Last week I visited Poland for the first time. I went there to talk at a travel festival... ...and this was my presentation: "I first met Tomasz (who's organised this festival) 10 years ago on the Camino de Santiago in Spain. We met in a misty wood the evening before we both arrived in Santiago. … Continue reading Signposts for Another Way
Five years ago I posted a blog piece entitled 'Home thoughts from abroad'. At the time I was confined to an AirBnB apartment in the city of Logroño, on the Camino de Santiago in Spain. I was confined because it was the first Covid lockdown of 2020, I was waiting to continue my camino and,… Continue reading Home thoughts from abroad: Take 2
Allow yourself to be gentle, to be kind.No need to force, no need to rush.Allow yourself to be, and to feel, different every day...to be human.Try to greet that difference with patience, acceptance and a pinch of curiosity. Allow your priorities and focusto be different every day but, always,with an underlying awarenessof the central purpose… Continue reading Just because it felt worth sharing…
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… Continue reading Where no-one is harried and nothing is forced…
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… Continue reading Why I go down to the river…
Yesterday I received, not for the first time, a life-giving lesson in the powerful and ever-present reality of the quality of Grace. How it lives within each of us. How each of us has the power to use it gently, kindly, wisely, consciously, as part of our own way of being, through our own choice… Continue reading The Rosebush…
Yesterday morning a dear friend sent me a link to a televised Mass from a Catholic church in Ireland, which she'd tuned into by chance, because she wanted me to see how the Mass had started. She knows me well, and she knows that the way in which Catholic Masses traditionally begin (verbally acknowledging that… Continue reading A Prayer for the Possible…
I don’t believe it matters how we start, when we start, or even where we think we’re heading, the only thing that seems to matter is listening to the part of us that longs for and just knows there’s something more. We tell ourselves, or are told by others, many things about why we should… Continue reading That blessed ‘something more…’
Sometimes words don’t work. Sometimes a candle-lit room, accompanied by the sound of rain, says more than the greatest philosopher. Sometimes pain is our greatest teacher. Sometimes those that give us life try to destroy us. Sometimes time doesn’t heal our wounds. Sometimes choosing life is harder than giving in to death. Sometimes friends become… Continue reading Sometimes
The time will comewhen that which troubled youpounds at the door of your heartno more. When the endless clouds of confusion and competing choice part... and only clear, uncluttered clarity remains. When that which seemed so complex, confounding, complicated and weighed-down with worry.. transforms, as day-light breaks. Miraculous metamorphosis And the earth-bound, shadowed, heavy, static… Continue reading Redemption
La Casa de Paz 