remembering Pat, on the 7th anniversary of her death...

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
   In verdant pastures he gives me repose;
Beside restful waters he leads me;
   he refreshes my soul.
 He guides me in right paths
   for his name’s sake.
Even though I walk in the dark valley
   I fear no evil; for you are at my side
With your rod and your staff
   that give me courage.
 Only goodness and kindness follow me
   all the days of my life;
And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
   for years to come.
                                                 ~Psalm 23

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I will never be able to hear Psalm 23 and not visualize my dear  Pat Stankus in my heart’s memory. 

As part of her preparation for our Camino de Santiago pilgrimage, Pat memorized all the words of the Psalm in order to use it as a prayer mantra as we walked. And by the end of our 350+ miles of walking together, I, too, had internalized the words that we proclaimed out loud together—usually on physically challenging days, or when walking uphill!

It’s been exactly seven years since Pat completed this earthly pilgrimage. 

I miss her. I miss being able to call her to get her opinion on a decision, or being able to share pictures or stories of our grandchildren over email. I miss her spiritual insights, and hearing about the novels and non-fiction books she had just read (and then mailed to me, along with a note telling me what she loved about it).

I miss how she waited for me on her front swing, anticipating whenever I was coming over to visit. I miss her surprise cards and just-because gifts. I miss her sweet, generous heart and the way she made me feel loved, unique, and truly myself. I miss hearing the way she said "Amen!" with her whole being every single time she received the Eucharist. 

And I am still caught off guard by emotions and tears, as I was the other at prayer, when reading out loud Isaiah 25: 6-10.  It was the exact Scripture that I proclaimed at Pat’s funeral Mass.

I will forever associate Pat with the story and the image of Saint Nicholas, the fourth century bishop of Myra (modern day Demre, Turkey), who was known for his generosity to the needy and for his acts of surprise gift-giving. Pat loved Saint Nicholas as a special friend and, clearly, her mentor in generous giving! 

On the Camino, whenever we encountered San Nicolás, which was often, Pat and I made a point of lighting a candle and saying a prayer together for our families and for all who are in need.  

But no memory stands out more than celebrating Mass together at the 12th century church of San Nicolás in the Camino town of Portomarín, Spain. I can still see Pat smiling, with the joy and genuine giddiness of a little girl!

St. Nicolas of Myra, pray for us.

St. Patricia Elaine of Austin, pray for us.

remembering Santa María la Real

capilla de Eunate, 

Camino de Santiago, España

My friend Pat & I walked out from the small tree-covered hill and stepped suddenly into a landscape of lined crops and dust fields. Next to a busy highway to our right, we recognized what had to be the famous chapel at Eunate, whose Basque name means “the Hundred Doorways.” 

Described by guide books as “one of the jewels” of the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela, the chapel actually required a 4 to 5 kilometer walking detour off the main route on el Camino de Santiago. 

I might have been the first one in our family to walk the Camino, but since that summer (16 years ago!),  Michael has walked it, as well as two of my adult children and their spouses! 

The other night, several of us stayed up telling stories and remembering special moments in our Camino, like the morning Pat and I encountered the Shepherd (see here), and our 23-mile-day (see here). 

Looking back on the morning we visited Eunate, I remain grateful that the decision whether or not to detour came on the second day of our pilgrimage walk from Pamplona. In all honesty, if we had to make the same decision a week later, I know I would have been tempted to ignore the guidebooks and obsessed solely about the extra number of kilometers that it would add to our walking day!

From the woman living next door to the church, its unofficial caretaker, I learned that the origins of the small octagonal church are obscure. Its unusual shape suggests a link with the Knights Templar, whose churches often resembled the octagonal structure of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem.

Graves marked with scallop shells (the sign of the pilgrims) have been discovered between the church and its surrounding arched cloister, suggesting that Eunate was once a major funerary chapel for pilgrims who died along the Camino de Santiago. 

I was immediately drawn to the chapel’s simple and spartan interior. Floor to ceiling pillar buttresses stretched upward, as if reaching for heaven, and small marble windows let in only a gentle, soft light, making it breathtakingly serene. 

Only one image stood in the entire church, a mid-size statue of Mary that, I learned (several walking days later) in Najera, was known as Santa María la Real. 

She was, indeed, royally dressed, with a gold dress and a gold crown on both hers and Jesus’ heads.

Perhaps it was the way her left arm lovingly encircled the child on her lap. But there was something completely disarming in this Mary’s smile that instantly won me over.

Without words, with only a slight but captivating smile, she told me how much she loved her son.

She might be the queen of heaven, but clearly, Santa María la Real was a mother first. 

final lessons from my Camino, 15 years later

 

It’s official.

As the month of June comes to an end, it marks 15 years since my dear friend Pat Stankus and I marched into the city of Santiago de Compostela—culminating our pilgrimage across northern Spain on the Camino de Santiago.

In my Camino journal, I made a list titled, "things I have learned this final week."

But really, they are lessons from the Camino:

• ·      a country church bell can be rung softly or loudly. I did both!
• ·      all of creation is an open book (St. Benedict), symbolically expressing—and portraying, the sacred
• ·      There is always shit on the path
• ·      Old or new, shit always stinks

·      at least for this pilgrimage, I was not meant to walk in boots, but in sandals

• ·      people in Spanish churches sing loudly, even at daily Mass
• ·      my grace is sufficient for you
• ·      eucalyptus leaves are a piece of heaven—and nothing like the ones you find at Michael’s
• ·      sheep don’t like to be sheared
• ·      I can still sing the lyrics to songs I learned in my childhood and have not sung since then
• ·      The butterflies and wildflowers play silent music with their colors. Remember!
• ·      I love Spanish food
• ·      I love Spanish wine
• ·      I may never fully understand why I did this
• ·      Bidden or not bidden. God is present
• ·      Every pilgrim will go home describing a different Camino.
• ·      Threading your blisters with a needle & thread and betadine really does work
• ·      You can get blisters on top of blisters
• ·      Creation’s beauty does not cost or weigh anything
• ·      Your heart sees and recognizes joy (as well as sin) simply through presence
• ·      I doubted the guidebook. But, yes, cheese can be shaped to look like a breast with a nipple
• ·      I love Spanish cheese
• ·      Yo soy el Camino 

15 years after my Camino: Isodoro

I walked into the albergue at Hospital de Órbigo limping, as usual. 

After checking in and getting my Pilgrim passport stamped, I went straight to the bunk bed, took off my boots, and put on sandals to let my blistery feet air out. 

A man wearing a name tag that said Isodoro saw me walking across the courtyard, nodded, and smiled. After washing and hanging our wet clothes in the back patio, Pat and I went off to find a meal at a place that had been recommended.

Hours later, we came back and discussed weather and details about the next phase of the Camino with Isodoro, the main hospitalero. Pat returned to the bedroom, and I remained outside, taking time to write in my journal:

"We are staying in an albergue run by the parish here. It's old and medieval (used to be a pilgrim hospital!) and quite rustic in its accomodations. There's a tiny kitchen, two very uncomfortable showers--but a very good feel to the whole place. There's a beautiful courtyard where everyone gravitates to and chats, and there's a beautiful painting of Santiago [St. James] heading up the mountain--just as we'll be doing later this week! 

As you come in, there's a memorial on the wall to the martyrs and holy people of the 20th century: Romero, Kolby, Edith Stein!, Gandhi--and a sign at the bottom that reads:

Yo soy el Camino, la Verdad y la Vida 

[I am the Way, the Truth and the Life]

We are in a small [bed]room with huge beams--with a wooden ceiling that feels very cold.  

Right now I am sitting in a small chapel by the courtyard that has a statue of a baby Jesus with its sacred heart exposed, an image I've never seen before...

This is a holy place.

Lord, I surrender my feet to you. I give you my blisters, my pains, my aches, my soreness, my strenghth and my lack of it. What I am to walk must come from you. I know that I can not do this. I can't fix it. I can't carry it. I will not make it. Make my feet yours, Jesus--I trust you will do it."

As I walked out of the chapel, Isodoro came to find me. 

"You're having trouble with your feet," he said in Spanish. I smiled in response. 

"Here, let me see," he gestured, inviting me to sit down. I hesitated. Is he really asking to look at my feet?

Isodoro patted his lap and waited, sitting across from me. I timidly placed my left foot on his legs, and he gently put his hand on it, reaching for some sort of a nursing kit he had nearby.

For the next few minutes, in my own personal holy washing of the feet, this stranger who didn’t even know my name patiently doctored both of my feet. With the greatest tenderness and attention, he cleaned, mended, and laced each of my blisters, including two huge blisters on my heels, one new from that day’s walk.  

15 years after my Camino: following the shepherd

One early morning before the misty fog had lifted, Pat and I headed west through the town where we had stayed the previous night, following the Camino’s trademark yellow arrows. 

In the outskirts of the village we passed an old cemetery, and instinctively began to say out loud the Church’s traditional prayer for the dead: 

“Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord. And may perpetual light shine on them. May these souls and the souls of all the faithfully departed rest in peace. Amen.”

At the end of the cemetery grounds, we turned right and stood, literally, at the end of the town facing a forest--with no apparent yellow arrow or marker of any kind that we could follow. 

Pat and I stopped, looked at each other and at the pebbled path, which split two ways in front of us. 

Before either of us could say anything -- and seemingly out of nowhere -- we saw a man walking ahead of us and heading into the forest on one of the paths, and we followed him. 

He was walking at our pace, dressed like the local shepherds, and was holding a wooden staff--but no backpack or bundle on his back.

We followed the shepherd in silence. I don’t remember for how long. 

Suddenly, just as he had appeared when we needed help discerning which way to go, we looked up and he was no longer there. But the yellow arrow painted on the tree showing us the way was as clear and detectable as a blue cloudless sky.

It wasn't until later that morning at our breakfast break, as Pat and I discussed how Providential it was that the shepherd appeared when we needed him most, that we realized that we each saw different things. 

Pat saw a young man dressed as a shepherd walking with a stick. I saw an older man with a beard dressed as a shepherd walking with a stick. 

Today I read a quote from the Book of Revelations that reminded me of our Camino shepherd: 

“These are the ones who follow the Lamb wherever he goes.” [Rev. 14].

I want to follow the Lamb. I want to silently, without hesitation, follow the Shepherd wherever He goes, wherever He leads me.

15 years after my Camino: when suffering is prayer

The funny thing about making a pilgrimage like the Camino de Santiago, the kind that incites an awakening of something new in your heart, is that you continue to learn from its lessons for the rest of your life--or so I assume since I'm still learning 15 years later!

As our long first day came to an end, I noted in my journal:

"I only remember being this sore after childbirth. Today we climbed El Perdón, where wind turbines lined the horizon at the top of the mountain. We walked paths and rocks and uphill and downhill. We passed fields of green and yellow wheat. We stopped to smell the dill and to watch a family harvesting a field of white asparagus... We walked in the heat of the day, longer than we said we would do on our first day."

Some people, like my husband Michael, can walk the entire 500 miles of the Camino and never get a significant blister. But I noted in my journal two things: I already had “big blisters,” and it was our “first internet access!” I didn't know it then, but I struggled with sores covering my toes or feet for basically the entire month of June.

In Estella, a 1,000-year-old town early on in our walk, I wrote:

“The albergue has 38 beds and a beautiful mural of St. Michael painted on the wall of the back patio. Our hospitalero is a guy with strict rules, big tattoos, and bad skin. 

With every painful step today, I offered my walk, my pain and my tears for the people I know who hurt even to stand everyday—Shirley, Lonnie, JoAnn’s friend who lost a leg in the [Oklahoma City] bombing, all who hurt every day. God bless them. When we arrived here we saw a man with a fake leg on a bike! God be with him.”

a butterfly wing that I found and taped to my journal, 

and a rough sketch of a church steeple that I doodled during a break in our walk

a traffic sign that I didn't recognize, 

and copied to my journal after I learned that it means: "unclear or undefined danger"! 

I’m convinced that no matter how much one prepares and trains in order to “successfully” walk this historic pilgrimage, the Camino will still be what it needs to be for every peregrino. It’s a personal, intimate experience.

And as is true of life, we can’t predict what the pilgrimage will demand from us. For me that meant blisters upon blisters. Never would I have dreamt that this experience would come back to help me and guide me years later as I began to face the beginning of my physical struggles with chronic pain.

15 years after my Camino: walking together

Every June becomes for me a special time to remember and ponder my pilgrimage journey across northern Spain on the Camino de Santiago.

This year is no different, except for the number... I find it hard to believe, but it’s our 15 year anniversary! 

But let me start at the end, in Santiago, and make my way back to the beginning. 

When Pat and I arrived in Santiago de Compostela, I remember standing in the plaza in front of the cathedral in awe at ourselves, feeling more than a little disbelief that we had made it. 

For weeks that felt like years, Pat and I walked the Camino de Santiago… stepping beyond the blisters, the pain, the exhaustion, the heat, the blisters, the swollen knees, and did I mention blisters—and we did it together.

I don’t want to take away from the many friends – and even my husband – who have walked part or all of the Camino by themselves. But I do believe that, just as it is true in life, there’s a level of surrender to the Camino that can only be experienced when you commit yourself to walking it with another person. 

Perhaps that's why Jesus sent out his disciples two by two...

When you are walking with someone day in and day out for weeks, it doesn’t matter how close you are or how much you like each other. Ultimately, sharing the Camino with another is always both a beautiful encounter, and a downright grueling challenge!

Pat and I were no exception.

When she hurt, I hurt. When she needed a break, I took a break. When I felt discouraged and pissy, she felt discouraged and pissy. When walking with blisters made me cry, she cried with me. When the heat overwhelmed her, we both stopped walking.

Looking back at that month of June and what we accomplished together FIFTEEN years ago, it was no coincidence that Pat and I would arrive in Santiago and kneel at the altar together on the beautiful feast of Corpus Christi.

Like the oneness we experienced as we held up and encouraged each other day by day, every time Pat and I received the Eucharist together—something we were blessed to do almost every day of our Camino pilgrimage — we also became one in and with Him who was, is, and always will be our strength and our Lord.

In a very real way, the Eucharist was our food for the journey—and what held us together.  

Like the Camino itself, the Sunday that Pat and I walked into the Santiago de Compostela Cathedral together was one of the most Eucharistic experiences of my life, one that has become even more significant now that Pat completed her earthly pilgrimage and is waiting for me at the Heavenly Banquet.

Pat's tombstone, with the final Camino shell pointing down