully the crowds will have abated by then and I'll get to
butt heads with Maestro Mateo's  statue by the Portico de Gloria and take
communion INSIDE of the Cathedral, instead of outside the Platerias or Azabacherias
door.

By the way, there are cameras and security people everywhere; although they
are fairly unobtrusive, one cannot help but feel that things have changed.

Warm regards,

Rosina
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