where I went

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." A nephew drew to my attention this quotation from Douglas Adams's The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, and I think it beautifully summarizes my year off.

Ages ago I had hoped we'd both go live somewhere interesting for a while, when Richard was still planning to freelance. But those hopes faded away when he got a job he actually enjoyed, and couldn't take time even for a few weeks in Paraguay. Then I thought I would be a homebody and pursue domestic interests. Except that I was only interested in them when they were a diversion, not my primary focus. I thought I might do an MCC learning tour to a Spanish-speaking place. Then I got intrigued by CPT and did a delegation with them instead. I had wanted to read, finish Der Mann Ohne Eigenschaften for example, but I've made no progress with it, couldn't sit long enough to focus. Ed asked me to spend a few weeks (minimum) at their place helping with the house, and hanging out. Oh look, that was something I did! After that I was torn - should I do the CPT training and get serious about NGO work, or should I follow other friends and walk the Camino to Santiago? And look, I ended up doing both (although I am no longer associated with CPT). Oh, and I did work on my Spanish quite a lot, though speaking is not easy yet. So where I had intended to go was to be useful, do things I had no time for before, and learn Spanish.

And here's where I think I've ended up:
- more thoughtful about power and more compassionate toward people who get in its way
- still sad at relationships that don't work
- more aware of how difficult nonviolent communication is
- more committed to practicing nonviolent communication
- amazed that you sometimes get what you want, and always get what you need (thanks for reminding me, Nanna)
- more committed to keeping my eyes open in order to see that I get what I want and need
- hopeful that there is more to life than getting stuff done
- more patient and compassionate with myself in learning all of the above

Wish me luck and/or pray for me.

pix of my camino

Here are my low tech efforts, at capturing some of the moments on my camino:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=56974&l=507aa&id=657825405

here are some photos sent to me by camino friends:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=60860&l=ecf28&id=657825405

Remember to visit Fernando's blog if you want more proper pictures! (link at left)

still on the road, sort of

So I'm not walking anymore, which makes me sad but makes the balls of my feet happy. However my travels are not over. June 12-16 I'll be visiting Quebec City with a friend from Winnipeg. June 24-28 my sister and her family are coming for a visit (from Switzerland) on their way to BC. June 30 to July 19 I'll be in BC visiting family and helping my dear parents-in-law celebrate 50 years of marriage. July 20-27 I'll be in Quebec City again for the convention of the International Federation of French Teachers. It'll be fun to see three dear colleagues again, and to share that week. Then I'll be home, slowly getting back into my work head.

Over the year I've had a bit of contact with some colleagues, and have checked my work e-mail only enough to pass on what needed to be passed on and ignore the rest. It's been very good to get away. I've also missed the thrill of shared learning and interesting conversations with students and colleagues. I'll be ready to go back.

camino people

Now that I'm home, I've been going back over my camino log, checking the place names where I slept, checking the kilometers, remembering what happened and how I felt.

I really like to know the names of the people I'm talking to, and I wrote most of them down. So I thought I'd make a little litany of place names and people names, just for fun:

train to Bayonne, taxi to St-Jean-Pied-de-Port
Bruno from Freiburg, CH; Giuseppe from Italy; Gudrun from Munich

1. St-Jean-Pied-de-Port to Roncesvalles: 27 km
Gabe, Giuseppe, Claude, Christian, Renate, Kim

2. Roncesvalles to Zubiri: 20 km
Giuseppe, Bruno, Renate, Gerda, José, Elsa, Mariaje, Pachi, Kim, Inma, Jacqueline, Nicole

3. Zubiri to Cizur Mayor: 30 km
Elisabeth, Inma, Giorgio, Gastone, Pietro, Umberto, Annie & Claude

4. Cizur Mayor to Puente la Reina: 20 km
Giorgio, Gastone, Pietro, Umberto, Di, John the van coffee guy, Inma, Jacqueline, Annie & Claude, Jill, Elisabeth & Maria Eugenia, Wolfgang, Kay, Fernando

5. Puente La Reina to Estella: 22 km
Raymond, Monique & Jean-Louis, Maria Eugenia, Elisabeth, Inma, Jill, Gary, Annette, Gabe, Di, François & Jean-Pierre, three Albertans

6. Estella to Los Arcos: 22 km
Di, Monique, Wolfgang, Kai, Fernando, Elisabeth, Maria Eugenia, Elsa, José, Jacqueline, Nicole

7. Los Arcos to Logroño: 28 km
three Albertans, Jill, Lydia, Kay, Fernando, Wolfgang, Oscar, Giorgio, Umberto, Gastone, Pietro, Günther and the Frankish male quartet, Inma, Rosa, Ricardo

8. Logroño to Nájera: 29 km
Wolfgang, Kay, Fernando, Oscar, Monique & Jean-Louis, Inma, Rosa, Ricardo, Gerda, Tony & Johanna, Chantal

9. Nájera to Santo Domingo de la Calzada: 21 km
Wolfgang, Kay, Fernando, Oscar; Ismael Gomez Sacristan (wine saint in Cirueña)

10. Santo Domingo de la Calzada to Belorado: 23 km
my camino brothers (Wolfgang, Kay, Fernando, Oscar); Elsa & José, Vanna, Marcella, Belen (hospitalera)

11. Belorado to Altapuerca: 30 km
camino brothers, Nathalie, Eduardo from Villafranca (pure water at the Montes de Oca), Inma, Rosa, Ricardo, Maria Eugenia, Elsa, José, Danielle & Michel, Edelgart

12. Altapuerca to Burgos: 20 km
camino brothers, Nathalie, Christian & Claude, Annie & Claude, Donald

13. Burgos to Hornillos del Camino: 20 km
Wolfgang, Josefa, Rosa, Lucy, Nathalie, 3 Albertans

14. Hornillos del Camino to Itero de la Vega: 31 km
Wolfgang, Gerda, Nathalie, Edeltraut (74 yrs old!), Nanna, Anne, Mary, Nina, 2 Quebeckers

15. Itero de la Vega, Carrion de los Condes: 34 km
Bernie, Nanna, Lim & Jean (Korea), Kay, Fernando, Oscar,
compañeros of Ricardos paella: Inma, Rosa, Ricardo, Abby, Alessandro, Felipe, José, Elsa, Santiago

16. Carrion de los Condes to Sahagun: 38 km
Oscar, Kay, Fernando; Chantal (Quebec), Daniel

17. Sahagun to Mansilla de la Mulas and Villarente: 37 + 6 km
Oscar, Kay, Fernando; Daniel
I started getting nervous about asking people's names when one person started winking at me and sitting too close to me after we introduced ourselves. So there are fewer names from here on.

18. Villarente to Leon: 14 km
Oscar, Kay, Fernando

19. Leon to Hospital de Órbigo: 31 km
Kay, Fernando, Oscar, angel from Vienna, Amadito, Michel & Danielle, hospitalera in San Martin del Camino, Fernando from La Rioja

20. Hostpital de Órbigo to El Ganso: 30 km
Astorgan guy with visions; Kate, Ange

21. El Ganso to Riego de Ambrós: 27 km
Kay, Fernando, Oscar, Kate, Michel & Danielle,

22. Riego de Ambrós to Cacabelos: 28 km
Kate, Ange, Stefan, Bernie, Christophe the Breton and his pals

23. Cacabelos to Trabadelo over Pradelo (camino duro): 20 km?
Kate, Ange, Christophe, two German women, Richard, HeJo, 4 Barcelona women

24. Trabedlo to O Biduedo (over O Cebreiro): 30 km
HeJo, Richard, 2 Australian women, blond Breton smoker, Ange (in bar at H. de Condesa), Sabine (Freiburg), Wolfgang (Köln), Jean-Marie


25. O Biduedo to Samos: 16 km
2 short French smokers, Nanna, K, F, O, Ange, Wolfgang and Sabine, Jean-Marie, John, Alison

26. Samos to Portomarin: 34 km
K,F,O, Edelgard, Nanna, Helga

27. Portomarin to Palas del Rey: 24 km
K,F,O

28. Palas del Rey to Árzua: 30 km
K,F,O, Edelgard; San Xulian hospitalero of 4 beds and Bach; Nanna, Alice

29. Árzua to Monte de Gozo: 35 km
K,F,O, Edelgard, Michel & Danielle, Christophe

30. Monte de Gozo to Catedral de Santiago de Compostela: 5 km
K,F,O, Edelgard
Reunion with the compañeros of Ricardo's paella (Carrion de los Condes) and many other pilgrims I met on the way.

in my end is my beginning

I wasn't expecting anything much from the arrival, since it was all about the walk for me. I was arriving with my camino brothers to share in their experience, because it was important to them. And then we were walking down the hill before light, with the city lights below us. And then we saw the back of the cathedral, walked through a portal and saw the almost empty square in the early morning. We just stood there for a long time.

It was a day of meeting camino friends again, and we ate together in a big crowd in the afternoon, and because no one wants it to end, went for coffee in view of the cathedral afterward. Many tears were shed before we finally parted ways.

For me the most emotional moment happened in the first reading during the mass, from Deuteronomy. The text talked about choosing your camino, and reminded me of our wedding text, Deuteronomy 30:11-16, and that's when I turned into a water fountain. I thought about this choice between life and death which God asked them to make on that day, and thought that probably there are some choices I need to make every day rather than rely on that one choice ages ago. Choosing life in my thoughts, attitudes, interactions is part of what I'm taking with me from my camino, echoing what we took along into our marriage, renewing it somehow.

Today Fernando gave us each a puzzle, because life is full of puzzle pieces that we put together as best we can. This puzzle has a pilgrim on it, and it says "Por una vida llena de flechas", wishing us signposts to show us our way, echoing the blessing of the Augustinian nuns in Carrion de los Condes, who encouraged us to look for the arrows in our life as we look for them on the camino.

overnight at the mount of joy

After a long day of 35 km from Arzúa, I arrived at Monte de Gozo with Kay, Oscar and Fernando. The walk went through forests and villages again today, with fragrant eucalyptus trees shedding their bark. The 2 hrs of morning fog finally burned off to leave us with sunshine through the trees. We walked mostly alone, meeting up for coffee breaks. It was the right way to do the last big day.

Tomorrow we will walk 5 km to the cathedral, get our compostela, and attend the pilgrim mass at noon. Then we'll head to our hostel and transform ourselves into regular people as we get ready to meet some of our other friends for a "family gathering", reuniting the families of friends who ate Ricardo's marvelous paella in Carrion de los Condes. Monday K, F, O continue to Finisterre, but I will do it in a day trip on the bus, just to see the ocean and throw my socks in it.

I'm feeling sad, I don't want it to end. I keep thinking of how I might do this next time. Strange. Good thing I'll have lots of time in trains and planes to think things through.

at home in Galicia

This is me with my favourite pilgrim monument, the tired one who has taken his sandals off. We were on our way out of León that day, it was the beginning of my bad day turned good day.

And today what a lovely wet day of walking through the Galician countryside! Lots of farms with cows and chickens, lots of rain, lots of mud. Lovely views all around. Many pilgrims looked unhappy today, they're really tired of the rain. Lucky me I like the rain! My jacket kept me dry on top, and the rain didn't get hard enought to wet my pants except for about an hour or so after lunch. And when it stopped, my pants dried quickly. Still, it was great to get to the big modern pilgrim hostel in Portomarin, and throw everything into the washing machine, sleeping bag and all.

This morning I started off with Kay, Fernando and Oscar from Samos where we had stayed overnight in a monastery. They like to get going early with a minimal breakfast of yogurt and fruit. On that fuel we covered the 12 km to Sarria in 2 hrs and 10 minutes. That's so fast! Too fast really; I got a leg cramp in the last few minutes before we stopped for breakfast, where I could fuel up on tortilla (potato and egg dish), while my camino brothers ate toast and jam. No wonder I took off like a rocket after that, right? I always feel a little sad when we lose each other during the day, they're so great in so many ways. But it makes the reunions in the evening so much nicer, and tonight we had a dinner with some other friends as well.

There's a light haze of sadness over the great camino family feeling now, as we near the end of the walk. I don't want it to end! But just a few more nights of earplugs against snorers, waking up early, massaging the feet and walking with the first light. But it's so much more than just a walk, have I said that already? I'll figure out a better way to say it soon.

should I go or should I stay?

Should I stay in Ponferrada or should I heed the call of the road and keep walking?

If you're wishing there were some pictures here, please visit my friend Fernando's blog, since he's better organized about photos than I. And I'm in some of them anyway.

Yesterday I passed the highest point of the walk, some 1500 m above sea level. There I left a symbolic stone at the bottom of the iron cross where pilgrims have been doing just that for ages. It was a wonderful climb: the fog burned off, there were dark clouds with light coming through, the terrain of the path was nicely varied to give my feet a break, and I can't talk about the view, you'll have to see it for yourself. Do visit the mundicamino site (link at left), stay on the Spanish page and click on Camino francés (the English site is not great). I'm somewhere in their stage 25.

My head and heart are full, and I have a week of experiences left. Will likely arrive in Santiago on June 1, hopefully for the party that some of the "compañeros de la paella de Carrion" are planning.

So, I think I'll go to the next village after all. Animo!

los ángeles del 21 de mayo

Today I had a very hard day. It all started with a little egotism yesterday: I went for a massage in León and told the therapist that I'm ok with intensive massage. Ha. Maybe true at home, but not here on the camino. I walked out of there one big ache, and sleeping for 90 minutes afterwards did nothing to ease the pain. Walking to the cathedral afterward I felt some gentle twanging in the left foot. Should have gone straight to my bed, but didn't. Felt better this morning, but after about 90 minutes of walking with my compañeros and with very sore balls of my feet, I had to stop for a café con leche in Virgen del Camino. They went on, of course, they want to get to Finisterre by June 4 or so. Besides, I've left them before and caught up, so it's not like I'll never see them again. Still, I was feeling very sad and very sorry for myself. I sat outside with my coffee, my orange juice and my pastry and pulled my hat over my eyes ostensibly against the sun but really to make it less obvious that I had turned into a water fountain. That's when the camino started to speak to me.

Angel #1: a pilgrim from near Vienna who asked if she could sit at my table even though the others were unoccupied. When she came back with her coffee, she saw my face and told me she was in the same spot a few days ago, that it was ok, that I'd feel better soon and would stop hurting soon, and that I'd see my friends again. I didn't ask her name. She left before I did, but later she came up from behind me again, encouraging me to let the camino teach me about limits and to enjoy my own pace. After walking with me for a while, she stopped to put moleskin on her sore toe and I walked on.

Angels #2 and #3: I was walking with quite sore feet, but the terrain was softer so I was making better progress, and happened to catch up with Danielle and Michel, a couple from the south of France who've been on the road for weeks, started in Le Puy. They told me they had seen our mutual friends and encouraged me to keep to my own pace. Walking with them took my mind off my self-pity.

Angel #4: around 12:30 I stopped at an albergue in San Martin del Camino, wondering if I should call it quits for the day, but not really wanting to. The hospitalero told me what was in the mixed salad and I ordered it. The hospitalera who brought it to me was angel #4: the salad was a small mountain and had eggs, tuna, rice, pasta, tomatos and lettuce. She told me to sit there and eat the whole thing, that this is exactly what my body needed. She brought me a pitcher of water and big chunks of hearty bread, then kept checking on my progress. After a while she asked if I wanted a glass of wine, on her. Really exactly what I needed. The break finished off with yet more comfort because Richard called just when I was finished eating, and then Ed called as I was walking out of the village.

Angel #5: the misery of the day was incomplete without a nice downpour, but that happened a few minutes after I left the village. I found partial shelter under a tree until the worst of it passed, but by then my pants (that's right, I came without rain pants, loca that I am) were drenched. By then self-pity would have been ridiculous, especially when I saw Fernando, a pilgrim-hospitalero from La Rioja, poking his head out the window of an old barn asking if I was nuts. But I won't call him angel #5; that honour goes to the happy frogs who were singing in the creek next to the path for the remainder of the walk to the village of Hospital de Orbigo.

Angel #6: when the rain stopped and the sun came out, my quick-dry pants quickly dried in the light breeze which was playing with the leaves. The sound reminded me to breathe and to live where I was and not somewhere else.

A few hundred metres from the village Fernando from La Rioja caught up with me and laughed at the two of us walking in the rain. He might be angel #7, but that would simply be too cute or medieval, so I'll leave him out of it :-)

Now I'm sitting in a warm albergue getting ready to eat my empanada with tuna, and later my yogurt. My feet are still very sore, as are my calves and shins. Who know how things will be tomorrow, how far I'll be able to walk, but for tonight at least I'm warm and dry.

moments, not kilometers

When I was walking out of Burgos with my friend Wolfgang a few days ago, an elderly gentleman held us up for a little chat. This happens regularly, and the opportunity for an interesting conversation is just to great to pass up. Domingo Lopez Calle told us the camino is not about hurrying to collect kilometers, but about slowing down and collecting moments.

That's what I'm doing. I'm walking on my own again, enjoying the space around me watching the clouds pass, and the space in my head watching the thoughts pass.

The meseta is so beautiful, there are fewer pilgrims on the road, and my body has found its own rhythm.

Gifts of the Camino

Today on Pentecost Sunday I'm in Santo Domingo de la Calzada. There's a 5-day feast for the saint going on this week, so there's one party after the other going on in the village. It's fun, makes one forget that it's cold and damp out. There's a great legend here that features miraculous chickens, so in a while I'll go to the church and check out the chickens there. You can read the legend by following the image on the site above, to "milagro".

Sounds tacky, I know, but there are so many great things that happen as one walks along, so I thought I'd make a little litany of thanks for the gifts I've received, in no particular order.

The four compañeros I've travelled with yesterday and today: Wolfgang, Kay, Fernando (link to his blog at left) and Oscar (2 Germans, 2 Mexicans). It's a great little band of pilgrims, there's lots of singing and laughing and multilingual chatting. Yesterday when I was walking with a wet behind for about 4 hrs their company helped me keep my spirits warm, and in the evening in Nájara we had a great time at dinner. When we're walking, there's a nice rhythm of walking alone or with the others, and we wait for each other at major crossings or at a café/bar for our morning coffee.

The views: the beautiful colours in the fields, the amazing delicacy of flowers (the colours of the season are blue, red, yellow). The lines of geography: the shape of the hills, the line of the path ahead, the shapes and colours of the wet rocks, the different colours and textures of the mud. The villages: smooth shining cobblestones, beautiful arrows and shells showing us the way, seemingly unpopulated before 9, except for the flowers in the windows and at the doors, and then when we finish dinner, around 9, and come out of the restaurant, suddenly there are people everywhere.

It seems there's something every day: Fri I walked into Logroño with 4 men from the Frankish area of Bavaria, and they turned out to be a folk quartet. Their beds were in a row next to mine, and as we were settling in they sang for me "Grosser Gott wir loben Dich". They've promised me "Weisst Du wieviel Sternlein stehen" next time we meet. The room we ended up sleeping in last night had huge skylights through which we watched storks flying around. Today when we were having a wet picnic on a bench beside the road in Cirueña, an elderly couple opened their window and welcomed us. The man, Ismael, came out and said, "nice picnic, but where's the wine?" We said we didn't have any, and he motioned for us to follow him. He led us to his cellar where he has 4 vats of 300 L each, and he gave us from the vat of young wine of tempranillo grapes. It was so delicious with our baguette of ham and cheese! He was so fun, telling us about the process, about how he sees hordes of pilgrims rushing by but rarely anyone who stops and even more rare the possibility for a conversation. His son and grandson dropped by and we talked to them too.

The food: the morning coffee after a couple hours of walking, when friends meet again and check on each other's aches and pains and how they slept and where they're walking to. The lovely fresh bread, delicious cheese, the interesting local stuff on the pilgrim menus in the restaurants.

The hot shower at the end of a day's walking, the crashing on the bed afterward before heading out to explore the village when everything opens again at 5. The delicious feeling of early sleep, a natural waking, and peaceful start to walking at first light.

This is just a little taste of some of the joys in my days. I'm filled with gratitude for these and many other gifts of the Camino.

"That's man all over for you,

blaming on his shoes the fault of his feet." Says either Didi or Gogo at the beginning of Waiting for Godot. And indeed my shoes and my pack feel so much better on my feet and my back and hips since I got rid of about three pounds of stuff.

Had a lovely day 6 today, walking from Estella to Los Arcos. Could have kept going, but the beds in Torres del Rio were all full. But it's ok, this way my body can recover better.

The spirit of the camino is something to be experienced. Pilgrims are friendly, respecting your need for either some conversation or some quiet. There is comaraderie if you want it, and an inexplicable privacy in the midst of living shoulder to shoulder in the hostels. Very curious.

The path through wine country today was so beautiful, rolling hills formed by the wind, it seems. I was out of earshot of others for a couple of hours and was belting out some hymns and some songs from my Women of Latin America cd. Who needs an ipod? But mostly I listen to babbling brooks, the wind in the trees and fields, the birds.

Now I'm off to my massage appointment. A local therapist offers good prices to pilgrims, and comes to the hostel! Tomorrow maybe a longer day, we'll see. One day at a time!

in joy and in pain in Puente la Reina

I'm so glad to be here!

I mean that in several senses.

So glad to be walking the Camino. It feels like exactly the right combination of physical effort and peace in nature; solitude and encounters with fellow pilgrims and interesting conversations in English, French, German, Spanish, and some multilingual ones with gestures. It feels right to be here.

Also so glad to have arrived at the hostel earlier today, because being here also hurts. The heck with my spiritual reflection on what I need and don't need, my attachment to my things is taking a physical toll, on my hips (inadequately padded hip belt for this weight) and my feet (too much weight on them). Something has to go. But what? I'm eating the food as fast as I can. Maybe mail some clothes and things to Ed's place. I will also to take a few short days like today and give my feet and hips time to recover from their effort.

Here's where I'm staying tonight, the Albergue Santiago Apostol, so you can see my view even though I can't figure out how to get photos out with the technology I have available.

Off to sit in the grass looking out over the green green valley. Pray for good weather, if you're praying!

my avowed intent to be a pilgrim

I've had this Anglican hymn text (after the original text by John Bunyan, with the Monk's Gate tune) running through my head off and on the last little while. It's a popular hymn at school, and maybe I've been homesick for thrice weekly prayers with 700 women's voices singing in unison (with a few men's to enrich the texture). But I've also been thinking a lot about what I need vs what I can carry. If I can't carry it, does that mean I don't need it? And why on earth was I not lifting weights for the past two months to get ready to carry everything I need?

Of course I'm talking about the 35 liter pack that will sit on my back for 4 - 6 hours a day, for the month it will take me to walk the Camino francés across northern Spain to Santiago de Compostela. The suggestion is not to carry more than 10% of your body weight. The single item in my pack that weighs the most is the water: the three-liter hydration pouch which fits into my pack and has a hose coming over my shoulder so I can drink hands free (-ish), when full, weighs 5 pounds. My simplified toiletries weigh 2 pounds. (I should make do with even less, I know, but I'm a middle-aged lady who needs a certain minimum of face creams and hair products.) My sandals weigh 1.5 pounds. My sleep sack and towel weigh 2 pounds, and my clothes weigh 5 pounds. Not bad, right? But I also need to carry food and vitamins and some other supplies like a knife, string, clothespins, duct tape, lamp, etc. My total at the moment is between 5 and 10 pounds heavier than I want to carry, depending on how many snack bars I carry. So, tomorrow when I'm well rested and clear-headed I'll go through everything again to see what else I can do without. After all, look at John Bunyan's pilgrim above, how comfortable does that look?

So the final big adventure of my year off work is this pilgrimage during which I will live only with what I can carry, spend hours on end alone (although my youngest brother is beginning the walk with me), sleep in pilgrim hostels (with earplugs) and eat off pilgrim menus.

What's the point? Or, as one relative said, Can't you think of anything better to do with your time? Well, actually, I can think of a lot of things to do with my time, and maybe that's the problem. There's too much stuff around me all the time, and too much noise in my head from all the things I should do, want to do, owe to other people. I guess I'm so used to this weight from my job, that even this year when I'm not working, I've packed on feelings of obligation to accomplish stuff for myself and for people around me. So by taking up my pilgrim's pack for a month I'm putting off the pack I usually carry around with me, to which I've been adding very worthwhile little things here and there, barely noticing that I'm bending more and more under the weight.

The destination is Santiago de Compostela, which I do want to see; but this is really mostly about the journey. I want to cultivate inner quiet, an attitude of awareness, openness, listening to the wind and the birds and to God, and occasionally to the people I meet. I'll have a notebook and a pen to slow my thoughts down by writing them. Since I can't actually sit still for very long, this physical effort will provide a framework for my inner pilgrim's progress. From the reading I've done, I know that sometimes the loudest thing I hear will be my aching shoulders or shins, or the snores of others in the bunkroom. I'll see how it goes. I don't want to be arrogant about my fitness, and will take a bus part of the way if I can't keep up the pace to get done in a month.

If I feel like it, I'll post something here occasionally. I'll see if my reflection leads anywhere. I can't tell where, from here!

(If you've never heard of this walk, have a look here at the route.)

Visit to Paraguay

for those who are interested in having a look, and who have some time to kill, here are photos from my 2-week visit to see Richard's relatives in Paraguay. Not very complete or artistic shots, but you can get an idea of how beautiful and interesting it is there. It's fall there now, so daytime temps only around 35 C., most nights around 25 except last few around 20. I ran twice in Asuncion and twice in the Chaco, very early, to avoid the worst heat.

I had a great time with the rellies, so many interesting people! And I have become an enthusiast of chipa, tereré, and the marvelous scent of palo santo wood. I am definitely going back, next time with Richard, and taking more time to see things I had no time for this time, and to spend more time with more of the cool relatives!

Asuncion:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=47271&l=91dc7&id=657825405

Chaco (mostly Neu Halbstadt, the centre of Neuland Colony):
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=47277&l=1d5b3&id=657825405

Chaco farms (Cousin Alfred's and Onkel Heinz's):
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=47281&l=98d2b&id=657825405

weekend trip to Iguazu (the Brazilian park):
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=47304&l=5173e&id=657825405

Relatives:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=47302&l=e983f&id=657825405

Final reflections on my learnings from CPT Training

Many have of you have asked about my experience in CPT Training in January, and it’s been hard to answer. I needed to talk to Doug P. (CPT Co-Director) before talking about it more publicly, and now feel ready to respond.

I am not continuing with CPT because I was rejected. I was shocked: because I believe it is not a good decision; because of the lack of transparency in the decision-making – I was told on the second last night – and because of the hurtful way the decision was communicated. I was given no warning, no opportunity to respond, and nothing but a broad general statement as a reason (“the way your gifts played out would not be good on team”). I found it very difficult to accept that an organization dedicated to peacemaking could behave like this, and I mourn the impossibility of further involvement with CPT because of this exclusion at the very end of a month’s good-faith effort.

I feel fortunate to have the support and nurture of a devoted spouse and close friends at church, but it has been especially hard thinking about being at church together with Doug and Jane. I am thankful however that Doug has listened respectfully to me, and has named what he hopes CPT can learn from this experience. We have decided together that naming what we have learned is one way to begin restoring this relationship in our strong church community. We've read each other's statements which will be printed in the church newsletter.

And so I would like to share some of what I have learned from my month in CPT.

1. I want to learn more about my own personality; how others might respond to my personality and what I can do to minimize the impact of those reactions; how and why I respond to the personalities of others. I have generally avoided personality profiling in the past but am committed to learning more.
2. Another learning about myself as a person is the strong reaction I have when I see interpersonal injustice. My first instinct is to figure out how to fix it, and I have a hard time letting go; even when I realise that I can’t fix it, or that it’s out of my area of responsibility and influence, I still want to convince people who are are a position to do so, that they need to fix the injustice.
3. I experienced the difficulty of having conversations across barriers created by privilege (of citizenship, skin colour, education, etc.) and moved from despair at the seeming impossibility of openness to the hope that acknowledging my own privilege will somehow be part of the movement toward more justice for all.
4. The most interesting and potentially useful part of the training for me were the three days of conflict transformation, with a large emphasis on the non-violent communication tools of Marshall Rosenberg. The workshop gave us a good initial familiarity with the tools, and learning about these transformative possibilities has given me reassurance that I don’t need to pursue CPT to obtain justice; it has been enough for me to be able to imagine various scenarios if CPT and I were to talk.

I want to thank readers of this blog for supporting me. I'm in an intensive Spanish course at the moment, trying to get more comfortable speaking. I'll be off to Paraguay for two weeks over Easter, and will get to see how much I've progressed. It'll be a linguistic feast for me, since many of the Ratzlaff cousins speak Spanish, German, English. I'm looking forward to discovering new places.

home again; perspective adjusted

It's so great to be home! Back to the comforts of home after three months away (with 5-day and 9-day breaks in the first and second month) feels like a blessing. The laundry is done and I've been napping a lot. I don't have plans to work on team with CPT at the moment. I am looking forward to being home, to reading and running and practicing yoga and practicing conversational Spanish. Thanks to all of you who were supporting me in various ways during my month in Chicago. Here's one last look at one of the more fun activities we did, a peace song circle, posted by my colleague Chihchun. The page has links to video glimpses of other parts of the training.

This morning I went to federal court with about 10 people from TUMC, accompanying a long-standing fellow church member, a stateless Palestinian whose application for status in Canada has been in process for 14 years. You can read an article about him in an August issue of the Toronto Star, and it wouldn't hurt to send an e-mail to Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day asking him to look at the 300 pages of evidence and reverse his decision. There's absolutely no grounds to believe that Youssef poses a threat to national interests, after all. On the contrary, granting him status would reflect well on Canada as a nation practicing justice.

In the meantime, please keep Youssef in your thoughts and prayers. He's in a very vulnerable place at the moment, feeling desperate at the continued separation from his family. I tried to encourage him by telling him the story of my parents' 14 years of refused immigration applications followed by miraculous permission; and encouraging him to hang in there by thinking of his children who need a better life. Canada can't deport him because he has nowhere to go; the refugee camp where he was born was destroyed. Why not let him and his family in?!? I hope the little crowd around Youssef in court this morning will help his chances, and I hope you'll all join to swell the ranks of the crowd and ask the government to give Youssef status.

Selected Quotations from my CPT Training Notes.

The way to get rid of an enemy is to turn him into a friend.

Justice: it will be better when everyone has enough.

A feeling of purpose or meaning in one’s life contributes to a sense of calm in difficult situations. What is my purpose, my meaning in life?

When coming out of a place of privilege, we can forget that our strongest power is the power of non-violent love, and rely instead on our privilege.

Observation without evaluation is the highest form of intelligence.

The purpose of conflict transformation / non-violent communication is
- to return to a natural way of being, i.e. joy in interactions
- to free ourselves from pre-conditioned thinking
- to build life-serving organizations

Working on undoing oppression (my own and that of my society) is part of working out my salvation with fear and trembling.

Sometimes you have to go slow to go fast.

The way out of the mess we have created will mean that people of privilege give something up.
But that’s ok, because there’s enough here for everyone.

Walls are better at keeping people in than at keeping people out.

Do you put a dollar’s worth of energy
into a nickel’s worth of conflict?

Welcome to the fiery furnace.
CPT is in here alongside Shadrach, Meschach and Abednego,
and is pulling the church in as well.

It’s not children’s responsibility to end violence.
They will stop violent play when they stop seeing it in their life.

My intention: to get “self” out of the way of relationships,
to be curious, to see, to ask questions, to enjoy.

Reconciliation is what God does with the enemy problem.

nearing the end of training

Just three and a half days of training to go. I have some assignments to complete this week yet, so I'm grateful for having evenings off for the rest of the week. I also hope to visit the Art Institute and go to one more concert of the Chicago Symphony. I fly back to Toronto at 6:00 on Sunday.

For those who were curious to hear more about our public witness (aka demonstration), I invite you to visit the article which appeared on Medill Reports. In the photo accompanying the article, I'm on the left, in the red toque and the yellow cape (I was handing out leaflets to traffic stopped at the red light, so needed to be visible). You can also read the official CPT report.

More to come once I get home!

learning and acting

We’ve covered a lot of ground in almost three weeks: the history and purpose non-violent direct action, conflict transformation and non-violent communication, spirituality for peace-making, organizing skills for working with media, inter-personal styles, CPT history and mission, undoing racism, trauma healing and self-care. Last week was particularly challenging for me, as we learned about non-violent communication. It’s a long time that I’ve been wanting to delve into this topic, and it feels like it will take me a long time to develop the skills I so badly want. Then I had some personal trouble during the two days of undoing racism, not related to the topic. It took its toll, but my fellow training participants were marvelously supportive. I feel very lucky to have them.

It’s a fabulous group: there are two Catholics in the group, one of them a nun who worked in Africa for 30+ years, the other an activist who goes to a really cool church with a woman priest. Both of them are warm and kind and loving, though their personalities seem different at first. Then there’s a retired minister from the UK who has spent chunks of time in Hebron, appreciates quiet and reads poetry. There’s a college grad who’s an activist and has a very inspiring faith. An older retired couple who came to activism when they joined with aboriginal people in their town to protest a uranium exploration project. Another woman grew up in Jamaica and has worked a lot with oppressed people. There’s a very cool and funny woman from New Jersey who has an amazing life story, and who has been a Mennonite for three years. The other Mennonites are just as interesting: a young woman from Taiwan who learned about CPT when she was on exchange in Goshen, a warm and funny retired missionary from Africa, a young social worker from the west coast who has a shining heart and faith, a musician/teacher/builder, and then there’s me. Everyone is inspiring and admirable in a different way, it seems, and I think I could work with any of them in the field, it things go that far.

Today was our second public witness: we visited Congressman Rahm Emanuel’s office to ask him to vote against any additional war funding. He’s a powerful Democrat who has been voting for war funding even though he is very vocal about opposing the war. Go figure that one out. Some of us stood with banners, leaflets and posters on the sidewalk outside the office, while others went inside to ask him to sign a pledge to oppose war funding. He wasn’t there, so they prayed and read a litany for the victims of the war, both US soldiers and Iraqi civilians. Outside on the sidewalk we read the same litany and sang peace songs.

I will tell you more about the events after the action at another time. Just now I wanted to invite you again to pray for our training group as people discern where to go from here, and of course to support the work of peacemakers everywhere. You can start by visiting CPT’s newly re-designed website! And please write me e-mails, I am really feeling quite homesick in spite of my great colleagues. Today especially was hard, because it's Richard's birthday! But I'll be home in 12 days.

Training has begun!

With my 9th day of training behind me, I've reached a certain comfort level with the training content and with my colleagues. The house where most of us sleep (in bunk beds) and eat breakfast is located about a 45 minute walk from the training centre where we spend our days and evenings. Most people do this walk twice a day. We begin with worship from 8:15-9:00, and we take turns leading that. Our sessions then go from 9:00-12:00, from 2:30-5:30, and from 7:30 till 9:00. We've covered quite a lot of ground already, from Biblical basis for non-violence, to learning about public witness and non-violent direct action, to planning and carrying out our own public witness, to reviewing the history of CPT and using a tool to discuss our inter-personal styles. It's been intense, but I've managed to run a few times, usually with colleagues, and occasionally practice yoga. I need more sleep than I'm getting, but it's hard to unwind enough at the end of the day to get to bed at a decent hour. We've been passing around a cold, but I only had it for a day. So I'm actually doing great.

Like other training groups before us, our first public witness was to challenge Toys R Us to remove violent video games from their inventory. Part of this witness can be seen here. We will also carry out a public witness on January 15.

I'm learning a lot, and I'm sure I'll learn a lot more in the 3 weeks + remaining. Thanks for your support!