Is today Tuesday or Wednesday?  I can´t keep the days straight anymore, nor the hour since I don´t wear a watch. Time seems to divide between waking, walking, resting, eating and food shopping, and sleeping.  Sometimes, like today, when it´s overcast or when I feel a smart of pain, my sense of time narrows to each hill, each new horizon, or even each step.  It´s interesting the way my whole body has acclimatized not only to a new schedule but a new rhythm of being.

In that vein, today I vowed to pray with my feet.  I´ve heard that phrase many times, and I have used it in a previous post. But today it took on a certain meaning, meaning I wanted the way my feet felt, acted, moved, and rested to be, in and of themselves, a prayer.  For example, when I rush at the end of the day because I am tired or when I push on when I know I should rest, I am walking in a way that is forced, pinched, sore, even sacrificial.  That is a type of prayer and a way to approach faith and life, but it is not a life-giving one. Instead, today I vowed to walk in a way that found and played along to the rhythm my body finds to be peaceful, easy, light, and even enjoyable.  In that way, I let my whole body pray, alternating between holy work and holy rest.

That worked pretty well until the end of the walking day, when I was tired, it was cold, and I just wanted to finish.  At times I had to force myself to stop or to let someone pass me, even though my ego might be bruised by it (especially older women!).  But it was a good start.

However, I feel sickness coming on, probably a cold from taxing my body so much each day. I napped for over 2 hours in the spartan pilgrim hostel.  Once I was up, I walked around town and bought some medicine at the pharmacy. That made me feel much better, like I can take steps to care for myself in a foreign world where there is no one to really care for me.  Yet, within me is the capacity to find what I need - like a pharmacy and a Diet Coke - and even other pilgrims in which to find community, support, and rest.

I don´t really like this post; it feels rather banal and icky -- kind of like I feel.  But as my pilgrim friend Monica would say, "This too is part of the camino."

Yesterday we hiked from Roncesvalles, a tiny village of ten buildings, to Lorrasoana, a small village with about three hostels and a very expensive hotel.  When we arrive, about 3pm, there were no places to stay in the cheap hostels, and the final place had only five beds.  There were seven of us.  Very tired and anxious -- the next town was about 5 miles away -- we waited patiently for things to settle, and two of our group had to backtrack by taxi to the previous town to stay in an expensive hotel.

It was an odd reminder how the pilgrimage can easily turn into competition, not just for how quickly you hike and how much ground you cover, but whether or not you have a place to stay.  Each pilgrim who passes you represents a bed you may not have once you arrive at your destination.  It´s hard to keep the spirit of hospitality and generosity alive in such a setting.  In fact, today we saw a Spaniard whom we befriended in Lorrasoana, in Pamplona; she said she was going on to our planned destination.  It made us wrap up our touring in Pamplona early in order to book it to the next village. 

Later today I arrived at Cizur Menor, just on the west side of Pamplona.  May 1 is a holiday  (Labor Day) in Spain, so Pamplona was a mixture of closed shops and city dwellers lingering over their late morning coffee languidly. However, the city is quite nice, and the best part was a tea and tortilla espanola after a brisk morning hike there.

There is much swirling around in my head, including the need to pull back from the core group of three I have hiked with thus far, in order to reflect and to pray.  (The three include me, Brendan from Worcester, MA, and Siebrecht, a Belgian.  There is also a group of 10 or so who started from St. Jean the first day, and we keep meeting each other at the final destination each night.)

However, the biggest thing today has been paying better attention to my body, which is telling me clearly that I have pushed too hard.  My knees, and now the tendon above my left heel, are sore, and they will not take kindly to the 400 meters we have to hike up and down tomorrow.  I planned to go over 26 kilometers (20 miles or so) but now I plan to cut back.  As Monica, a seasoned hiker from Germany who started the camino in eastern France, told us today, "You do not walk the camino; the camino walks you."  She also said that when she started she walked from her head, thinking that each day she would travel a certain distance to a certain town.  Now she walks with her body, following the lead of her legs, her feet, and the rest of her body which tells her how far they together can go.

I knew in my head that paying attention to my body is something I want to learn.  But it is hard when your body does not agree with your mind, which presses you on to accomplish and to cover ground, in a certain amount of time.  Perhaps I will learn, willingly or not, how to follow the cues of my body, knowing and trusting that it has something to say to me that my mind alone cannot know and sometimes refuses to accept.

With Julian, I am praying that I can trust that some goodness in God´s providence (an aseity) is not to be known but just to be trusted.  And in her famous words, I hope to learn through my body and into my head --

"And so our good Lord answered to all the questions and doubts which I could raise, saying most comfortingly in this fashion: I will make all things well, I shall make all things well, I may make all things well and I can make all things well; and you will see that for yourself, that all things will be well."