<HTML><FONT FACE=arial,helvetica><HTML><FONT SIZE=2 PTSIZE=10 FAMILY="SERIF" FACE="Palatino Linotype" LANG="0">Hello,<BR>
Regardless of one's wishes, the Camino is not shielded, nor separate, from current realities.<BR>
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.<BR>
The inferences are inescapable.<BR>
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.<BR>
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.<BR>
I'll be going home next Sunday.... I don't want to, not at all.... But I must.<BR>
To paraphrase that lovely poem: 'the woods are calm, and the waters deep... but there are miles to go before I sleep'.<BR>
(A priest in Ourense repeated that old adage that "power corrupts,... and absolute power corrupts absolutely".... I wonder what 'super-power' does).<BR>
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.<BR>
<BR>
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.<BR>
<BR>
By the way, there are cameras and security people everywhere; although they are fairly unobtrusive, one cannot help but feel that things have changed.<BR>
<BR>
Warm regards,<BR>
<BR>
Rosina </FONT></HTML>