A Long and Winding Word

It was a week that most would look on as a crashing bore: a hundred hardcore Catholics, gathered in a moldering seminary in a far corner of Spain – people determined to keep Mammon from stealing away the historic Christian savor of the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route. There were Benedictines from Samos and Leon, Augustinians from Avila, three flavors of Franciscans, priests, monks, and nuns – people who work every day along the pilgrimage routes. There were laypeople too, hospitaleros, academics, students, and even a few people like me. Foreigners, Protestants, arrivistes, adventurers – “others.”

And this time there were bishops, at least four of them, and two archbishops. Even a Dean, for Chrissakes. Suddenly we are newsworthy, credible. In a town built around a Cathedral Shrine, we Made the Scene.

With that additional clerical firepower we were the first International Congress of Christian Welcome on the Camino. We had three days dedicated to the apostolic sweetness and light we all like to imagine has motivated this pilgrim pathway for a thousand years. Evangelism, ministry, communion, community-building.

I went because I am myself a Christian, an Anglican/Episcopalian with a Buddhist outlook. I attend Catholic Mass each week, as it is the only game in town (I have official permission). I have belonged to the Acogida Christiana group for a couple of years now, almost from its inception, because I live the Christian Acogida ethos – Christ told us to welcome strangers, travelers, and pilgrims into our homes as if they were Christ himself. I find this appealing and pretty easy, and divine providence so far seems to approve the decision.

The original ACC members still can fit into one meeting room at the Benedictine convent in Leon. But as the group grew, the bosses decided to move the April meeting to Santiago de Compostela, the goal and the nerve center of the pilgrimage. They decided to go international, invite like-minded ministers from outside Spain. Big hitters. They booked into the big seminary complex.  

And some of it was wonderful. We had Mass each morning in the seminary chapel,  presided-over by the beanie-bearing bishops, concelebrated by eight or nine priests, sung by skilled musicians with readings in several languages by native speakers that included me. Delicious worship. It alone was worth the trip!

But then the talks began. Talks at ACC gatherings are usually lively affairs, presented by people who have walked the camino, experts on the artwork and buildings and saints that populate the Way, people with real insight on pilgrim spirituality, albergue management, healing, how to pray and counsel and cook with groups big and small. But this time was different.

This time we sat in red-velvet theater seats in the Major Seminary of San Martin de Pinario, and heard a bishop from France describe, in French, the Philosophy of The Word "Pilgrim" ... or so I think he described. I do not speak French. And neither did 80% of the other people in the room. The bishop is a fine man, I am sure – he presides over the dozen or so bishops in France who have camino trails passing through their respective turfs. But he has never walked a pilgrimage. And even a bishop should not talk for two hours when he was assigned 45 minutes.

Other people had discussions planned for those later time slots. Discussions that many of us had a part in scheming and planning and presenting. Discussions with some real relevance. But no, we all were treated to the philosophical musings and scriptural ponderings, in French, of a highly respected bishop that no one had the rank or audacity to tell to sit down and shut the hell up.

He was not the only offender. I learned an important lesson this week about bishops, at least bishops in Spain: schedule them at the END of the agenda. These are men unused to controlling their verbiage. Some are gifted speakers, but more are very, very narcotic. Give them a chance to bloviate, and no one else will get a word in edgewise. I hate to say so, but the bishops, the very men called in to give the conference credibility, just about highjacked the whole thing.

If not for the time alongside – the communal meals, the sessions skipped for a quick coffee or vermouth – it would have been a bust. Outside the meeting room I met Faith and Nate, two American Evangelicals who are setting up an outreach center near the pilgrim reception office. That takes a lot of nerve and patience and conviction. They see how many pilgrims finish their journey having found no answers on the trail, and only incomprehensible rituals at the cathedral at the end. So they´re opening an English-speaking Christian meeting place, where they´ll offer a simple, clear Gospel message to people who may never have tasted spiritual food before.

A German couple were there, who do the something similar in German. And a Dutch group, who do it in Dutch. The Spanish are missing out, perhaps... but I do not think they can see that. But then I am a foreigner, raised by Protestants. I am not an Evangelical, but I see them doing great things.

I had a coffee with Laurie, an expat Canadian who´s had to do with the camino since the 1980´s. I spent hours with two friends from Scotland, movers and shakers these days in Santiago cathedral and pilgrim office posts – logistical and strategic geniuses who left big business in London to come here and serve the pilgrims and pilgrimage. I stayed out til the wee hours with the chairman of American Pilgrims on the Camino, a professor out of Carolina. I walked to the Alameda with Marion, the power behind the Confraternity of St. James in England, and did tapas with William, a merry English doctor with a stentorian voice who once rescued our pilgrim Kim from the streets of London and let her stay at his house... he´s a hospitalero in the Great Wen!

The Augustinian sisters from Carrion de los Condes were there, and the sweet Benedictinas of Leon, Isabel from Casa Pilar in Rabanal, and Don Blas, the priest of Fuenterroble – we almost moved there instead of Moratinos! Old friends, co-workers, some of them truly saints.

It was good, and it was exhausting.

I am not a “joiner.” There are many pilgrimage-related clubs and groups, but I do not belong to many of them. There is work enough here at Peaceable to keep me busy, and I seem to make the leaders of many groups feel uncomfortable... I do not toe the line so well. My Spanish is not the greatest. I am foreign. I live a long way from anywhere. I cannot contribute very much that is practical.

I like this Camino Welcome group, though. They do things I believe in. They do not only talk, they achieve. And it is true: we do better with the support of the church authorities. Spain is still a deeply Catholic country, even if most of its people almost never go to church. We cannot continue this Catholic pilgrimage without having the bishops and archbishops on board.

But we don´t have to hand them a microphone.

We don´t have to make ourselves a captive audience.  

Incoming Outgoing.

These are the best of times and the worst of times. The sun comes out and the flowers bloom, then the wind comes from the east to chill and kill everything.
The swallows arrived early, prompting our friend German to predict the end of the world -- they never, ever come before June, he says. The air is full of them.
Fred the guitar-builder came back too, which is always somewhat apocalyptic.
Malin and David went back to their mountain. Our house is very clean indeed, the under-floor heating is working now (at last, after 5 years!) but we still have a great deal of putting-away to do. 

Bruno went to Italy for a few days, and me and Elan volunteered to run the pilgrim albergue for him. It was a big job, exhausting even. We were not overwhelmed with pilgrims, but there was a steady stream. We had pilgrims here at The Peaceable, too, including our first Siberian.
We get the ones who can´t or won´t pay Bruno´s price. Some would say they are the bottom of the market. But I think, with the exception of the hardcore skinflints, these are the cream of the crop. They aren´t looking for a big bang for their buck, because they don´t have one. They just want a bed to sleep in, and a shower... a meal is a big bonus. They are happy people, and gracious, and grateful.
Which is more than I can say for some of Bruno´s better-heeled clientele.
Anyway, this week I got to use my tendinitis and blister-treatment juju a couple of times. Some lovely Canadian ladies stayed, fans of this very blog. Pilgrims bought some "Moorish Whore"s. I washed floors and feet and carrots, and I made a killer plate of spaghetti carbonara.
Elan did most of the real work, but I was reminded of how hard is the hospitalero life. The life he wants to live. God bless him. He is doing the right thing, looking around first, seeing what it is.
Bruno came back. We said goodbye to Elan this evening.

Two days ago, Paddy´s computer screen went fatal blue. I read up on computers, and we went to Leon and bought him a new laptop. I brought it home and opened it up, and found it utterly incomprehensible.
I am not a stupid person. I have been using PCs and the Internet since they appeared, but evidently the technology has now outstripped my abilities. We will take it back to the store and ask for a refund, cry for a refund, shout and dance around for a refund because I cannot have something this incomprehensible in the house unless it is God. And this is definitely from Satan.

I pray that all computers in the last three years have not "evolved" so far that we cannot use them. Otherwise, we are in big, big trouble. My little netbook can´t last forever. Paddy is a heavy user of the internet. We do not have a television. Reading newspapers and magazines, arguing with stuffed-shirts, and watching live horse races are important parts of Paddy´s day, and he needs a computer to do it all.

And so he has my netbook to use, until I can get the Windows WhizBang model back to the store and find something a bit more obsolete. Which will have to be after this week, because I am off to Santiago de Compostela tomorrow for another of my Acogida Christiana en el Camino meetings. This is a big one, they´re rolling out the archbishops and canons from the big Cathedral of Santiago Apostle itself to discuss how we can better welcome pilgrims to the great shrine.   

It is an interesting project, a lofty dream. I do not know what part someone like me might play in it, living as I do in isolation, 350 kilometers distant. But I love to see history happening, and Santiago de Compostela is lovely in the spring.

It´s my turn to be the one going this time.

I need to get out of this house for a couple of days!

Win-wins

Gone are the sweet, silent days of just us two.

The trail is full of pilgrims, many of them chatting in the unique American rhythms I can hear from a distance. They are bundled-up. It is cold out there, spring is very late. But the air is changed somehow. It is charged.

Suddenly the schedule has marks on it. 

I spent a bit of last week in Madrid with a tax lawyer. Our tax situation is scary. When a country finds itself in deep financial doodoo, it´s the foreign residents (all of us are millionaires) who are first handed a shovel. I will not bore you with details of this fiscal proctology, but will warn you that your turn is probably coming. (I tell myself, over and over: "Romanesque churches. Prehistoric cave paintings, Roman mosaics. Flamenco. Tempranillo, Albariño, dove songs in white sunlight. And free health care.") 
 
Tomorrow David and Malin will come down from their mountain home, and all of us will swing into Spring-cleaning, painting, and repairing parts of the Peaceable. Big, dusty jobs are too much for just Paddy and me, and work is hard to come by for able-bodied young people. It is a win-win situation, long as nobody else shows up and wants to stay.   

Bruno came back from his long winter in Italy last week, and Michael, his partner, told him he leaving the business.

So Bruno is back on his own again, and the work is just too much for one man alone. He came to church this morning looking pale. He was praying for Providence, he said: he has to go back to Italy for three days next week, and unless someone could be found keep the albergue going, he would have to close up shop during these important early days.

Enter Elan, an enthusiastic young hospitalero from Chicago. He walked the camino last year, and now  wants to learn all about running albergues. He came down from France to help us with the chores and to hear our windy yarns of camino life.  I only picked him up in Sahagún yesterday afternoon. Just in time for Bruno. Elan said he´ll be glad to keep the albergue open ...Win-win again!    

I´ve planted lettuces and spinach in the garden, and netted them against the hungry birds. Nothing has germinated yet. The two stubby sweet potatoes I brought from Boston have made dozens of little "slips" that are ready to go into the ground... if the ground ever warms up enough to plant them! The animals spend their evenings lounging in front of the fire as if it was January. On my birthday the sky spat snow.

I am going to an ambitious conference in Santiago de Compostela in a couple of weeks. I had hoped to walk there from Lugo, a little less than a week, a little more than 100 kilometers, over a backwoods path. The hiking part of the plan is looking more and more remote -- so many things are happening here, what with the tax forms due at the end of the month, and plumbing backup somewhere under the hallway floor, and Bruno and Elan in need as well. I traded my mostly-waterproof standby Timberland boots to a pilgrim a while back, and do not relish the idea of Galician cart-paths in my leaky old dog-gnawed Vasques. And it´s still freakin´ COLD out there. 

Even if all the news isn´t joyful, Moratinos is the center of the universe these days. People come here from hundreds of miles away to paint walls and re-hang chicken-house doors. If I go out hiking in the woods, I might miss some of the win-winning that´s going on.

Maybe I will take the train to Santiago. I can always walk back if I want. That is how lucky I am.

A stony sort of passion

Sky full at Colmenares

"The scenery in Castile is in the sky."  I think Delibes said that. He was obviously here in springtime. 

Here are rainbows, doubles and triples. Rainbows, and huge skies, every kind of cloud and color.  Our horizons here are low and rolling and often plain, the bane of pilgrims who expect "something interesting" to look at while they walk.

Skyful at Quintanatello

The sky is full of pillars of cloud and fire, and often larks, too. They are strange little birds, they sing manically, like wind-up toys, as they fly straight upward and then hover up there all a-twitter. It´s like they´re rising up on a column of song.

Back side of Paddy at Vega de Bur

All the towns round about are caught up in Holy Week processions, Masses, Holy Hours, and Stations of the Cross. Meantime, the tourist office and the diocese had a stroke of genius: they´ve opened up 47 Romanesque churches in the north of the province -- thousand-year-old jewels in depopulated, isolated mountain towns. They are always locked up. Except this week.

Me and Paddy gassed up the furgoneta and hit the road yesterday, following a route up the Ojeda valley west of Aguilar de Campoo. We hit eight stone churches large and small. We met two fine roosters and some lively hens, saw hidden statues, carvings, reliefs, and capitals. We climbed up a steep stone spiral to the top of a tower in a town with 12 inhabitants. Tiny Maria Angeles showed us the hidden pine-cones in the stonework of her town´s chapel -- she wore splendid velvet pants the color of grape soda.

Spiral stairs at Vega de Bur

In Quintanatello de Ojeda someone had left the tower door unlocked. I poked through their tossed-away treasures. (I was sorely tempted by the plaster angel-wings, but I did not take anything away with me.) We did not see another human in that town, but their rainbow was first-class.

In Colmenares we found a spectacular Romanesque baptismal font, maybe the finest I ever saw. The old man at the door said he was baptised there himself, but he can´t remember the last time it was used. No babies. No priests.

on the baptism font in Colmenares

These towns and valleys teemed with Christians, back when the Arabs pushed the old faith north into the mountains. They built monasteries, hermitages, nunneries and parish churches, and filled them with sculpture and art and song.

The builders did good work. A thousand years later, some of their work is still standing -- rabbits and devils and faces peek down from the rafters, or wait out eternity in the darkness behind a froufrou Renaissance altarpiece. (the ladies at Vega de Bur keep a worklight handy, so you can climb in and see for yourself.)

Two monasteries are still in operation up there, but the hermitages haven´t been inhabited for centuries.

fabulous trash

It was tiring, but delightful. We saw lovely buildings and artworks and people, with mountain towns and meadows and clouds in between. It was like an art tour, but with breathing room. Hours of beauty, but not overwhelming. We looked and chatted and said "wow" til the clouds rolled in and rain pounded down. Then we headed home.       

Today we rested up. Because tomorrow we go back again to the mountains, this time to four churches up in the backwoods of Burgos. While the rest of Spain hits the streets to mourn the Passion of Christ, we´ll be with an archaeologist from the Romanesque Studies Foundation, pursuing passions of our own. 

over the doorway at Perezancas

Classifieds

It´s been more than 30 years since eighth grade algebra class, but this morning the horror came right back and hit me in the face.
It was a worksheet, homework. Preterite and Indefinite verbs, the same stuff we´ve been over and over for months now. I filled it in Saturday afternoon, without putting in much effort. And this morning, at Forum Idiomas in Carrión de los Condes, me and Lucía and Aisha got out or pens and papers and down the sheet we went, and when we came to a verb, out came the red ink.
My answers were wrong, wrong, wrong.
The other two were patient and kind. I was neither. I was angry, disgusted, and very very sad. It was a great effort of will to not stand up and walk out.
I was back in eighth grade algebra class, where Miss Stoker seemed to delight in marking my homework with red X´s. She switched to a wide-tip red marker to put the grade on top the paper: FAIL. And that term she wielded the same fat marker to mark the 0 on my report card.
It broke my heart. I had never failed anything before, and forever after failed to grasp abstract mathematics. To me,  x - y = 3(r/11) =  defeat + humiliation. No one at Forum Idiomas is shaming me or treating me badly, but that page full of red marks, and this ongoing struggle, feels identical to that awful algebra class.
I admit it. I shed some tears on the drive back home.

Later on, in my kitchen, I opened today´s edition of Carrión, the weekly free newspaper. (It still makes me smile, knowing that in English, "carrion" means "animal carcass." Here, it´s just the name of a river.) This is a thoroughly awful newspaper, but the ads are fun to read. Full-page ads for beauty treatments feature almost life-size before-and-after snaps of saggy bums, balding pates and baggy chins. Best of all are the classified ads in the back. There you can shop for "economical canaries," "a useable female donkey," "ferrets good for hunting rabbits and frightening mice," and wedding gowns "almost never used." One store brags "We buy junk and sell antiques." 
But today another listing caught my eye: Ofertas de Empleo. Job Offers.
There were three: Someone to hand out sales flyers on the street. A mechanic with experience repairing farm machinery. Someone to clean up a disco bar after closing time, "very part-time." 
Just below were Demandas de Empleo. Situations Wanted.
"I can cook, clean, care for elderly people and small children. I can drive, attend a shop counter, wait tables, help in the kitchen," one woman wrote. Dozens more women offered similiar services.
"Widow. Spanish, not foreign. Available morning, noon, and night to care for your elderly family member. I am serious. I have a car. I iron and do windows. Also children."
"I have a university accounting degree. Will do any kind of work."
"I am a licensed driver of trucks, tractors, bulldozers, chain-driven equipment. I will not disappoint you."
"Looking for work as a construction peon. Please call."
"Shepherd seeks work. Tractors, help in kitchen, butchering, shearing, meat and cheese. Call day or night with total confidence."
"Young men offering garden work: trimming vines, pruning fruit trees, clearing brush, insecticides and fertilizers. High-altitude work without scaffolds. Economical prices."
"Young man will work in barns, fields, construction sites. Urgent."   
"Young man. Experience with disassembling motorcycles."
"Middle-aged woman familiar with dental hygiene. Afternoons." 
"Dynamic young man, pastry and bread baker, available for all types of work. Urgent."

Seventy-five people are listed there, with their varying levels of experience, skill, and desperation, part of Spain´s massive population of unemployed adults. They´re the ones lucky enough to afford an ad.  
They are urgently want to iron clothes or herd sheep or baby-sit. They are willing to hose down a disco at 5 a.m., just to get a few euros to keep living on.  
It occurs to me that all these people probably use indefinido and imperfecto with perfect ease, but that hasn´t change their luck.

Meantime, I can communicate well enough to read the newspaper without any trouble. I can buy exactly the bread and apples I want by asking for them. And in my pocket I always have enough money to pay for them.  

So dry your tears, Rebekah. Shut up your whining.
Life can get a whole lot worse than preterite verbs. 

A blast, present and past!

the plaza, Villalon de Campos

We poked through passages deep beneath a shuttered pharmacy, and toasted one another in pink-painted dining rooms. We navigated an obsolete canal, and ogled skulls and sacrums of forgotten saints in a massive, mouldering monastery. At midnight, in the rain, we hiked to the next town and back. Some of us slept in bunk beds in a pilgrim albergue, while others filled up the pensions, the B&B, the little hotel. This is how Spanish camino-heads have a good time.

I just shared an intense weekend with a gang of camino movers and shakers. They all are Spaniards, mostly from Galicia and Madrid.

Paco

The ´do is organized by a charismatic fellow from Valladolid called Paco, who has managed to not form any kind of organization or club out of it. This gang gets together every early March in Villalon de Campos, a little town about 25 km south of here on the Camino de Madrid. They converge, but they don´t sit still. There are almost 80 of them. They all seem to know one another, and they all talk at the same time.

I was invited a couple of times before, but my foreigner status kinda scared me away, up til now. I have been taking Spanish lessons since November, so I felt I was ready.
So I packed a bag, girded my loins, and headed out on Friday afternoon.  I did fine.

It was not so much the babble of speech, the massive amount of food, the obvious mutual affection, and the kindness of some of them that impressed me. It was the choice of excursions. We went to amazing places that tourists do not usually go, because they are not open to tourists. But for some reason they were open to Paco and his 80 good friends. 

Novitiate, Villagarcia

We saw inside the big old Jesuit monastery in Villagarcia de Campos. It is a huge complex of buildings hulking over a tiny mud-brick town. Inside it is dark and damp, with a gruesome collection of saints´ relics and slippery stone floors. It was home to a seminary, and an incendiary counter-reformation press meant to fight the Calvinist heresies that popped up in this neighborhood. It was also a safe place for royals to stash their surplus sons. 

Chapel for young Jesuits

It is an isolated, severe, gray place. It is still a school. I would not send a child there. 

The novitiate chapel is an explosion of gold leaf and froufrou, speckled with woodworm,  while the relics and the big stone church below are marble neoclassical bas-relief. There was big money here, 500 years back. It is a wonderous place to see. And best of all were the faces -- the saints and martyrs, naked votive baby Jesuses, severed heads, grotesquely realistic images of murdered children. Here is Spanish Catholicism at its most morbid. (It is easy to condemn an age that turned out this ghastly kitsch. Until you turn on the television.)

 CSI Vatican?

The faces of many of the statues are faces you see again and again, on the streets of Villalon, in the pension, in Sahagún and Carrión and Madrid. Castilian faces, for Castilian believers. 

Roman martyr, I think...

the kid you just want to smack

Yes, that IS a severed head in his arms...

(Blogger does not like me posting too many photos, or I would show you a big ol lineup of them!)

fun-loving old pope

 We ate empanada, and took a riverboat up the Canal de Castilla. We walked several kilometers to Tamariz de Campos, another mud-brick town on the Madrid route. Here is a thousand-year-old parish church with a huge collection of Madonnas and prophets, some of them of charming, cartoony local make. More neighbors´ faces, hundreds of years´ worth. I was so taken with their faces! Best of all, I think, is Jesus and the Apostles at The Last Supper, the Jewish Passover Feast. In the middle of the table, ready for carving, is a fine fat piglet!

It ain´t easy, being a virgin mother...

So, it was a great visit with the Camino people, wonderful full-immersion into Spanish language, and a fascinating look at Castilian art and architecture. I didn´t get to the part about the underground passages and the pharmacy that was sealed-up for 50 years after the druggist died, nor did I tell you about Marisol and Lourdes, two new friends I made... But I am already pushing my luck with Blogger! 

Two Treasures

Two Treasures today... No, you have not stumbled onto a Chinese takeout menu.

Today I found two treasures, for real.
One I found this morning on a back road out of Carrion de los Condes when, like Bruce Springsteen, I took a wrong turn and I just kept going. I rolled north toward mountains sharp and bright and  snow-white. I rolled through little farm towns and wondered how many people lived in them, what kind of antique oddments lurked in their adobe barns and byres.

I rolled into Nogal de las Huertas, or "Walnut of the Orchards." It was just another farm town, except... over to the west, along the riverbank, was a big stand of disorderly trees. And in the trees? A big building. Also disorderly. Abandoned. Along the river. A mill? A factory? A palace? You never can tell til you get up close. So I drove down the dirt road til it ended at the river-fording. The water roared. There must have been a mill at some point.

In the trees stood an archway, simple and fine. It was the front door of an old church.
A very old church. A little monastic church, from the look of it -- and from the checkerboard trim on the stone I could see the inner sanctum was at least 900 years old. Romanesque.

The village clock rang out noon. 

I did not have my camera. Other people have taken photos there, but they´ve made it hard for people like me to share them on blogs. Click on the link and you will see pretty much what I saw. It is what remains of the Cistercian monastery of San Salvador, founded in 1063 by Countess Elvira Fernandez, and inhabited pretty much continually until about 200 years ago. There are older buildings in Palencia province, but no older Romanesque ones. This one is a jewel. A hidden diamond.

And built right up against the apse, among the derelict orchard, was a huge haunted house. Its doors gaped open, its timbers creaked, the tile floors downstairs were littered with baskets, harness chains, shutters, stair-rails, embroidery floss and Gospel pamphlets. Both staircases were gone, rotted and collapsed. The second floor remained untouched, with steamer trunks and walking-canes and bookshelves visible through the holes in the floorboards. Sunlight beamed through broken glass and glowed on soft blue wallpaper.

Unreachable. A habitation for owls.

It was, in its way, as spectacular as the abbey, but nobody takes its picture. It´s another abandoned old farmhouse, in a countryside full of them. A couple of hundred years ago, the place next door was just another abandoned monastery, in a countryside full of those.

What a wonderful countryside I live in, where I can stumble over such jewels!

Once I got home, I found the next treasure. It was in our mailbox, in a padded manila envelope. The return address was Aspinwall, Pennsylvania -- a Pittsburgh suburb. A town I know of. But the person who sent it?  No memory of that name.

Inside was a hand-written note:

Dear Rebekah Scott and Paddy:

Happy New Year!! I hope everything with your family is going to be well include your lovely dog. 

I am Seun Lee, who stayed your "The Peaceable Kingdom" around Dec. 2009 with my german friend Matin. At that moment we didn´t have enough energy to continue Sahagun, exhausted and even hugry. However, you and your husband allowed to stay and gave a great green curry with white wine, and whiskey later. I appreciate about that day forever because that was the time I really need help.

So, since then I´m looking for how I can express my thank you to your family. Finally I found out that you and Paddy love to hear piano music when I heard my favorite Baik Kun Woo´s Fauré playing several weeks ago. I hope you and Paddy like this CD. It is low volume. It is good to listen in the morning. 

I know it´s just nothing than your kindness, but I want to say "thank you."  

I believe we meet again one day in the road. Actually my friend Matin also agree to walk again some day. 

See you soon. 

Best

Seun Lee 

 
I don´t remember Seun or Matin, but their names are here in our guest register.
We have not hosted a pilgrim for three weeks or more.
We don´t get them here like we used to. I tell myself I do not miss them much.
But this? This is such a treasure. 
(and it is a really lovely recording!)

You blessed my soul, Seun Lee. You, and countess Elvira Fernandez -- one from far away, and one from long ago.
I thank you both for scattering your treasures in my path.