Tag Archives: Camino de Santiago

Somethin’s comin’!

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Barb Morris Camino de Santiago

I’ve been away for a while, finishing my novel. It’s my second big pandemic project. (My first one was becoming a Certified Wayfinder Life Coach. I finished my training back in 2012 but never jumped through the certification hoop.)

This novel erupted out of me in March of 2017. Its seed was a dream I had about a woman walking the Camino de Santiago who follows her soul’s urging to step through a little door into a Spanish church. Magic things happen. I totally “pantsed” it, a writing term that means I made it up as I went along. Magic happened because I pantsed it. I would never have had the courage to write some of what I wrote if I’d been following an outline.

Finishing this work has been challenging for me. I’ve shared bits and pieces on this blog, made sporadic attempts to edit and revise, but couldn’t muster up the energy to buckle down and get ‘er done. I’ve had to write connecting scenes and invent characters to make it all make sense. I’ve never written a novel before, and since I think I need to do everything perfectly the first time, whether I’ve done it before or not, I got just a wee bit stymied.

Now it’s coming, and it’s coming soon. I decided to publish it as a free PDF on my website, which lowered the pressure enormously and made finishing it possible. Those of you who’ve been asking when you can read the whole thing, I’m aiming for June 1st. Putting this child out into the world in an imperfect form (and believe you me, is it ever imperfect) is a huge stretch for me. But it’s taking up room in my creative abode, and it needs to leave home.

So that’s me. What have YOU been up to?

~Barb

Serenity and COVID-19

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Here are four things I’m remembering now. I hope they help.

1. Change and transformation are how nature works. Nothing in the natural world is immutable. Even rocks change. We’re part of nature. Earthlings are designed to change and transform! Expecting stasis, and equating falling apart with failure, will only make you crazy.

Every thing arises and passes away. That’s always been true. Nothing is fundamentally different now, except that we’ve had our illusions of control ripped away. The caterpillar in its chrysalis has to completely dissolve before the imago cells begin to coalesce into a butterfly. Why do we think that we, with our conscious worry-prone brains so afraid of dissolution, should find this fun??

2. We’re all connected. Elsewhere I’ve written about the moment on the Camino de Santiago when I viscerally knew what science and faith had been telling me all along. That moment on the rainy Meseta, when I felt the presence of the deep heart connecting me to everything and everyone around me, is one I’m rooting myself in these days. I’m sure you have those moments, too. Re-member them. Just as trees in a forest feed each other through their interconnected roots, our rootedness in love and peace feeds our neighbors and our world.

3. We’re all grieving right now. You might have lost someone to death. You might have lost your job. You might have, as I have, lost your freedom to go where you want to go. We’re all grieving the death of our sense of predictability and safety. (See #1, above.) So be gentle with yourself and others. Treat yourself as though you’re in mourning, because you are.  

4. Presence is our only refuge from what we can’t control or predict.* You can’t control the past or predict the future. The only thing you’re in charge of is how you show up in this present moment. Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor, has this to say:

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

Let’s look back at Frankl’s middle sentence above: When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. I’m reminded of this version of the Serenity Prayer used by Twelve-Step groups: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”

Here’s a “Serenity Practice” to help calm your worried brain:

  • Write down the things you’re currently worried about.
  • One by one, ask yourself if you can and want to do anything about the thing, whatever it is.
  • If so, and you choose to take action, make a to-do list or a checklist. Identify the first step, and calendarize it.
  • If you’re worried about something you’re not in control of, find a way to begin to accept it. You might try RAIN, or prayer, or a ritual of giving your worry to the universe.
  • Finally, make a habit of connecting to your Wise Self during this time of intense unpredictability, in whatever ways work for you. Breathe. Walk outside. Do yoga. Call a non-anxious friend. Make something. Help someone.

I’m here if you’d like to talk through this practice. I’m here if you want to talk about anything else on your mind unrelated to COVID-19. I’m here if you just want someone to talk to, especially if your mind is losing its shit. Contact me if you’d like to schedule a free, no-obligation conversation. I have time for you!

Be gentle with yourselves, my friends. Be gentle with each other. Be present to the miracle of this moment.

We won’t be the same when this is over, but we will be okay.

Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash, edited on Canva

*Approximate wording of a statement made by Dr. Martha Beck during her weekly Facebook Live on March 22nd.

Suburban Chicago, Late May

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Barb Morris Camino de Santiago

I’ve been steadily writing a novel for over two years – a blink of an eye in novel-writing time. The first scene came in a dream. I crafted my own NaNoWriMo in March of 2017, using the dream scene as a jumping-off point. That writing was “pantsed,” writer-ese for “Screw planning! Let’s just see what happens!” What happened completely took me by surprise. You can read some of it here. Following those crazy days, I introduced planning – crafting a coherent narrative, introducing additional characters, and writing missing scenes. The first draft is almost finished! Here’s the opening chapter of Lost and Found: A Journey on the Camino de Santiago (working title).

Suburban Chicago, Late May

Martha handed in her keys for the last time and went home to empty her closet and dresser. She took all the sensible clothes, the khakis and cardigans and school spirit t-shirts and sturdy shoes, to Goodwill that afternoon. She kept only a few pairs of blue jeans and two t-shirts for gardening.

A bright yellow t-shirt and lime green skirt were hanging in the Goodwill window. They went fabulously with the plastic flamingo pink flip flops in the shoe section. Martha bought them all.

The next day, the books. All gone. She’d left her classroom library and best practice books for the bright shiny teacher taking her place. She fully expected the new teacher to throw the texts away, but held out hope that some kid someday would read Wizard of Earthsea. She took all the self-help and the novels to Goodwill, too.

Two days after her last day as a sixth-grade teacher, Martha walked out the front door of her mostly empty house and climbed into the waiting cab. She carried only a backpack that held two changes of clothes, a few basic toiletries, her Goodwill purchases, and her trekking poles. Inside the backpack was a smaller bag with a paperback book, passport and credit cards, and 300 Euros donated by her former colleagues at her retirement party. She hadn’t wanted a party at all, so it was a small gathering of team teachers and a couple of principals. She was the last of the group that had started teaching together 25 years before.

She was flying United to La Guardia, then Iberia to Madrid. From Madrid she’d take a train to León and the bus to Pamplona, where she’d start walking the Camino de Santiago de Compostela.

Santiago de Compostela, the terminus of many Caminos – routes from all over Spain and from a few cities in France. And from Portugal. Even from England, although that route was mostly the ferry from Portsmouth, then three days of walking in Spain.

Martha thought, not for the first time and certainly not for the last, that she was crazy to be doing this. She was 62 years old, healthy but not in perfect physical condition. Her Spanish was rusty. And she was alone.

What better way to mark the end of an era? What better way to tend the ending of her working life and to invite in whatever was next? You see, she didn’t know what came next. When her retirement had become public knowledge, the Camino was a handy answer for the inevitable question at staff meetings and in the teacher’s lounge, a place she usually avoided. Martha had asked her principal not to tell anyone until the new teachers for the coming year had been hired. She didn’t want her retirement to be a distraction for the last couple of months of school. She just wanted to teach – to pay attention to this ending as fully as she could.

The questions. Oh, the questions. “So, Martha, what are you going to do next year when we’re all back in school? Do you have plans? Are you going to get another dog? It’ll be nice to spend more time with your kids, won’t it?”

She’d answer, “Actually, I’m spending the summer in Spain, walking the Camino de Santiago.” She liked the surprised look on their faces. She’d enjoyed surprising someone for a change.

The inevitable follow-up question was, “Who’s going with you?”

“No one,” she’d say. “I’m going by myself.”

“Is that safe?” they’d ask.

“A lot of people do it, so I hope so. It’s fine. Joy is meeting me in León for a few days in the middle to check on me. I’ll email the kids when I have wifi.”

She would see the doubt cross their face and find it mirrored in her own thoughts. What the hell am I doing?

Yet there Martha was, at Chicago O’Hare, checking her backpack, carrying on only a book and the small bag. The ticket agent wished her a good flight as she handed over her boarding passes. She went through security to the waiting area, sat down, and fought the rising panic that had become her constant companion. Fear’s voice with its predictable litany once more took a run through her head: This is a batshit crazy idea. I don’t know why I’m doing this. I don’t have to do this. I could walk right through that door there and catch a cab back home. I could be in my house tidying up and tending the garden. I could start the kitchen remodel. I could paint the study. I could wake up in my own bed. I could get in shape for this. Train for it. Do it next fall when it’s cooler. What the hell am I thinking? 

Somehow, she kept her seat. She let the voice yammer on, and sat. She stayed in her seat until her flight was called, when she stood up and walked down the jetway and onto the plane. She found her seat and, once again, she sat. She didn’t speak. She didn’t trust herself to speak. If she talked, she’s not sure she’d ever shut up. I’m alone on this fool’s pilgrimage, she thought. No conversation with strangers will change that. Just for a moment she pondered taking a vow of silence for the duration of this journey. She could hang a sign around her neck that said, “In Silence.” Tempting.

She didn’t get up until the plane landed at La Guardia.  Her flight to Madrid didn’t leave for three hours. Three hours. Three hours to change her mind. To come to her senses. Her backpack would go to Spain without her. Then she remembered the empty closet. The empty bookshelves. The almost-empty house. Her empty former life. What had she done?

Her phone rang. Her son.

“Hi, Matt.” So much for the vow of silence.

“I’m fine. I’m sorry I didn’t call. So much to do. You know. Yes, I’m in New York between flights. The Madrid flight will be boarding any minute. You got the itinerary I sent you, right? I’ll check in when I have wifi. Yes, sweetie. I promise. Give Flora a kiss for me. Spain is a first world country, dear. Thank you for taking care of her. I’ll miss you. Not going to back out now, dear. I’ll be fine. I love you. Mwah. Bye.”

Martha silenced her phone and put it away in her bag. She sat, unmoving, until her row was called. She got up and walked to the gate and down the jetway, onto the big plane that flies across oceans. She found her seat, shoved her little bag under the seat in front, buckled her seatbelt, looked out the window, and smiled.

All I have to do is put one foot in front of the other, and walk. Babies do that. I can do that.

She’d had so many ideas about this Camino. So many theories. So many thoughts. Now it was here. She was suddenly aware that she didn’t know anything anymore. She didn’t need to know anything. All she had to do was walk. All she had to do was follow the arrows and walk to Santiago.

But first, she had to get to Pamplona.

Forging a grown-up faith.

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Muddy Meseta Shoes
Muddy Meseta Shoes

I’ve been receiving more requests for coaching rooted in spirituality after writing “A letter from God to her daughters who observe Lent.” These writers are seeking coaching based in progressive Christian faith and practice. I want to help, and so I want to be transparent about my own spiritual life.

My husband and I walked the Camino de Santiago in 2014. Experiences of God were common for me on the Camino, although it was still mostly walking. One of those experiences has shaped my spirituality — how I imagine and connect with the Divine — in profound ways.

I was alone for a few hours on the 17th day of the 35 days it would eventually take us to walk to Santiago. We were walking between Castrojeriz and Fromista, across the vast central Spanish plateau called the Meseta, on a cold, rainy day. Jed stayed behind in the village we’d just walked through to buy lunch. I continued up the next hill alone, surrounded by other pilgrims also walking up a hill in the cold Meseta rain through the sticky Meseta mud. Gradually I became aware of a presence beneath me, in the earth, sustaining me and communicating with me. This presence felt muscular— “a womb-like heart,” I wrote in my journal. The presence felt incredibly big, and it overflowed with love. I knew this presence was love. I was connected to it, and through it to the pilgrims walking around me, to the trees at the top of the hill, and to the hill itself.

I was connected to everything in the universe through this deep loving presence.

I understood that day that the only thing God requires from me is to accept this connection, maintain it, and strengthen it. To stay connected, and to flow with what comes through the connection. That’s it.

This Camino experience was deeply physical, a mosaic composed of feelings and images. There were no words. I simply and clearly knew something then that I hadn’t known ten minutes earlier. And I still know it.

Here’s the thing we often forget about religion. It’s made up. It’s constructed. Religion is a container created by humans to hold experiences of God, Other, Ultimate Reality, Oneness, whatever you want to call the Divine. In Christianity’s case, it’s an invented response to experiences of Jesus – a Jewish peasant healer killed by the Roman Empire because of his love-based, rebellious, socialist message. His followers experienced his presence after his death, and they told resurrection stories about him. A loosely organized religion began to coalesce. When Constantine converted to Christianity, the church become aligned with dominant culture and spread across the Roman Empire.

Once created, religious containers take on a life (or a death) of their own. Communities begin to protect and pass on the container at the expense of the experiences the religion was created to hold. A couple of millennia later, that container sits on our shelf, cracked and dusty but still prominently displayed and precious.

I’m a child of the Christian church, gestated in mainline Protestantism. I was born into an Episcopal family, and the Episcopal Church has been my Christian place for the most part. I’m a member of “the Episcopal branch of the Jesus Movement.” My personal experiences of Jesus, both in church and not in church, are precious to me. Yet I seem to have most of my experiences of the Divine outside, under trees, on mountains, beside rivers, swimming in lakes, sitting on rocks in the sun. I also find much wisdom and solace within Buddhism.

People who contact me to explore coaching together usually want to answer these questions: How do I reconcile this Jesus-shaped place in my heart with my adult knowledge and experience? How do I navigate this uncharted territory with integrity and faithfulness? And how can I be true to what I know about God while keeping the peace in my family?  

For me personally, the question I’m living is: How do I reconcile my adult experiences and beliefs — my Camino experience, loving Jesus, and the oneness I feel with God in creation among them — with conventional church affiliation and Sunday morning worship?

I don’t know yet. This is a work in progress and probably always will be.

Here’s what I do know:

I’m not required to accept any authority but my own. I can trust my own authority and experiences of the Divine. I’m connected to the deep heart of God. My job is to stay connected. That’s all. That’s it. God will do the rest. My spiritual practice is doing whatever helps me allow, maintain, and strengthen my connection to God, and, through God, to all beings. Sometimes my practice is going to church. Sometimes it’s sitting on a rock with my feet in a river, praying. Sometimes it’s Vipassana meditation. Sometimes it’s none of the above.

My spiritual practice is doing whatever strengthens my connection to God, and, through God, to all beings. This is my call.

When I look at the Christian tradition through this lens, here’s some of what I see:

  • Language that places God outside or above creation weakens that connection.
  • An emphasis on sin, on our badness instead of our belovedness, weakens that connection.
  • I experienced the presence that day on the Camino as most like a womb, yet beyond gender. Patriarchal words and ideas weaken that connection.
  • Eucharist strengthens that connection.
  • Jesus stories strengthen that connection.

It’s not heresy, and it’s not sin, to melt that cracked, dusty vessel down and forge a new one. I believe this is our responsibility and our vocation. Death and resurrection is, after all, what Jesus was all about.

I wish church on Sunday morning was right there with me. It’s not. So I’m very intentional in my church attendance. Sometimes I don’t go for weeks, and I choose mountain or river or studio church instead. And then I go back, because something in me needs this occasionally anachronistic Christian tradition to feel whole. I’m focusing on letting go of what doesn’t serve me and choosing to live in unknowing for as long as it takes. I suspect this is the work of a lifetime. This work feels uncomfortable often, especially because I’m married to the rector. I’m working to find that elusive and shifting balancing place where I’m living in integrity, being present for my husband, and feeding and being fed by others who love Jesus.

I want community to do this work within – the work of forging adult faith, engaging the sacraments and stories, and participating wholeheartedly in rituals that allow, maintain, and strengthen my connection to God’s deep heart and, through Her heart, to all beings.

I say “forge an adult faith,” not “find an adult faith,” because, for me, this process requires melting down and separating out what’s useful from what’s not. Forging faith requires acceptance and endurance of the refiner’s fire. Forging faith requires discernment of what nurtures us and our world. Forging faith requires courage to honor our experiences. Forging faith requires trusting resurrection and joining with God to make something new. Forging faith means creating a new vessel for the Holy One in our midst, and holding that vessel lightly.

This all sounds like a lot of work, doesn’t it? So why bother? Why not walk away? My rational, quantitative left brain asks this over and over.

Walking away is the answer for some of us. It’s not my answer. Since you’re reading this, walking away probably isn’t your answer, either.

My current response to my brain’s protestations is that my heart knows things my brain doesn’t. My heart remembers what it felt that day on the Camino – the bottomless peace and love flowing from that bigger, deeper, holy heart  – and it won’t let me walk away from this spiritual journey. To live in integrity, for me, requires that I take faith and spirituality seriously. To be whole, for me, requires forging an adult faith, one component of which is Christianity.

If any of this resonates with you and you’d like to talk further, please contact me to schedule a free no-obligation consultation. I’d love to connect!

Are you a Mother of Dragons?

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Choose a name that helps you do hard things. Camino de Santiago

Our Western Scrub Jay is now the California Scrub Jay, because the American Ornithologist’s Union says so. The AOU recently split the former Western Scrub Jay into two species – our West Coast species, now called California Scrub Jays, and the interior Western species newly christened the Woodhouse’s Scrub Jay.

What difference does this name change make to the no-longer Western Scrub Jay? And what does this new name for a common bird have to do with healing, the theme of my recent blog posts?

The jays in my back yard and all over Central Oregon don’t seem to care what name we give them. They’re blissfully unaware, still going about their Scrub Jay business – mostly dive bombing cats and people and other birds, squawking, and searching for food.

You, however, are not a bird. You are a human, with a human brain busy thinking thoughts that create feelings, which lead to actions with consequences. The names you use determine your thoughts, so how you name yourself is vitally important. Names are powerful.

I became firmly convinced of the power of names while walking the Camino de Santiago in 2014. The Camino was hard for me. My feet hurt pretty much constantly. I longed for privacy. And I never felt clean. About 200 miles into the 500 miles my husband and I walked across northern Spain, I read a blog post by my life coach mentor, Martha Beck. Martha describes her practice of giving herself an airport name, much as itinerant travelers give themselves “hobo names.” Martha writes that the hassles of travel become easier to endure when she imagines her airport hobo self enduring the waiting, rushing, and not being in control. Her inner airport hobo only knows airports, so she doesn’t constantly compare airport life to how life should be. Travel becomes a much lighter thing.

So I gave myself a Camino name: Junebug. My new name made a huge difference! It was Junebug whose feet hurt. Junebug who slept in a dorm room with 40 other snoring pilgrims. Junebug who couldn’t quite get clean. Junebug took her suffering more lightly than Barb seemed to be able to. Junebug knew she could do this hard thing, and persisted in walking to Santiago when Barb wanted to bail. All Junebug knows, and all I needed her to know, was how to put one foot in front of the other and find joy in the journey.

Long haul hikers on the Appalachian Trail and the Pacific Crest Trail do something similar. When I queried the American Pilgrims on the Camino Facebook group to ask other pilgrims had given themselves Camino names, I was told in no uncertain terms by several men that THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A CAMINO NAME. IF THERE WERE, YOU CAN’T GIVE IT TO YOURSELF. YOUR COMPANIONS MUST GIVE YOU YOUR TRAIL NAME. (Not kidding about the caps. They were very firm about the rules.)

I call bullshit. Sweetheart, you can give yourself any name you want. You already are. Ask yourself if the name you call yourself is a good name. A healing name. A holy name. Is that name helping you get where you want to go?

Are you naming yourself “Bad”? “Fat”? “Stupid”? “Lazy”? “Too Old”? Or some other strength-sapping or energy-draining epithet?

Think of the names nuns and monks choose when they take monastic vows – their new names are symbols of their intention to become new people.

Do you want a new name to symbolize and empower your work and the new person you’re becoming? Do you need a new name to help you do hard things? Choose one, and use it.

Name yourself Powerful. Brilliant. Beautiful. Persistent. Strong. Epic. Name yourself Daenerys Targaryen, Mother of Dragons. And don’t let anyone tell you that you’re not allowed to. That you have to follow their rules. That you can’t.

Choose a holy name. Choose a healing name. Choose an empowering name. Use that name to remind yourself who you really are. Decide where you want to go, and choose a name that will help you get there.

Names are powerful. Choose well.

Love, Junebug

Photo credit: Jed Holdorph, June 2014 on the Camino de Santiago.

Things that bother only burros.

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Love Does That

All day long a little burro labors, sometimes
with heavy loads on her back and sometimes just with worries
about things that bother only
burros.

And worries, as we know, can be more exhausting
than physical labor.

Once in a while a kind monk comes
to her stable and brings
a pear, but more
than that,

he looks into the burro’s eyes and touches her ears

and for a few seconds the burro is free
and even seems to laugh,

because love does
that.

Love frees.

~ Meister Eckhart ~

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Barb Morris Camino de SantiagoTHIS IS A SCENE FROM MY CAMINO NOVEL-IN-PROCESS. PLEASE SEE THE FIRST EXCERPT, “THE MESSIES,” WHICH INTRODUCES THE NOVEL AND WHY I’M POSTING THIS WRITING IN ITS RAW STATE.

So here our three travelers are, Hope on the floor and Martha and her mom on a soft couch covered with an Indian throw, safe and warm in the arms of the Hospital of the Soul. Hope is happily eating sugar cookies off of prettily-flowered china and chattering away. She licks her fingers with gusto and relish, licking the sugar and crumbs off, then swiping the crumbs off her plate with her finger. Hope is content, and so is Martha as she watches Hope’s contentment. She’s aware in a corner of her mind how truly bizarre this is – sitting in the warm living room of a house in Spain called the Hospital del Alma with her dead mother and her little daughter who until just a few hours ago was curled up in a chest freezer nestled in her chest, naturally, right beside her heart.

Martha realizes that her heart has been keeping Hope alive all these years, and the Hospital of the Soul is the perfect place for the three of them to be.

 I wonder if others can see all three of us, or if I just look crazy and alone from the outside. But I choose to believe the evidence of my senses – here these two are. Hope is eating cookies. My mom is next to me, drinking chamomile tea with honey. I feel warmth from the wood stove. I can see and hear María outside building a mosaic in the patio’s east wall. A pine tree I don’t know the name of overhangs the glass ceiling of this room.

 I am simply grateful to be here.

I love this space. I love the earthiness and the colors and the constant surprise. I love the hospitality of it – not a Parker House hospitality, but a hospitality of the heart and home. This is a place on the Camino designed for one purpose only – refuge for peregrinas’ souls. A Hospital of the Soul. I love the complete lack of expectations and judgment. “Come in and sit.” That’s all. Warmth, nourishment, comfort, welcome. All it needs is cats.

And at that moment Martha see kittens in the back, on the patio, and the place is complete. She could sit here forever.

This magical child who’s evidently not an apparition will need some clothes. Are those rubber-toed red sneakers adequate to the task of walking at least a little every day? They’re from a time when support in kids’ shoes was nonexistent. Martha hears herself worrying about Hope’s shoes, because she has no idea what she’s going to say to Maria at dinner when she asks for their story.

Here’s all she knows: she retired from her teaching job, a job she loved for many years and was good at, because it was time. Class sizes were growing, the kids were getting harder to reach, and she had less time and creativity because of mandated curriculum and tests every other week, it seemed. So it was time. She would have done a few more years, but then the district sweetened the retirement deal for older teachers and she jumped ship.

My kids didn’t need me, I’d seen The Way and done a little research, and I knew I needed a Thing to Do right after retirement. An intentional journey wanted to happen and the Camino met that need – cheap, flexible, set up for solitary walkers. A week after I turned in my school keys I was on a plane to Madrid, then a train to León, a bus to Pamplona, and another bus to SJPP*.

Everything had been pretty normal for the context of doing this crazy thing of walking 500 miles to Santiago, for the first week or so. Little stuff had started happening around then. She’d found herself taking unplanned side excursions and detours, sitting by the side of the track for a few hours, walking by herself a lot. These things just seemed to happen. But once on the Meseta, they’d come fast and furious, getting odder and odder all the time. The voice in the Templar church. The cougar who talked. The jar of messies. She was beginning to get used to it. Retrieving her daughter from a freezer in her chest and having her mom come along to help thaw her out was only the latest. It was also, she knew, of a completely different order of magnitude of crazy. These two seemed to be real people. Her mom she could explain, sort of. This little girl dressed in clothes from the 1960s, not so much. What will they tell Maria, she wondered.

Just then Hope got up, wiped her hands on her 1960s trousers, and climbed into Martha’s lap. She put her arms around her mom’s neck, said in a muffled voice, “Thank you for unfreezing me,” and fell asleep. Martha glanced at her mom and found her mom looking at her. They shook their heads, smiled, and returned to silent fire-watching. El Hospital del Alma, indeed.

Eventually they heard the back door opening and María making noise in the kitchen. “I’ll go see what I can do,” said her mom. She heard her mom ask in Spanish how she could help. María evidently found her something to do, since the next sound she heard was voices and occasional laughter. The sounds of wine glasses being filled, along with cooking noises and smells, came from the kitchen. Her mom came to her with a glass of Riojan wine.

Martha reached out a hand to take it, saying, “Mom, I’m so glad you’re here with me. I don’t understand it, but I’m glad. I think I might be crazy.”

“You’re not crazy, sweetie. You’re wondering how long I’ll be here, right?”

“Thanks, Mom. Of course I am. And I’m also trying to just be here now and enjoy this gift. Since I’m not crazy.”

Her mom smiled and returned to the kitchen. Martha sat, a daughter she didn’t have this morning on her lap, and drank her wine. I’ll take it, she thought. I’ll take it. I won’t get to keep it, I sure as hell don’t understand it, but I’ll take it. I’ll enjoy every minute I get with these two, and I won’t mourn them before they’re gone.

Supper starts with a salad of baby greens and peas, because it’s June in Spain and Maria’s garden has just started producing. The flowers and tomatoes will come later, in a month or so. Chicken and rice, and quejada for dessert. Hope has been pulled up to the table on a stool, and she’s digging into her chicken, cut up for her by María, and her rice. She eats the peas with her fingers, eschewing the lettuce. It’s her first real meal in decades – she’s been kept alive by Martha’s heart but she’s hungry for real food.

This meal is delicious. “Gracias, María. Es delicioso,” Martha says. María responds, “Y gracias para ustedes. I am happy you are here.” Hope keeps shoveling it in, humming happily. Then she looks up and says to Maria, “I’ve been frozen next to my mommy’s heart for a long time. Today she found me and unfroze me, and here I am!”

Her mom added, “And I was walking along and saw Martie sitting on a rock in a field of poppies, this one on her lap, and I thought they might need help so I went to see what was up. As I got closer I could see that I knew them. Then I saw that they were Martha and Hope, both of whom I was surprised to see. Martie because I’m dead and she’s alive, and Hope because I hadn’t seen her since she was a little girl.”

Okay then, thinks Martha. She won’t be any help explaining this to me, or anyone else. Maybe when you’re dead you just take weird shit for granted.

María simply nodded and took another bite. “There were angels all round you three,” she said. “You were glowing when you entered my house. It’s called El Hospital del Alma for a reason.”

*SJPP is Camino shorthand for St. Jean Pied de Port, a small, charming Basque French town that’s served as the Camino gateway over the Pyrenees into Spain for a millennia or more.

Camino Fiction by Barb Morris