Wind

 

                                                  Prayer Flags in the wind - Everest 2010


Wind is definitive not a friendly element for trekkers and pilgrims, especially when it is cold and you are walking at 4000 meters of altitude having problem breathing.
We were way above 4000 meters, we stopped to rest, repaired by a big stone, in front of us the view of three stunning mountains and the view of the old monastery of Tengbochee overlooking the valley, above us an Himalayan eagle is flying free knowing how to ride the wind so beautifully. 
From behind this stone I started listening to the wind, the sound was strong but now that is not an enemy anymore it is instead nice and sweet ... I am sure that it brings a message somewhere... Unfortunately I do not know its language.

                                               Camino de Santiago, 2007

Everest Base Camp

It has been a week since I was back from this amazing trip. Here is the Youtube I made with the pictures I took.

Back from the Mountain

I am back in Boston. I will write soon about this amazing experience on Mount Everest. And will make soon a Youtube with the pictures I have taken.
Stay tuned.

From my Journal

  12/26/2007

Najera – Santo Domingo della Calzada, Spain

Today the walk wasn’t so long, only 22 Km but all under the rain, I am in the Rioja region where the path is very muddy, and after a while is like walking with weights at my ankles. Nobody is around, last night I slept all alone in Najera as the day before in Logrono. I really hope that tonight I will meet someone at the next stop to talk with; maybe we could share a meal together or at least a glass of this great Rioja wine.

I arrived at the Rifugio of Santo Domingo and with great surprise I see other 4 pilgrims. A couple from Barcellona. a very nice German guy, Heiko, who is an actor and then there is an old guy from Madrid. I am not really sure what is the deal with him, he says he is living on the Camino, walking back and forth all alone, but when I talk to others they say that nobody has ever seen him actually walking, maybe he is a homeless and by pretending to be a pilgrim he can sleep in the refuges. I really cannot care less if this is the true or not, actually, if he is really a homeless, I commend him for having found a dignify way to get a roof on his head. He is friendly and we start talking. I offer him wine and I share my dinner that he accepted with a smile (especially for the good wine). He asks me why I do the Camino, and why I choose to come to Spain. I explain to him that this is not my first time on the Camino. And I explain to him, that although I am from Boston, I know very well Spain… Then I add that I do it also as a way to raise money for A Bridge of Roses. 

with Frere Romain, Tom and Winifred in front of our project "Atelier Ponte Rosa", Madagascar

Europeans do not really understand the concept of raising money for charities. In Europe people tend to rely more on the government, they pay higher taxes and the government supports what in US it is instead often supported through personal donations, like cultural projects, education, and charities… So it took a while for me to explain him the entire project.

He listened carefully but at the end, with a very blunt comment, he replied:

“I feel you do all this as respond for felling guilt of being rich!”.

I am stunned; even from a European perspective such a blunt comment, if made by a stranger, would be considered rude. So I almost stood up and left him there with the bottle of wine, but instead I engaged him in a conversation (also I wasn’t finished with drinking my wine… J)

True is that I believe I was actually explaining to myself, more than to him, the real reasons behind my desire to found my charity.

         In Madagascar giving away puppets handmade by a very good friend of mine, Katarina 

- First, I replied, I am not rich. Well of course I am better off than people who live with two dollars budget a day, or people without a job or a house, or people who live in a country at war, or people who have lost everything under an earthquake… Of course I am better off than them. And I do consider myself rich, as I have a great family, a fantastic partner, a very nice life, a great job that I love and great support from my friends. So, I am not poor.

But do I feel guilty for all this? Not really.

Why should I?

I wake up every morning and work, and I try all my best to reach out to others.

Each of us has his own Camino…

I leave the feelings of guiltiness to the ones who fall asleep, and the ones who do not try to elevate themselves, the ones that are just “passing by”, and finally the ones that enough is never enough.

But if, in the small or in the big, with little or with a lot one try his best to share his own Camino with the others, if one, with all the mistakes people can make, try his best to help, to reach out… Well, I do not see why this person should have any sense of guilt.

Can I do more? YES!

Then I tell him: -“Have you seen the movie Schindler’s List? At the end Oskar Schindler says something very touching… “Look this watch, it is worth so much, I could have sold it and save two more lives, and by selling this pin: one more live, and this coat: two more… I could have done more, much more!”

Yes, I can do more. But… for the moment, this is what I can do. It is that simple. And at that point I left him there.

Unfortunately, it is not that simple… because, deeply in my heart, I know I can do more.

                                            Tom with one of our little friends 

Project in Madagascar

This morning I got an e.mail from Madagascar with some pictures from the Centre Fitiavana in Mahajanga. The school is one of the projects A Bridge of Roses supports. We provide 120 meals three times a week to the 120 children. The school is the only school in the region for children with mental disabilities. And these meals are, in some cases, the only meals the children get.

The Centre, to thank us for our support has just dedicated and named a classroom to A Bridge of Roses. It is in memory of Jane Lynch Crowley, Tom's mother.

Thank you to all the people who have helped me and are helping me in this dream to help children in Madagascar to have a better future. 
I could not have done it without you!

Thanksgiving

                                                Camino de Santiago, 2007
We experience your abundance,
your light,
in our summer.
In our autumn we feast on the harvest, 
the fruits of your love,
even as we store them
for future nourishment and savoring
in the cellars of our memories and feelings.
We prepare for cold,
coming darkness and dormancy,
our winter, with our roots deeply embedded
in the ground of your love.
We await 
the resurrection and healing
of our spring.
All in all,


Thank you.
                                                      Written by my friend Tim P. Kochems

Stones

How is it that Elephants can walk across the Namibian desert every year knowing where to go, following the same path? Or million of birds, without compass, can go south in the Winter and north in the Summer, returning every time to the same nest left months before? But we, human beings, need signs, maps, guides, and GPS to not get lost? Usually on Pilgrimage pilgrims follow yellow arrows, they mark at every intersection the way to go. They are a great help, a great comfort to all of us that walk, and very soon they turn into friends that at every corner wait patiently to you to wave where to go. How in the ancient time pilgrims could do without them?

Probably the biggest fear for a pilgrim is to get lost, and also the most common thing people ask about a pilgrimage: “did you follow a trail? Was it well marked? Did you get lost? Was it hard to find your way?”

                               My partner Tom - Following Saint Francis's Footprints - Spello, Italy, 2009

Paths are marked. Mostly very well marked. And rarely one gets lost. When you are in these kind of situations, when you rely mostly only on yourself, on a guidebook and on a path to follow all your senses awake, little signs that before you will never have noticed now will not passed unnoticed. On the first couple of days you still find yourself reading over and over again your guidebook, but after a while, you put it away in the backpack. And you just start to trust yourself and the path.

The funny thing is those fears will come back on the last days of your pilgrimage when you will start wondering how you will cope once you return to the ‘real’ world, where the signs that you have to follow are not longer simple arrows, gentle friends waiting at the corner to wave to you. 

But like on a trail also life is full of signs for us, the problem is that we have become almost immune to seeing them. We often miss the signs that have been in place for generations to show us, to guide us the correct and honorable way to go through life. They are around us, but somehow we keep missing them. And when it happens, the rare times that we let us be guided by our intuitions, we call it: coincidences or luck instead of giving credit to ourselves for having recognized a sign and have follow it.

We are also afraid to adventure all alone. We prefer to follow others. We call them hero or leaders, they are the ones who adventure into unknown territories, the rest of us are the seconds, the pack that prefers to take the backset.

When you walk on the Camino of Santiago you cannot miss to notice neat piles of stones placed on the edge of the path, you can soon figure out that this is part of a ritual in which almost everybody participate. The stones are not placed to show you the path, although they help you to understand that yes, you are following the right direction. The real meaning of those little minarets is different. It is said, if you pick up a stone and put some of your sorrow into it, when you place the stone down you leave your sorrow behind. And leaving your sorrow on the Camino you create more space in your heart for love.

                                                           Camino de Santiago, Spain 2007

One year later when I was walking in Madagascar on the mountain of Zafimarany I noticed the same piles of stones. I stopped and show them to Tom, who had already noticed them and wondered what they meant, I asked to our guide if he knew what they meant and told him the Spaniard belief. The meaning here was different.

Malagasy belief in the existence of close ties between the living and the dead. Malagasy peoples have traditionally accepted the existence of a supreme God, known commonly as Zanahary (Creator) or Andriamanitra (Sweet, or Fragrant, Lord). The dead have been conceived as playing the role of intermediary between this supreme God and humankind and are viewed as having the power to affect the fortunes of the living for good or evil. The spirits of our ancestors populate our lives. They live all around us and influence our lives. When you walk on the top of a mountain you are more likely to meet them. They most of the time do not like you disturb them by passing by. So you hold in your hand a stone and start talking to them, letting them know that you come in peace and that you will leave them in peace, then you put down the stone on the path as symbol of peace and leave it behind you.

                                                                       Madagascar, 2008

I picked up a stone, and started to converse with my ancestors. And like other before me I put it down leaving it behind. After this very simple gesture I felt light. The day was a beautiful sunny day; the breeze on the top was refreshing, flowers were everywhere, the mountain was very green and the view was just unbelievable.

We continued to the poorest village I have ever visited. I was not expecting that day in that village I would have met and felt such sadness in my heart.

The level of poverty, the lack of everything: education, hygiene, privacy, respect for life and development of it was overwhelming. I felt the situation was hopeless, and that day, that beautiful sunny day, full of blooming flowers I felt such sadness in my heart.

On my way back I took another stone in my hands… this time I did not asked to any ancestors permission to pass I, instead, try to put all my sorrow into it to leave them behind. Unsuccessfully.