We’re experiencing a heatwave in Spain at the moment, with record temperatures announced each day in the town where I’m currently living, and a ‘record-record‘ reached yesterday, as we tipped over into the 40-degree-plus celsius realm. The mornings are still comparatively cool (in the low 20’s) but, from 2pm onwards, the temperature gradually climbs, shutters are drawn and the streets become deserted as people stay within their air-conditioned buildings or take extended siestas, to avoid the height of the heat each day.
But it’s always cooler next to the running-water shallows of the town’s large river, banked as they are on either side by a profusion of trees, which creates a cooling canopy of leaves above. Luckily, and foresightedly, the town’s Council has developed a long network of cycle and walking paths that trace the course of the river, taking advantage of this cooling and protective bounty of nature, given so freely by the trees that flank the river’s sides.
I’ve got into the habit of rising early (a legacy of years of Camino walking) and going down to the river path to walk and jog for an hour at the start of each day. It’s a joy to feel the coolness of the morning, to hear the birdsong, and to listen to the gentle burble of the river as it courses over rocks and winds along through weeds and reeds beside me, meandering on its way.
But today I realised that it does much more than that. I saw, maybe for the first time, the vital part that the river plays in recognising what I’m truly feeling in a moment – almost like an echo – and the way that it responds to reassure me that all is well and all is truly progressing, in the way that it should.
Almost two months ago, a friend of mine died of cancer. He was someone I came to know through walking the Camino and we met when the Covid lockdown in Spain brought my Camino to a halt in the city where he lived. Our association and friendship grew in the 3 years that followed and it ended up having a lasting impact on my appreciation of how spiritual awareness can enrich and give a greater sense of meaning, purpose and fulfilment to ordinary, everyday tasks and lives.
We shared a deep love of nature, and a sensory appreciation of how miraculous is the smallest detail of the creation that surrounds us and the sheer abundance of perfect design and beauty that exists in all that Mother Nature reveals to us through every changing season.
But, despite the love that I felt for this friend, I wasn’t unduly affected by feelings of grief following his death, mostly, because my overwhelming feeling was gratitude, knowing that he was no longer suffering or in pain. But also, since the day that he died, I’ve felt an enduring sense of his peaceful presence – which others also speak of – and it remains with me still.
But this morning, on my river walk, a wave of grief came over me and I found myself crying on the river path. Not wanting to alarm or distress the small band of individual dog walkers who I’ve grown acustomed to meeting each day (and who I usually greet cheerfully, and with a smile), I walked down to the river’s edge and stood on the small rocks that border it, with water gently lapping at my feet.
I watched a solitary duck glide along, stop, suddenly raise itself to a standing position, as if standing on pure water, and then begin to preen itself with precision and with care. It made me laugh and I realised that it had obviously found a rock submerged below the surface, which I couldn’t see…and…in that moment, a memory jumped up from the depth of me, like an unexpected and marvelous fish suddenly breaking the surface of the water before me and showering me with a momentary, refreshing spray.
It was a memory from the afternoon of the day my friend died, in a different city far from here, but a city with another great river flowing through its heart. During the time I lived there, I would often walk its river paths early in the morning and stop, and look out across the large weir that divided it; sometimes at a distance, and sometimes right beside it, to see and hear the full force of its flow, when the river was particularly high. I was back in the city on the day my friend died, as I’d gone back to visit him, knowing that he’d been in hospital some weeks.
That day I walked the river path again and stopped, at a distance, to look at the weir. In that moment I spotted a young man, very carefully making his way across the wide river, from one side to the next. I let out a little gasp of laughter and surprise because, for all intents and purposes and at that distance, it created the optical illusion of someone miraculously ‘walking on water’. I realised quickly, that he was picking his way along the rocks that formed the edge of the weir and, at the river’s low mid-Summer height, they were barely submerged below the surface. But the metaphor of the moment wasn’t lost on me.
No-one stood on either bank watching him, cheering him on, or waiting for him, so this young man had decided, purely for and by himself, that today would be the day when he would cross from one side to the other, carefully and mindfully. He was young, and he was strong, and he was quietly confident – as young men close to nature often are – he was in no hurry, and it was a joy to see.
And with that memory another came, almost instantaneously, of another magical moment, beside the self-same river, two years before.
A memory of another friend, who I’d also made through the Camino, and who also influenced me significantly with his encouragement and with his lived example. He had a strong faith in the ‘spiritual dimension’ that can be seen, felt and found in nature, in making the effort to have positive, meaningful encounters with others and in living every day as positively as he could. He was a friend who also had cancer, who died, and whose death gave rise to another symbolic, river-side experience that gladdened my heart and lifted my spirit and soul.
I’d been working all day when I received news of his death and wasn’t able to go for a walk (my first instinct) until later into the night. It was dark, so I decided to keep to the larger, paved river path, rather than heading into the less-travelled paths that wind through the trees and undergrowth that flank the river’s sides and which I usually preferred. After a few minutes I decided to head to the old stone bridge, where the Camino enters the city and crosses the river’s wide breadth. It’s a walk I’ve taken many times before, both as a pilgrim and as a temporary city resident, but this time I approached it with a certain sadness in my heart, thinking of my friend who so loved the Camino.
And then I stopped, let out a little laugh, and said out loud “I don’t believe it!“, because I didn’t. For the first time ever, I saw the bridge lit up with a myriad of slowly changing, rainbow colours, as the moon shone brightly above. In that moment, it truly felt like my friend had reached out across the great divide to say to me “Don’t be sad, I’m at peace now. All is well and all is as it’s meant to be.“
I took some photos, to capture the moment, and when I got back to my room I decided to post them on my facebook page, just to share the joy of them, with no comment about my friend. To my surprise, one of my friends posted a comment below that said “When I’m a ghost, I will always be there for you“. Taken aback and slightly puzzled, I messaged my friend to ask her why she’d chosen to say those words. She responded quickly with a good-natured apology, explaining that she’d mixed up her comments, intending to post those words on someone else’s page, and quickly removed them. When I responded telling her why I’d taken the photos she said “It seems that your friend wanted to send you a message“…and I agree.
These experiences are the reason that I believe in transcendence – our human material world, existing alongside a larger and all-encompassing spiritual world. They’re the reason I believe in the eternal, and in a force of Love that is so powerful and enduring, it can bridge the gap between both worlds, when we allow it to. I see it expressed in simple acts of unexpected, deeply-healing, selfless human kindness. I see it in the mystery of incredible and timely positive coincidence. I see it in the radiance of the natural world all around me. And I call this force God.
My friend who died two months ago was a priest. He once told me that, when he lived in a smaller village and struggled to write his sermons, he liked to go into the forest, down to the river’s edge, and to sit there quietly for a while. “If I stayed there long enough, just listening to the river,” he said “eventually it would tell me what to write“. And so it is. The reason I go down to the river is to hear God’s voice, in a hundred different ways. In each of them, the message is personal to the moment, but it says the self-same thing “Trust the flow of your life, trust the course that it takes, trust that I am with you always. Trust my presence, trust my love for you…and with that trust, by sheer force of its enduring and eternal nature, you will be carried safely home.“
La Casa de Paz 