A Day on The Camino de Santiago
Movement for Meditation:
Day Six
FIERCE
This morning, we make our way back down toward water through the steep, quiet town of A Guarda and take a quick look at the map. We decide to strike our own path for the first couple of kilometers and meet back up with The Way after checking out the huge, blue art-covered wall that protects the town from what must, at times, be a raging sea. We hug the rugged edge instead of taking a shorter, inland route that the yellow arrows propose. We’ve grown attached to the sound and liveliness of the surf. By now, we allow ourselves to stay snugged up against the coast whenever possible, even if it means extra kilometers and veering a bit off The Way. As we pass by a painting of the sun that takes up an entire building, I think, “100% chance of rain but still sunny.” The forecast is rain for days. We’re not sure what to expect because it seems unlikely that the rain here will be cold and weighted like the Pacific Northwest rain we’re accustomed to.
The first thing that is different today, on day six, is that the wind is as voracious as the surf. We walk along the craggy coast who’s waves are bigger than any I’ve ever been this close to. There is something about the wind in this part of the world that swirls my insides and makes me feel like I’m going to be blown away. Quite literally, my heart races and I imagine being lifted of the ground and taken, like Dorothy, deeper into a high dream. Somehow, this existential threat of being swept away, makes me commit more fiercely than ever to the ground. I find myself chanting a mantra in my mind- “I belong to the world. I belong to the world. I belong to the world.” It is as if my mind is determined that my body not be taken by the wind. But also, there is something about being so close to Nature’s most basic elements that makes me feel, uncharacteristically, that all is, for sure, as it should be. Nothing is out of place. No words have been left unspoken that were meant to be said. Loose ends are meant to stay free and unfinished. I belong to the world. This is what I am to learn today.
The second thing that’s different about today is that my hips are no longer aching from the inside out. My pack feels like air and the length of my legs is all that holds me back.
Today we alternate between coast line and highway. The traffic on the road is as persistent and loud as the surf but oh, so much less inspiring. Appropriately, there is a wide, bright yellow strip along the side of the road that we cannot help comparing to the “yellow brick road”. I put music in my right ear so I can block the wet swoosh of traffic on my right and still hear the sound of the surf on my left. Fierce day. Rain and wind and traffic and the thrum of pavement jar my bones at every step. And yet I can hardly contain my energy. I let the wind sweep me into the music in my ear and continue my mantra… I belong to the world.
Pretty soon I am skipping. And then running for a few steps. I pass other Pilgrims. As I wish them “bon camino”, I let thoughts about what they might be thinking move through my mind and away. I belong to the world.
Meditation, in my experience, is conventionally viewed as quiet and still. Quiet your mind. Sit for twenty minutes. Notice your thoughts but let them move on. Keep returning to quiet. I think of meditation like training your mind to sit and stay, rather than letting it run around, unsupervised, chasing squirrels. I love this. I have long viewed meditation as important for my health and also something that is really freaking hard.
I begin to run for longer periods along the yellow brick road, then switch to skipping down along village lanes toward the sea, then back to running along the yellow brick road. I think back to a conversation I had a week before leaving for Portugal, with Jesse. I shared with her a story that has lived in my bones for many years- a little corner of shame- that has been holding me back in some indefinable way. Twenty some years ago, while I was a Peace Corps volunteer, I did a ten day silent meditation retreat in southern Thailand. I left that retreat with one important revelation that would shape the direction if my life but also with a burden that I am only now, on this yellow brick road, beginning to shed.
During the retreat, there was A LOT of sitting. I had been expecting this. I’d built a practice- sitting in meditation for minutes every day in my little village house- during the months leading up to the retreat. Despite this preparation, I felt a strong desire to move. Not from a need to get away, or distract or rebel against stillness. But I instinctively knew that, for me, movement was an avenue into the center of myself. Running had always given me access to presence in a way almost nothing else did.
During the retreat, I found a spire of steps in a far corner of the monastery grounds. During the time a lotted for movement meditation, I donned my running clothes and ran steps. My running shoes were quiet on stone and every time I went up and down, I felt a deeper sense of being centered and my mind became less and less active. I did this for three days before I was called into the the “inner sanctum” and admonished by the American couple who were leading the retreat. Running was not allowed. What was I running from? There had been a complaint. My running had disrupted someone else’s concentration. I took it all in. I was not doing meditation “right”. In Thai, there is a word that means “to have a hot heart”. I could feel my blood run high with shame as they criticized My Way. Somehow, my heart was too hot. I was not quiet enough. I was selfish. They sent me away having agreed that I would not run for the remaining seven days and that I would try harder. I would seek to understand what was making me want to “run away.” I internalized this idea that movement was not conducive to enlightenment; that I needed to meditate “in the right way” in order to “become enlightened”.
On the Camino there is an ethic. Everyone does their own Camino. You carry everything in your pack or you have your luggage ported. You wander slowly or you move along. You pray or you don’t. You leave things along The Way or you pick them up. You socialize and you gather friends or you stay with your own self. There is an unspoken regard among pilgrims for this. I felt nothing but love from other Pilgrims as a ran by, my pack and heart beating. I belong to the world. I felt more present than ever as the details of traffic and rain and my own beating heart slipped away along with that years-old burden. I’d told Jesse that this journey, for me, would be about letting movement set my soul free. And today was the day. Fierce and free.
