Great Expectations

My mind shouts: Gotta write something! Gotta get that Peaceable Projects website out there, gotta fill in all the gaps in the design while the website-builder is here!  

But it was Christmas day, and Daft Punk was playing on the radio, and the sun came out for a while, and the early-arrival pilg was shaking his booty around the kitchen as the turkey came out of the oven. So I danced a little, too. ´Cause I´m happy. (And nobody laughs too hard at a person wielding a carving knife.)

I had a load of things to do. Not only feeding three friends, two neighbors, a husband, and four pilgrims a full-on holiday feast, but opening up the church for the 1 p.m. Mass, ringing the bells at 12.30 and lighting all the stoves and candles. After that, back at home, vermouth and cava, nuts and boqueron fillets, jazz from French public radio. Clear out the aperitivos, wash the forks, and bring on the turkey, stuffing, beans, carrots, apple pie and English Christmas pudding, whipped out of the microwave at the last minute by another helpful elf.

And a second round of the same stuff when the last three pilgrims straggled in, accompanied by

David on the guitar, singing hits from Prince, the Drifters, Beatles, Bing Crosby, Oasis. I thought about that website copy, thought about how this website is past due, how people are looking for it and not finding it, felt my old aversion to busted deadlines…

So I finally sat down to write this thing, but only after everyone finished singing and dancing and clowning around. Because keeping company with wonderful people is more important than just about anything. And because I was a little afraid.    

Once I write this, and it´s plugged-in to the design and sent out onto the Interwebz, Peaceable Projects Inc. is Really Real, and I am Responsible.  

This is scary. I don´t know anything about maintaining websites, or running a non-profit organization, keeping track of all this paperwork... I am not sure I do enough to keep a website interesting and fresh. Most of what´s done here, day to day, is dull as Ditch-Pigging.  

But I´m throwing myself in.

It´s time to step out into this. Peaceable isn´t just a house along the Camino de Santiago any more. It´s grown into the home-base for several projects, almost all of them aimed squarely at the Camino de Santiago and the pilgrims who walk there. It´s developed a base of supporters, fans, and followers, people who are shockingly generous and surprisingly interested in every kind of local development.   

I´m finding more needs and knotty problems among the non-profit Camino community, and I am getting good at matching them up with solutions, often from faraway lands.

We´ve developed a memorial grove, to remember pilgrims who die along the Way. We´re helping to fund an archaeological dig where a medieval pilgrim shelter once stood. I am  bringing sustainable architectural design to re-invent a shelter at a rustic albergue within a ruined monastery. Cool stuff!

And day by day, Peaceable Kingdom in Moratinos remains open to pilgrims, travellers, hobos and CEOs, the people of the Way. 

It´s about time we got organized. Within the next day or two, HONEST, we´re launching this rocket of a website, a place where you´ll easily see what all we´re doing, and how we hope to achieve it all. And if you like, join in the fun. Right this minute, send me your email address (at rebrites (at) yahoo.com)  and we´ll add you to our subscribers list – you´ll be the first to know if-when things happen!

It´s dark out there. We´re working hard to keep a light burning on the Holy Way. Come join the fun!