As we move towards the end of the year, and the season of Advent, I’ve been reflecting on how this year began for me, when I spent 3 months living in (and taking care of) the home of a friend in the tiny village of Molinaseca on the Camino de Santiago in Spain. That settled time of contemplation at the start of 2023 influenced many of the important and positive decisions I subsequently took throughout the year and was a true Camino blessing for me, as is the continuing friendship of the home’s owner, which began 2 years before.
I was walking to Santiago and had spent the day descending from the Camino’s highest point, where an Iron Cross (the Cruz de Ferro) sits at the top of a large pole. It’s where many pilgrims leave stones brought from home, symbolising burdens, sources of grief, or life challenges that they feel ready to leave behind. And the steady climb up to the cross, the moment of contemplation and release as the stone is left, and then the rocky decent afterwards, reinforces the symbolism of how challenging moving on from habitual ways-of-being, or deeply-rooted sources of grief can often be.
During the descent that day, I found myself wishing that I could meet someone who had a strong faith in God and a good knowledge of the Bible, but who didn’t feel duty-bound to instruct me in The Truth whenever I shared how my experience of God differs from what the Christian Churches teach, through traditional and established doctrines. A couple of hours later an American gentleman offered to buy me a coffee as I was paying my lunch bill at the village bar in Molinaseca, we started to talk about the Camino and faith, and it began to dawn on me that my wish was being effectively, and almost instantaneously, granted.
Tim, I discovered, is in his 70’s, has spent his whole life as a member of different Christian Church communities, reads the Bible every day, and relocated to live in Molinaseca after completing his own Camino in 2016. Now accepted as a member of its small community, he opens the Catholic church in the village every afternoon (although not a Catholic himself), so that pilgrims descending from the Iron Cross have a place of peaceful contemplation to go to, where they can quietly reflect and talk about their lives, their Camino experiences, and their inner spiritual journeys, if they choose to. He spends a great deal of time listening to personal stories, actively encouraging people to pay attention to their inner voice and heart, and telling them to trust that this process will eventually lead them to a deeper understanding of themselves and of God.
Over coffee, we talked about many faith and religion-related topics, quickly discovered that we share a strong belief in the power of The Holy Spirit (that God-inspired, life-force energy that creates circumstances and brings people together in ways that often threaten their habitual comfort zones and challenge them to look more deeply at themselves and at their lives) and he used an expression that made me smile, both inwardly and outwardly. “Days of obligation!” he said, with exasperation when talking about traditional Church doctrine, “That phrase just drives me crazy!” It’s one that puzzles me too. Because in the Kingdom of God that I experience…and I do experience it, every day, existing alongside this terrestrial world in which we live…there is no obligation. There is only ever choice.
The God that I experience, in the truly miraculous and in the mundane everyday, never obliges me to do anything. I am never told (in the many, many moments of silent contemplation we share together) that I have duties to perform; standards of perfection to reach; sins for which I must atone; forms of adulation, praise or worship with which I must comply; responsibilities for saving others, which I must acknowledge and then fulfill. God never speaks to me about any of these things.
Our conversations don’t reprimand me, attempt to shame me, urge me to try harder or to do better. They only inspire me, with their overwhelming sense of tenderness, patience, wisdom, forgiveness and love, and with the words that appear in the silence; or in the rays of the dawning or setting sun; or in the rustle of autumn leaves; or in the whirling dervish of the urgent, vibrant wind at play; or in the soaring swoop of swallows; or in the gentle smile of a stranger; or in the intuitive act of kindness by a friend; or in the wordless example of a dedicated and whole-hearted soul. Through all these things God speaks to me and in them all I hear the same inspiring words: “love”; “forgiveness”; “passion”; “joy”; “tenderness”; “wisdom”; “trust”; “strength”; “union”; “freedom”; “courage”; “respect”; “openness”; “honesty”; “life”; “peace”. Words that inspire me and draw me to the people who demonstrate these things and who, through their example, inspire in me a strong desire to embody and to demonstrate these too.
And one, abiding word over-arches them all…like a vibrant, celestial rainbow. It’s a word that speaks of the eternal covenant between us. The new alliance. The union that raises us up and calls us to be the intelligent, thinking, intuitive, sensitive, equal, compassionate, wise and feeling human beings that we are all created to be. The word that speaks of God’s faith in us. The word that demonstrates, without doubt, the unconditional love God feels for us and the unfailing trust that God places in us…time and time again.
“Choice”
“Choose” says God to us daily. “Choose how you will experience me. Where you will see me. How you will respond to me. How you will use the precious gift of free-will that I have blessed you with. Choose to see and understand that every person and circumstance I send to you is sent to help you to grow in awareness of the power and potential of your gift of free-will which, when used wisely, allows me to work between you, within you and through you.
“Choose to use your free-will consciously and actively. Don’t casually hand it to others, or be brow-beaten by those who desire to take it from you. See and cherish the priceless gift that it is. Choose situations and experiences that help you to find the best of yourself within yourself, and then share that self with others.
When you do this, you will naturally inspire...
with no need to shame, demand, reprimand, lecture or impose your will on those around you.
“Choose this way of being and then marvel at how, together, we are able to create…
love; forgiveness; passion; joy; tenderness; wisdom; trust; strength; union; freedom; courage; respect; openness; honesty; life and peace
...within your own life, and within the lives of all members of your human family, who truly seek the same."
La Casa de Paz 