- Time of past OR future Camino
- Yearly and Various 2014-2019
Via Monastica 2022
Robo raises a really interesting point in another thread--and I was intrigued by his post:
Obviously here there's a biased crowd of 'repeat offenders' but I was surprised to read that Robo had heard from 'many others' that they also have no interest in walking again. That hadn't been my experience. Maybe it's who you connect with...most (but not all) would if they could. Impossible to know, of course, but I wonder now after reading Robo's post what the proportion of pilgs have no interest in returning.
That aside, the question is this: Obviously walking the Camino again (and again...) is not for everyone.
On other threads, those of us who do return articulate various experiences of not being able to step into the same stream twice. That's a given. But the deeper question is what calls you again and again, and what happens inside. So I'd be curious to hear reflections from the old hands around here...and others who have walked (especially the same route) twice or several times...
Internally and externally: what calls you to the edge of the water again? And how do you relate to the journey?
My own curiosity was about what would happen if I went that much further out of my comfort zone--and I wanted to see where the limits of trust/faith now were. And the second camino was so totally different from the first that comparing wasn't happening so much. The frame was the same but the picture was very different--and the entire journey was surprisingly and remarkably fresh.
[Of course one remembers, but that's different. (And sometimes I didn't! It astonished me when parts of the path that I knew I had to have walked before felt completely new--or the details had been scrambled or remembered differently.)]
It was so not the same stream! it was deeper, broader, and quite a bit scarier than the first time. But I found I could swim just fine. You?
Second time huh? How many days did you walk the first time?
Funny, but I wouldn't do it again....
I'll close off my blog with the logic in detail. But mainly this.....
I walked the Camino at a time in my life that I needed a break. Isolation. Solitude. Time to think. Reflect. Re-prioritise.
What i got was a very powerful physical, emotional and spiritual journey. Far above my expectations.
It's job is done. It worked. Any repetition would be meaningless. For Me At Least. I would be constantly comparing it with my first time. ..
Many others I spoke to thought the same....
But I guess it all depends on the reasons we walk the Camino. ..
Obviously here there's a biased crowd of 'repeat offenders' but I was surprised to read that Robo had heard from 'many others' that they also have no interest in walking again. That hadn't been my experience. Maybe it's who you connect with...most (but not all) would if they could. Impossible to know, of course, but I wonder now after reading Robo's post what the proportion of pilgs have no interest in returning.
That aside, the question is this: Obviously walking the Camino again (and again...) is not for everyone.
On other threads, those of us who do return articulate various experiences of not being able to step into the same stream twice. That's a given. But the deeper question is what calls you again and again, and what happens inside. So I'd be curious to hear reflections from the old hands around here...and others who have walked (especially the same route) twice or several times...
Internally and externally: what calls you to the edge of the water again? And how do you relate to the journey?
My own curiosity was about what would happen if I went that much further out of my comfort zone--and I wanted to see where the limits of trust/faith now were. And the second camino was so totally different from the first that comparing wasn't happening so much. The frame was the same but the picture was very different--and the entire journey was surprisingly and remarkably fresh.
[Of course one remembers, but that's different. (And sometimes I didn't! It astonished me when parts of the path that I knew I had to have walked before felt completely new--or the details had been scrambled or remembered differently.)]
It was so not the same stream! it was deeper, broader, and quite a bit scarier than the first time. But I found I could swim just fine. You?