Secrets of My Nomadic Heart

I think I made 100km today. I have another 500km to go. It seems like such a long long road.

A pilgrim´s path, I believe, is always a simple but not an easy one. It is easy to walk, but not easy to keep walking everyday, no matter rain or shine, no matter how my legs ache. Someone asked, "when will the pain in the feet go away?" And the reply was, "it doesn´t. You just learn to live with it." And today I saw a poster that says, "no pain, no glory". Funny.....

But I ask myself why am I doing this everyday. Why are all these people doing this? I met a German guy today who has been walking for 2 months out of his door in Munich. He walked Austria, Switzerland, France and now Spain. He told me stories of kind souls who helped him when he needed it. He says, "on the camino, you won´t find what you want. But you´ll always find what you need." Stories like that, and encounters everyday inspire me to keep walking.

The road to Santiago is a long long one. A journey of a few hundred kilometers is made one step at a time. After a long day´s walk, I always think I need to stop the next day to rest. But I wake up everyday feeling better than before and ready to walk for another day. Everyday begins with a single step. One step after another to keep going. I don´t think too much ahead other than the kilometer I am making one at a time.

There is such humility in walking God´s earth. Our tiny steps are so insignificant in the grand scheme of things. He made the earth so huge and vast, that my feet can only kiss the brown earth one step at a time. A journey that would take a car to reach in half an hour, would take me a day to walk. How can one not be humbled by such an experience?

In the busyness of life, I tend to forget how small and tiny we are in the material and physical sense of the world. But I also forget too how large and immense our spirit can be. With every step I make, I feel a growing inner strength within me, an unshakeable belief that on this journey, there will always be someone who is ahead of me, someone who is behind me, signs when I am lost, angels when I need help. I am learning to remember that there´ll always be a rainbow for me everyday, and silver lining in every cloud - when I have faith.