Pilgrimage

   Picture this: two fit 70 year olds climbing the Pyrenees, ten miles up and then three straight down, having eaten a roll for sustenance. The wife of the duo is now sitting in the woods at the side of the trail weeping like a crazed mental patient while the man is slumped beside. She is barely able to think but just knows her husband is embarrassed by her as others trod by. Then he turns and says: "I want my Mommy" and she bursts out laughing." The Camino, that 500 mile walk in Spain, is saved.

 After her hero passes she finds notes he made on other trips. One struck her, how he believed that we shouldn't be tourists but pilgrims. What does this mean? It meant a lot I think for John : it meant travelling with purpose, to find what service God wanted him to engage in. To make a difference on his trips to Ghana, Central America and South America. 

  I must need metaphors because I have clung to the thought that I am on a pilgrimage still with John but different. In the corner of this room are our two hiking sticks, Camino shells, his running shoes, sunflowers. This is where I pray each morning. It reminds me that if I could do 175 miles of that walk in Spain I can do this hard last few years left to me.

On this walk so far I have encountered many trail angels who have helped me keep going just like on the Camino.Like on the Camino, I have cried over small things, then dropping my soap in the shower, now, not being able to get the cartridge in my printer. The first line of Scott Peck's classic "The Road Less Traveled" is this: "Life is difficult." I don't think we expect that, do we.

 I will end, clinging to my metaphor, with something that happened on the trail: "Mass at the stunning Leon Cathedral. When the homily is given in Spanish I try to open my mind and see what appears. I keep getting the word "profound". Then the message became clearer. We are all profoundly significant in this life. We ALL matter so much to the world,  to our world."  We are all pilgrims. Amen.