Walking the Camino de Santiago strips you down to dust and dreams.
On the Meseta, under that endless sky, my father’s shadow joined me.
The Camino’s silence quieted my mind, opening me to whispers of grace and easing the weight of loss.
This prose, Stillness on the Camino, was born in those quiet miles—a raw reflection on what it means to pause, to ache, and to find enough to move forward. It’s for pilgrims, and anyone who feels the pull to walk a path that will remake you.
Stillness on the Camino
My feet, caked with red dust from two grueling weeks of walking, pause not in weary surrender, but in a hospitalero’s quiet courtesy.
The Meseta unfurled before me like a breath held too long, beneath a sky asking only for my raw showing up.
Here, on this wide-open plain, edges blurred, bidding me sink into the ache of what I'm called to carry— my father’s shadow etching symbols on every pebble, now my quiet bet on holding memories firm against winds that scatter.
My conscience flickers, a stubborn ember, not a command to chase, but a steady trailmate whispering a call half-known, pulling me from home's hearth and modernity's grind deeper into this wild Camino crucible.
Grace waits on me, unearned, a hand outstretched in the dark, asking only for my open grip—hesitant, palm slick with sweat, shivering at the touch—asking me to receive and return what’s given. You are made in the divine’s image, it breathes, yet I see my cracked mirror scattering the light, and even so, the Way takes shape in me, rough but real.
Making pilgrimage is no lazy man's river walk— it’s the blacksmith’s anvil, forging an iron path, where grit on blisters hardens to callus, truth's hammer smashing the fog of lies.
The goodness in every 'buen camino' cultivates a beauty as the Way cracks open sunburned pilgrims like seeds bursting through scarred soil into wildflowers.
Memento Mori, my finitude ticks with every creaking step, sharp stones piercing thinning soles, yet nothing truly perishes on the shifting sands of this pilgrim’s trail.
Today I walk a dry riverbed trail carved by millions of stubborn feet, awe pushing back against doubt's onslaught, gratitude rooting around in the gravel I stir with my shuffling feet. It's love’s quiet flame kindled in the tinder of grudges resolved. Generation after generation of broken expectations break the big rocks into pebbles, exposing fathers' shame and sons' blame, now the dust beneath my feet.
Knee-deep in this mythic swamp, my father's voice pulses, not far-off, but in the beat of my own blood against the Way's unhurried hush.
The Eternal Pilgrim in me trudges onward, aiming for Santiago, the echoes of my footsteps pinging back from the depths of some mysterious chamber I can name but have yet to explore. I follow little yellow arrows, painted it seems everywhere a still small voice reminds me to look for them.
Maybe it's the joyous ringing of bells, a peaceful breeze, heartfelt conversations, or a newfound humility, that bids me to surrender and simply keep walking.
One evening as the light slants to weary gold, it hits me square. This stillness is my pilgrim’s unmerited grace, calling for this response— treat the blister, wash your socks, break bread and share a glass of wine. Laughter and storytelling is where what's inside you meets the world, where the Way, once walked, is retraced again and again with each fortunate dawn, forming a holy covenant to rise, take up whatever is my load anew, and step across the very next threshold that presents.
I'm home now, and my days? They blur into rough drafts of half-told tales. Three years later, in the stillness of a feeble prayer, I hear the divine whisperer say: Pay attention, Pilgrim, everything you need is right here, right now. Pack up your fierce ache for the sacred, along with your trembling hold on memories past, pick a new destination and start walking toward a horizon where light breaks anew. You know the Way.
~Lance v22,790
