[Gocamino] More on pondering

[blaroli at aol.com]

For those of you who asked:
....No,... I did not keep an eye on my sister in law Liz. Absorbed in my inner turmoil I followed some pilgrims from SJPP up the Pyrenees, at the break of dawn, while Liz returned to Roncesvalles to pick up her bike.
I did not see her again until a month later, when we both arrived in Santiago within hours of each other.
As it turned out, Liz' bike was totally ill-suited for the purpose. It was a "Friday" bike, made in Seattle, that came in a suitcase and had bags on the side, the front and the back. Even after discarding the bags Liz ended up pushing the bike most of the Camino, to the amusement, and with the help, of many other pilgrims and some locals.  She learned to ask for the "menu del dia" and got by with smiles, gestures and, no doubt, a healthy dose of her inherited Southern charm. Her only iffy moment,  she told me, came about when she found herself by the highway at the foot of the mountain leading up to O Cebreiro. She said that she sat there praying that her mother, Vera, would send her some help from heaven. In a short while a young Italian couple, from Assisi, no less, appeared on a motorcycle. They spoke some English and they ended up towing Liz and her bike up the mountain much to the amusement of motorists who slowed down to let them go by. (I have apicture of the towing a!
 nd will send it to Dave to be posted). Liz stayed in O Cebreiro for a couple of days in a room atop a tavern, and enjoyed it immensily. The rest of the way was a piece of cake, she says, pushing her bike a great deal of the time.
I arrived in Santiago in the pouring rain, went to the Cathedral dripping wet and the people on line let me go through to hug the Apostle. I then went to confession and to the crypt, and for some unfathomable reason I left my hat, my shoes, my watch and a ring there, and went to the pilgrims' office to get the Compostela and then next door to have it laminated.  When I arrived at the fancy hotel, Marriot Aragonay, barefoot and dripping wet the people there laughed, called me by my name and took me to the rooms. After taking a nice long bubble bath, Liz came in.... dripping wet, with her baseball cap, her pony tail and her shorts.... veritably sparkling. I told her about the Compostela and she insisted on going immediately to get hers, which we did.
That evening we went to the Parador for dinner; I was very quiet but she wouln'd stop talking and talking and talking about the wonderful people, the wonderful priests, the wonderful landscape, the wonderful everything... And so it went for the three days we stayed there.
When we got back to New York I went to my apartment, got in bed and refused to get up for a whole week, not wanting to go out, or speak with anyone or do anything.... I wanted to be alone with my self, my thoughts, my feelings and my emotions. When Liz came to see whether I was sick, she still wouldn't stop talking. She'd been immersed in her busy social life since our return going on and on with all her friends about the Camino. She told me that a priest told her in Leon, when she got it across that she is not a Catholic, that the Camino was forged by all Christians before they separated into Catholics and Protestans and, therefore, it is of everyone.  She was, and is, very happy with that.
At the Pilgrims' Mass, when she was the first in line for communion I remember reading in my New York parish that non-Catholics should  not to take communion in a Catholic chirch. I asked a priest in Santiago about it and he laughed, asking me, "Can you ever imagine that Jesus would turn anyone away from his table?".
And that's been that. 
Today, Liz has become quite proficient in Spanish and involved in religious matters. She "serves" at Mass in her Episcopalian church and is quite active in it; yet, she has formed groups to raise funds for the Leon Cathedral, which she adores, for repairs, and has even set up an endowment fund for them.
Last, but not least, since the Camino, which she has repeated three more times, she gets her tickets for Holy Week in Seville even before I do, and was overcome with sadness when Pope John Paul II died.
Go figure!
Hugs!
 
Rosina
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