This blog is a work in progress and may change markedly as I find my way. I started out on Tumblr but have now migrated to WordPress which all the cool people use. I’m still monkeying around with the appearance so some of the references below are to images which have not yet made it over to the WordPress layout. In particular, this:

The two pictures you see (or I hope you see!) are my way of binding where I’m coming from to where I will go on the Camino. The edge to edge photo banner is a picture I took last December in Sanderson, TX, and shows a fossilized impression of a shell. This echoes the symbolic marking of the way along the Spanish parts of Camino de Santiago. The path is marked by stylized scallop shells, a practical way to show the way. Some believe that it is also symbolic of the shells found along the Galician coastline, another three days’ walk from Santiago de Compostela. According to other accounts, the earliest pilgrims would carry a shell as a practical vessel from which to eat or drink. Finally, and certainly appealing, is the thought that the lines of the scallop shell all converge, as pilgrims from many origins converge at Santiago de Compostela. Many pilgrims today carry a shell as a symbol of their journey and I will likely do so as well.

I’m still examining the multiple reasons I believe I have chosen to walk the Camino de Santiago. There’s the challenge, but also the possibilities which lie along the way. I am not a religious person, but am moved by the music of Bach, or Palestrina, or the Masses of Mozart and Haydn. I’ve no doubt the off-stage horn signals in Gustav Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony represent the voice of God, and I know that I am always touched from beyond when I hear (and have many times played) those calls. But please don’t insist this proves I am religious. Call it spiritual, if you must call it anything.

The inset photo was taken through a window at Mission Espada, one of the five missions along the San Antonio River. I wonder how many of the missionaries who came to San Antonio from Spain, by way of New Spain (Mexico) might have walked the Camino de Santiago? But I suppose the reason I have used this particular picture, symbolically, is the passage which is suggested by a door, or the flight of imagination suggested by a window.

I am cautious about imposing expectations on my Camino. The pictures at the top of this blog may be meaningless by the time I walk the first mile. But there’s also the perhaps that I will find answers along the way, though I’m not sure of the questions. As I told one friend, I am prepared to accept whatever the Camino might offer.