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Walking the Camino de Santiago taught me the wonders of physical challenge, the wonders of spiritual freedom, and the wonders of baby powder.
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Christy Hall (The Little Silkworm)
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people should walk this path even before they graduate" [...] "What's one month? It's not even a paragraph in the book of your life...
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Diana-Maria Georgescu (THE UNSTOPPABLE THIRST : El Camino de Santiago de Compostela An Alchemic Path Towards The Inner Self)
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To feel the pull, the draw, the interior attraction, and to want to follow it, even if it has no name still, that is the "pilgrim spirit."The "why" only becomes clear as time passes, only long after the walking is over.
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Kevin A. Codd (Beyond Even the Stars: A Compostela Pilgrim in France)
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I hear a swelling swoosh; from the south a bullet train whizzes into view on the tracks, knives through the landscape in a matter of moments, then disappears with a whoosh. It has just covered in a few seconds what has taken me hours to walk. That very fast train reminds me that, as a pilgrim, travel is made holy in its slowness. I see things that neither the passengers of the train nor the drivers of the automobiles see. I feel things that they will never feel. I have time to ponder, imagine, daydream. I tire. I thirst. In my slow walking, I find me.
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Kevin A. Codd (Beyond Even the Stars: A Compostela Pilgrim in France)
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In the end, we are never alone! We have friends all over the world, people that are coming on our life path if they are supposed to support us, teach us a lesson, or just walk with us for a while And while walking the Camino, it is very easy to see it all and to understand how blessed you are in this life.
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Diana-Maria Georgescu (THE UNSTOPPABLE THIRST : El Camino de Santiago de Compostela An Alchemic Path Towards The Inner Self)
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Yes, husband. Now it is my desire that matters, not yours. Now I want something. I am very surprised to learn that I want things, for myself, things that have nothing to do with you. I want many things, in fact. Do you know what I want? I want to eat some roast pork, first of all. And then I want to walk the Camino de Santiago on sore feet with a song on my lips. I would like to travel on a ship, also. And I would like to learn how to play dice.
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Kate Heartfield (Armed in Her Fashion)
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Essentially, this thirst is not the longing for an extensive walk on the Camino. It's the longing of meeting your own being, outside the temptations of a fully materialistic world. Camino is just a channel, a concrete representation of your inner need to evade the loop your life is repeating over and over again, and find your true nature, your true voice, your true meaning on this planet. And when you walk this path, you complete a layer of your search.
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Diana-Maria Georgescu (THE UNSTOPPABLE THIRST : El Camino de Santiago de Compostela An Alchemic Path Towards The Inner Self)
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Please, Holy Mother God,” I whispered in prayer, “help me cut the invisible cords that bind me, and set me free. Give me the inner strength to let go of all that I have created up until now, on every level, and which no longer reflects the highest path for me, and for those I love and serve. Help calm my more masculine energies so I can settle into my own divine feminine nature and cool the angry fires of hurt and fear that have burned in my heart for so long.” After making my prayerful request, I got up and lit a candle to the Divine Mother, to say “thank you” for hearing me. I was ready to surrender. I knew it was time to release control over my life and let God take over. I spoke my intention aloud: “This life of mine is now finished. My present way is no longer serving me or allowing my greater Spirit to express through me. I ask for the cocoon to break open and free my true divine light. I surrender all attachments on all levels to the past and am now ready for what the Universe has in store for me. And so it is.” At that moment time stood still. I knew my intention was heard and registered by the heavens, and that my request would be honored and met with divine support. I sensed an inner shift take place in me. I didn’t feel euphoric. I didn’t even feel happy. Rather, I felt somber and quiet in spite of the thousand sounds swirling around me, the Universe saying, Okay, get ready. The next morning, I suddenly had a powerful intuitive hit from my Higher Self that said, “Sonia, it is time to heal your life, and the only way to do that is to walk the Camino de Santiago. And go alone.
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Sonia Choquette (Walking Home: A Pilgrimage from Humbled to Healed)
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Not for the wife to keep house, but to be a partner, someone to share strengths and weaknesses and make something even greater through union. To make sure neither one of you gets overwhelmed. To help make time and space for yourself, both of you.
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Jerry Meyer (Go Slow, Plan Little, Walk Forever: Along the Camino de Santiago and Beyond)
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The Camino. It’s not to get to know myself. I’ve repeated the condensed version of the story of my life so many times to others along the Way it sounds to me stale and formulaic. Even irritating. I’m from here, I did this, I do that, and I think such and such, that is me. For all the events in life I have found so consuming, so defining, I can see how petty and inconsequential they are. No, that’s a little too nihilistic. But being compelled to repeat my story so often I can see it is not all that I am. These headlines, where I’m from, the work I’ve done or do, the things I’ve seen and experienced and made, the people I know or have known, my beliefs and perspectives, the things I’ve yet to do but want to, I cling to them even as they turn to dust. The telling and retelling, I’ve begun to see, ultimately liberates you from your narrative, if you allow it to. The
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Jerry Meyer (Go Slow, Plan Little, Walk Forever: Along the Camino de Santiago and Beyond)
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Pilgrimage is a journey of discovery—the find may be inside oneself, it may be a fresh appreciation of nature, or the pleasure of opting out of the real world for a while; it might be the delight in making new friends in a very random but quite intense way.
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Natasha Murtagh (Buen Camino! Walk the Camino de Santiago with a Father and Daughter: A Physical Journey that Became a Spiritual Transformation)
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summer of 2011, when the first call to walk the Camino Santiago de Compostela had tugged at my soul, I would not have known this was my why. A tug so fierce I had no choice but to follow, the next years would guide me to
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Katharine Elliott (Patagonia: the Camino Home (A Camino of the Soul Book 2))
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In the spring of 2015, I went to Spain to walk for a week on the Camino de Santiago, the medieval route that has been used for centuries by pilgrims demonstrating their devotion, and now by spiritual seekers looking for renewal. Ever since I studied medieval art in college, walking the Camino had been a dream of mine. I loved the idea of a moderately sized adventure, one that was about walking, not running, and still had the safety of towns and sleeping on mats on the floor instead of inside tents. I set off with underprepared feet, too much in my backpack, thirteen words of Spanish and my copy of Eat Pray Love.
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Various (Eat Pray Love Made Me Do It: Life Journeys Inspired by the Bestselling Memoir)
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You are safer walking the Camino in Spain than any day you spend in the United States.
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Terence Callery (Slow Camino: My Adventure on the Camino de Santiago)
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Be yourself and be determined,” he says. “Even if you don’t know what you want, you won’t know if you are not determined.
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Natasha Murtagh (Buen Camino! Walk the Camino de Santiago with a Father and Daughter: A Physical Journey that Became a Spiritual Transformation)
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Optimists are intrinsically happier and happiness breeds further happiness. Light a candle rather than curse the darkness and do not wait for someone else to light it; do it yourself.
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Natasha Murtagh (Buen Camino! Walk the Camino de Santiago with a Father and Daughter: A Physical Journey that Became a Spiritual Transformation)
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Choose your life partner wisely; find one who makes you laugh and smile, who shares your interests and loves you for who you are, not what they want you to be; choose a partner who is strong but gentle with it; choose a partner you want to wake up beside every morning for the rest of your life. Choose a partner who would walk the Camino with you.
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Natasha Murtagh (Buen Camino! Walk the Camino de Santiago with a Father and Daughter: A Physical Journey that Became a Spiritual Transformation)
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… how on earth had it come to this; how was she looking at care homes for the elderly when she still felt twenty years old inside, still believed she could do headstands, and when there was still so much that she wanted to do with her life – like swim the English Channel or ride across plains with proper cowboys, learn the trumpet or walk the Camino de Santiago with all her belongings on her back. How might she do these things now? Where had the time gone? What was left of her one, brief life?
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Susan Fletcher (The Night in Question)
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Head south where they speak French, cross the mountains through the pass at St Jean, walk until they speak Spanish, then keep the sun at your back in the morning, and in front of you in the afternoon, or by night, follow the stars known as the Milky Way until your reach the sea.” - Codex Calixtinus
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Shannon O'Gorman (The Camino de Santiago: One Wanderful Walk)
John Seegers (Another Camino Story: Learning to walk my own Camino through life on 500 miles to Santiago de Compostela, Spain)
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learned walking slowly along the Camino is a blessing for me. Although my knee occasionally hurts, I enjoy the walk, enjoy the country and the people I meet. For me, enjoying the journey is more important than reaching the destination. It’s the experiences leading to the destination that make the trip enjoyable and memorable, truth that applies to your journey through life, as well. Enjoy your walk through life, even if your knee hurts. Enjoy the world around you and the people you meet. That is what the journey is all about.
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John Seegers (Another Camino Story: Learning to walk my own Camino through life on 500 miles to Santiago de Compostela, Spain)
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You need to go. You will go,” she proclaimed. “You’re already a pilgrim, Freddi.”
Every time I spoke to her, she repeated it for years, including the last time I’d spoken with her, just a few days before I walked off the doorstep of that albergue in Saint-Jean-Pied-De-Port.
“Pilgrim.”
She was the first to call me that, but not the last. Everyone became a pilgrim that first day. Our openness with one another created something. We surrounded ourselves with people of all generations and cultures and backgrounds; we were united in exhaustion from carrying our damaged, decaying spirits.
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Steven Hunter (Relish In the Tread)
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People who walk all the way to Santiago from France or somewhere beyond are usually considered pilgrims, but people who skip past the boring bits on a bus or train are lightweights, sight-seers, tourists. “Real pilgrims” take the good with the bad, they accept whatever the trail throws at them. They’re respectful, they carry their necessities and not an ounce more, in a bag strapped on their backs. They keep it simple, they don’t take the easy, or posh alternative. Rain, blisters, fierce dogs, bedbugs, blinding heat or deep snow, they keep walking. They’re vagabonds with a peculiar respectability, and a great deal of self-regard.
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Rebekah Scott (A Furnace Full of God: A Holy Year on the Camino de Santiago)