Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer

Showing Up to Dust and Sunlight

http://www.joycerupp.com

Quite present in the here and now, I spent yesterday monitoring Jeb’s low-grade fever, haggling prices with a car salesman, sweeping dust bunnies from under my bed and steam cleaning my floors.  Feeling the same kind of “nesting” energy just before giving birth to my son, I wonder what is driving this flurry of practicalities.

This morning in a newly angled bed, beneath all fresh linens, I drink coffee under the covers and allow myself a moment with a book.  Joyce Rupp’s “Walk in a Relaxed Manner” chronicles her 37 day pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago at the age of 60.

Only two chapters in and I’ve found quotes and passages that resonate.  Somehow I feel a weaving of the Archives, northern Spain and my current dust pan tasks.  She reminds that the ancient way of the Camino is a physical reflection of the path we each walk in life.  How do we take our steps?

“…on a refugio wall in El Burgo Ranero.  It said:  ‘Peregrina (pilgrim) you do not walk the path, the path is YOU, your footsteps, these are the Camino.'”

I can nurture romantic visions of walking a stony path in forests filled with purple crocus, but perhaps the treasure found there is just as rich as what could be touched, here, as I wipe down my window screens (well, I’m not sure how much of that you’d actually want to touch).  Certainly there is beauty in imagining a sacred path in a distant land.  I’ll keep that dream alive.  Yet right here, golden morning sun lights the drooping banana leaves like tropical icicles, heavy dew dripping in sparkled drops.

Rupp suggests that wherever you are the Camino can be found, quoting Pema Chodron’s sage advice to “train wholeheartedly.”

I am in training.  On a journey.  One step at a time.

Rupp tells of the inspiration she had to share her experience on the Camino, when at first she had been inclined to keep the special experience to herself.  It was an article she read including Joseph Campbell’s description of the mythic hero, someone who ends a journey with one of two kinds of heroic acts:

“A physical act in which the individual gives his or her life in sacrifice for others, or a spiritual act, in which the hero returns to share an extraordinary experience, and thus deeply benefits the community.”

I’m no hero.  My journey is far from mythic.  But I’m on the path, in training.  I observe and call back some snippets of what I find.  Log details in the Archives.  Yesterday turned up dead moth larvae in remote corners, long untouched.  This morning it’s hints of summer sun through my bedroom window.

The path is mysterious.  My intention is connection.  The strategy?  Just keep showing up.

Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer · 2 Comments

The Way

I’ve always been a walker.

In school days before cars and drivers licenses, I’d walk for miles.  Sometimes alone, sometimes with friends.  There were only a couple of girlfriends who were really up for the distance.

I recall a walk through suburban streets with a close friend around the age of 14.  Our footsteps stirred philosophy and metaphors as we began to liken life to the road.  Sometimes there were crossroads, sometimes detours.  As we walked the road of life there would be days of easy streets and rough patches with plenty of potholes.

The walk that day was vivid.  The black asphalt beneath my white Keds.  The olive trees and tidy pansies bordering short-trimmed lawns.  The goose-bump feeling of discovering a key to unlock one of life’s great secrets.  Life was a journey!

I was 29 years old when I began to read about The Camino.  The ancient pilgrimage path that runs through Northern Spain fascinated me.  I decided that I would walk the distance.  El Camino de Santiago would be my next adventure.  Or so I thought…

That same year I conceived a child and embarked on an adventure with no airfare required.  Books on the Camino were traded for “Wise Woman Herbal for the Childbearing Years.” I had come to one of those forks in Life’s road and the greatest journey of my life began.

courtesy of Wikipedia and UNESCO World Heritage Site

The pilgrimage still beckons.  Over the years it’s been small whispers that remind me of a calling.  But since last week’s ultrasound report, that path through a foreign land has come front and center.  Maybe it’s a case of the cliched ‘bucket list’ surfacing on cue when a health issue arises.  That big endeavor shelved for later takes center stage with a leap, exclaiming “Carpe diem!”

Or maybe these fantasies of cobblestone streets, rolling hills and Spanish train stations are merely fantastical reprieves from the reality of second opinions and potential medical bills.

Regardless of why I’m dreaming, there’s a sense I’ve been on that Spanish path before – that one day I’ll go again.  Was I a pilgrim in another life beneath the Milky Way?  I don’t understand what pulls me toward the Basque country. But then some of the most interesting things in life don’t lend themselves to logic.

Driving in the car the other day, Jeb says, “I want to go somewhere they speak a different language.  Somewhere we’ve never gone before.”

And I’m thinking, “Oh, I’ve got a place in mind.”

That night, I take a pause from the Google search phrase “holistic treatment of dermoid cyst” and have fun with “children on Camino de Santiago”.

This may be a grand vision, but great forests all begin with seeds.

And as I dream, I’ve come across a documentary in progress.  Below is the trailer for a film that follows a few brave pilgrims as they make their journey on this sacred trail.