'Cause I'm a Mennonite...it's what we do.

I am sure I probably mentioned this before but I was born Mennonite. It's sort of a quirky thing being born Mennonite as people think that means all of you travel in horse and buggies, that you wear black or navy, you don't watch television and you make great sausage. Now, some days I do wear black or navy and some days I self-righteously eschew television, too. I have even ridden in a horse and buggy, but I HAVE NEVER MADE SAUSAGE! Lousy Mennonite that I am! My dad makes sausage, though, so I think I get Mennonite points for that. Oh God! It just occurred to me that someone sincerely looking for information on Mennonites could Google this page. If this is you, TURN BACK NOW! RUN AWAY! YOU WILL NOT LIKE THE BLOG TO FOLLOW!

Anyway I digress. Mennonites digress, it's what we do when we are not making sausage. Or raising a barn. We're good at raising barns. It's what we do. Well, I am a woman, so I would be raising babies and making a charming picnic lunch for all the men folk raising the barn. Except for the fact that I look like shit in a bonnet and a long dress...not that I look good in a short dress, but I digress. It's a Mennonite thing.

So, anyway, I was born a Mennonite. Mennonites take the Bible literally. It's what we do when we are not raising barns, making sausage or digressing. I was raised with fire, brimstone and a healthy, neurotic, immense dollop of guilt. I am the Guilt Queen! If someone notices something missing and it is likely stolen, even though I am the last person on Earth who would have stolen it, I feel guilty! Yes, I do. Somehow it is my fault your wallet is missing.

As a child I would look on with wonder at all my Catholic friends. I remember a song or two talking about Catholic guilt and I could never understand it. Still can't. Seems to me that if you are Catholic, you can sin all the hell you want all week as long as you remember to hit confession on Sunday...and if your sin is really bad, you can offer to pay for a new pad for the priests to live in and you're in good shape. And then there's absolution...no protestant ever gets the luxury of absolution. Mennonites never get cut a break in their pious suffering, so there is absolutely no absolution, there!

So, needless to say, I was raised in a home where nothing from the Bible is ever questioned. I remember, as a child, having heard that "Our God is a jealous God" and asking my Sunday School teacher for an explanation. I couldn't understand how God, the penultimate Good Guy, could harbor as negative an emotion as jealousy. My teacher, bless her meek, inherit the Earth heart, told me she couldn't remember ever reading that in the Bible. Nice try.

I remember, also as a young child, a story of how Jesus, this loving, turn-the-other cheek, guy, went into a place where there were money lenders and he angrily turned their tables upside down. I remember thinking to myself how incongruent this behaviour was with the teaching of who this man was.

I loved Jesus Christ. This beautiful, compassionate man who stood up against everyone and lovingly did what he knew was right. He was assassinated in the most horrific of ways, dying this barbaric death that haunted me in my dreams and made me the martyr I became.

I realized as a teenager I was different. Instead of being attracted to men, as I was supposed to be, as a good Mennonite...it's what we do...I was instead attracted, and that is a polite word...to women. I was well-versed in the Bible's violent exhortations against homosexuals. We are an abomination...like shrimp eaters. Shrimp eaters are also an abomination. Bad, bad shrimp eaters...it's what they do. But I am a Mennonite and I digress.

There is nothing quite like being gay to make one seriously question the veracity of the document called the Bible. I spent my teenage years and my early adulthood hating this part of myself for not being someone God could love. I tried, I really tried to like men. I dated them, I had sex with them...I'll spare you the details. I remember sitting in my car after watching the movie Tootsie with Dustin Hoffman dressing in drag and I was overwhelmed with panic attacks. I was a fucking mess and I was begging God not to let me be gay. I was physically sick...I felt like a freak...I wanted to die.

I will never forget that night as long as I live.

Over the years I realized there were many things wrong with the Bible...like its treatment of women. Or that Christ's entire adolescence was missing. Or that the Old Testament espoused an eye for an eye, when Christ espoused turning the other cheek. Incongruencies, barbaric treatment, polygamy, incest, violence, the fact that only "Christians" can be saved ("Whosoever believeth in me, shall not perish, but have everlasting life.") or how God could let someone like Job be violated and tortured as a human being in a fight between God and the Devil... none of these things resonated with me...none of them rang true. None of them made any sense.

For brevity's sake I will skip my study of man's religions in university and my later opening up to reincarnation as the only plausible reason for some human suffering and just say that I rejected a good sized portion of the Bible as stuff that was just plain wrong. Human beings are imperfect filters for messages from God...the Universe, or Allah...whatever you happen to believe in. That's what I shrugged it off as.

I was setting off to do the Camino and did some research on the history and legend of the road. Catholic legend has it that James the Apostle came to Spain to spread the Good Word and he gained about seven followers. He returned home and was beheaded...'cause that's what happens to good folk...and his disciples put him in a stone...yes...a stone...boat, with no oarsman and no paddles and sent him out to sea.

Many, many years later, a priest, in Spain, was involved in deciding who the remains they found in some cave belonged to. He decided, likely in a convenient dream, that these bones belonged to James who became St. James. This was a very convenient way for the Catholics to take over a pilgrimage that was previously walked by the Celts, Goddess Worshippers and Druids. Bad bad pagans.

The Camino is rife with tales of visitations by the ghostly St. James. In the battles between the Christians and the Moors, apparently St. James was pivotal in helping the "Good Guys" win. In fact he gained the nickname The Moor Slayer for thoughtfully showing up...as a ghost...and winning some substantial battle for the Christians, turning the tide in the Holy Wars in Iberia.

In Santo Domingo del Calzada, on the Camino, St. James was, once again, a hero. Apparently a young man who was studying to be a priest was staying in an inn...inaninn...*grin*...all the good stories take place inaninn, don't they? And they all have innkeeper's daughters involved...although that metamorphosed, over time, to being bad ass farmer's daughter's. But I di--I am a Mennonite!

So, anyway, Poor Unsuspecting Priest Boy was being seduced by the Evil Innkeeper's Daughter and he spurned her advances. Advances apparently should never be spurned...spurning is bad. The inn in question was a Spurn Free Zone. So the spurned innkeeper's daughter decided to place a candlestick in his baggage and called him a thief. The young man was tried, convicted and hung...to die...didn't want to confuse you with the possible sentence of being hung for fun.

His inconsolable parents left the town and Dad had a dream. He dreamt that his son was still alive...that St. James...yes, that handy dead guy...was busy holding their son up so he wouldn't asphyxiate. Very thoughtful of James, don't you think? Especially because he had that whole errand list of Moors to decapitate.

Mom and Dad ran back to the judge, who was eating a chicken dinner and said "Our son is still alive! You must cut him down!" The judge said, "Why, your son is just as dead as the chickens on my plate!" At that point, the dead chicken carcasses got up and danced. The judge had the son cut down and he was indeed still alive. The whole incident was declared a miracle and sworn upon by at least one or two holy priest types, that this actually DID happen. The cathedral in Santo Domingo now houses live chickens to commemorate that amazing, miraculous deed by the ever busy ghost of St James.

I have two words for the many Catholic miracles of the Camino. 1/BULL 2/SHIT!

I had hoped, when I started on my Camino, to be able to set aside some of my cynicism...say that after a few drinks...set aside some of my cynicism (that was fun, wasn't it?)...but what happened was that it grew even stronger. I decided, while on the Camino, that I really should get around to reading the Pagan Christ...a book that raised an interested eyebrow on me when it first came out, but I never got around to it. Hey I am Mennonite...we're late bloomers, it's what we do.

So, I returned to Canada and went over to my very Catholic Camino Coach's home and looked up in her bookcase and found what else? A copy of Tom Harpur's The Pagan Christ. I picked up the book and devoured it.

Harpur does an incredible job of proving, at least to me, that Christianity is a farce. The beautiful stories I grew up with of the beautiful Christ the Saviour were stolen from Egyptian and Greco Roman myths. I am not going to list his arguments...he does so very eloquently in his book...pick it up. I dare you. He also goes on to prove the unlikelihood that a man bearing the handle Jesus the Messiah ever actually walked the Earth. There are no references to that guy ever making his mark in history, except in a handful of books from the Bible that were written many years after he supposedly died. In a time in history when things were avidly recorded, there is no reference to Jesus Christ. Ever. Not one.

Harpur also quotes Men of the Cloth from antiquity who admit, shrugging, that they did make stuff up...it was all for a good cause, so what was the harm?

LET ME TELL YOU WHAT THE FUCKING HARM WAS! It was thousands, probably millions of people who were murdered, including pagans who knew the truth of the cover-up, for this phony religion. It was and is centuries of Jews being put to death and discriminated against for killing Christ. It was and continues to be, a reason for people to discriminate against blacks and women. It was and is the cause of murders and suicides of gays and lesbians all over the world.

It was the cause for me, that excruciatingly painful night where I begged God not to let me be gay, to hate myself and want to die. It was the cause for me to become the martyr I emulated, effecting my relationships and the quality of my life, something I still struggle heavily with.

So, this Christmas, I have a bit of a bitter mood on about the season. For the first time in my life, I don't want to celebrate Christmas, I want to celebrate something real. I want to celebrate in the pagan tradition. I want to revel in Solstice and Yule. 'Cause I am a pagan...it's what we do.

Peregrina Pining...

My cousin just asked me if I felt the withdrawal of the Camino that others talk about. I do feel something rather all encompassing sometimes. The Camino is emotionally, spiritually and physically intense. Tears and laughter were never very far from the surface when I was there. Colors were bigger and brighter. The road was longer, the mountains higher. Heat was hotter, cold was colder, pain...well...okay pain always hurts...but it really hurts more if you have no escape from it for hours and days.

I am back in Toronto in a city I love very much, with people I love very much and missed very much and I am grateful to be home. But I am aware I am missing something. I understand, now, why people get addicted to this road...to this journey...to the intensity of naked experience. I miss everybody KNOWING they are spirit living an earthly existence. I miss the openness of people in talking about it. I miss the quick, yet deeply effecting connections with people all there to look for themselves...for God...for God in themselves.

There is no facade. No matrix. The veil is thinner. You can hear the Voice in your head. The Voice of love, the Voice of wisdom. There is no traffic to drown it out. No clamoring up the corporate ladder of indifference that interferes with the quiet message of your beating heart. Your heart. Your heart that says there is something more to this life...this world...this experience than what we blindly raise up as a false prophet. Our lives have truly become a game of Monopoly with everyone racing to get to the end before everyone else. Or to get out of jail free.

There is more.

There is silence. The silence with nowhere to go...nowhere to be...the silence where you can hear your Guides, your God, your Universe.

There is beauty. The beauty that will make you cry if you are brave enough to open yourself up to it. It's looking at the sun like it is the first time you have ever seen it. It's looking at the mountains like they are living, breathing entities who experience your beauty as you experience theirs. It's looking at the people you encounter everyday and seeing their beauty. Their beautiful, imperfect perfection. It's being able to see the beauty in things we don't normally think of as beautiful.

There is passion. The passion that is being courageous enough to feel everything. Feeling pain and being with it. Feeling fear and facing it head on. Feeling love and opening oneself to the ecstasy of that gift from God.

I think sometimes we cloak ourselves from the vividness of the life we were meant to lead. We attempt to make life into smaller more controllable, bite-sized pieces, when really we are supposed to grab the apple and bite into it with passion, feeling the juice run down our faces and our throats. Living life with passion and eyes wide open is scary...no...it's terrifying...but it's REAL! And it's ours. Our gift to be revelled in.

So, my cousin asks, do I feel a withdrawal? Yes, I do. On the Camino it was ok to cry, to yell, to laugh...to maybe even be a little bit crazy...because life is a crazy place. I guess the challenge for me is to find a way to remember and live those lessons here...where the volume for the distracting noise of avoidance is high, but the volume for truth is sometimes barely audible.

The Peregrina Returns

Yeah...so I walked the Camino de Santiago. Please excuse the delay in this edition of my Blog, but I was busy. Well, okay, not really, but whatever I have been up to seems to have taken up all of my time.

So, let me take this opportunity, NOW, to say, "Yeah Me! I did it! Yay me!!!"

My Camino was a magical experience even in those times it REALLY didn't feel like it. Like within an hour of my arrival in Madrid, for example. I taxied into the airport looking around with the wonder of a child at what Spain looked like. I was very excited and proud of myself for managing my first attempt at travel in Spain by taking a local bus to the Madrid Bus Station, where I was then to grab a bus for Pamplona. From there I would find my way to my starting point...Roncesvalles.

I figured out my second thing to master in Spain would be an ATM, so I found one and tried to take out 100 Euros. It coughed and coughed and I sat there with my extended hand hovering at the money slot...to no avail. I freaked-out thinking I had just lost 100 Euros (About $150 CDN) in my first hour in Spain.

I raced over to a bank of telephones and realized my next challenge. I had no idea how to call my country from Spain. I looked down and saw a sticker, in English, telling me to dial 1-900 Something-Or-Other if I needed to call Canada. I had just bought a phone card at the airport, but the operator refused to let me use it. Instead he had to have a credit card number, so I gave him one. After a convoluted game of Telephone Tennis, I finally got through to my bank. The nice gent on the phone told me I had nothing to worry about as there was no record of my account being debited. I breathed a huge sigh of relief, hung up the phone and reached down to pick up my carry-on bag. It was gone.

I panicked.

I ran all over the bus station trying to find anyone with it or even stuff tossed out of it that the thief wouldn't want. I went over to the Information Booth and asked "Habla Inglis?" She shook her head. I did my best charade commentary on what I thought had happened. She looked pitifully at the pained, desperate look on my face and we stood there like two brick workers on the Tower of Babel, both wishing we could bridge the gap.

I ran over to two other places to report my bag's disappearance. The results were the same. No habla Inglis. It took me some time to admit to myself that it was gone and there was nothing I could do to erase the last 15 minutes.

I started to cry. I felt like a child in a foreign country with no one to look out for her. I was lost. I was scared. I wanted to go home.

Oh? You want to know what was in my bag?

1. My expensive digital camera bought for this trip


2. My sleeping bag -- an absolutely essential item for this journey


3. My girlfriend's MP3 Player


4. My Camino Coach's waterproof backpack cover


5. My hat with the Canadian Company of Pilgrims crest my gf so lovingly sewed on --twice--because she wasn't satisfied the first time


6. My gf's scallop shell ( A pilgrim "must") from PEI -- a place with a lot of emotional ties for her


7. My Camino guide book with yellow sticky notes painstakingly placed throughout, by my Coach -- full of advice and encouragement


8. My Spanish phrase book. Need I say more about that one?


9. The most important thing of all: A card from the beautiful aforementioned girlfriend she had surreptitiously placed in my bag before I boarded the plane. You see, I have this habit of mocking her for being somewhat romance challenged. Well, okay, for being a complete lunkhead in that arena. She texted me after she left the airport and told me to look in my bag. I found the card, opened it and cried. And cried. It was the most beautiful, supportive, encouraging and romantic -- yes, romantic -- card I had ever received. I texted her saying I take back everything I ever said.

So, please understand why I wanted to know who stole my bag so I could scream, "Keep the stuff of monetary value, you fucking fucker! Fuck! JUST GIVE ME BACK THE FUCKING CARD!!!!" (Editor's Note: She has said she will give me another card -- if I go away again for another seven weeks! Love the girl! Really I do!)

Oh, and that phone call? Cost over $50 CDN. I was robbed twice that day!

Then, of course there was the loneliest night of my entire life. Yes, even lonelier than the Lost at the Madrid Bus Station Experience. I had been pushing myself past the point of exhaustion...I couldn't even regulate my body temperature and I was freezing on very hot days. I had developed some kind of stomach thing which caused serious cramping and many rather hasty trips to the bathroom. I was sitting in an albergue surrounded by people who spoke Spanish and Portuguese, but knew very little English. I, of course, had already proven my lack of Spanish verbosity at the bus station in Madrid and I sat there, trying to eat while intermittently bursting into tears and running to the bathroom. I was terribly homesick. I was definitely stomach sick. I missed my girlfriend terribly. I missed my country. I missed my language. I missed the familiar. I wasn't sure I could walk another step.

I got up the next day knowing I was not walking that day. I was taking a bus to Burgos and I was going to care about myself enough to stay there a couple of days until I felt better. I wandered down to the bar downstairs and looked at a map explaining how to walk to another town, off the Camino and grab a bus. I looked at it. I studied it and I headed off. In the wrong direction. I got really pissed off at myself for not being endowed with any sense of direction whatsoever. I walked back to the albergue passing some Aussies I knew who told me some of their group were staying back and taking a taxi to Burgos as they were sick and tired, too.

I hobbled back and finally located them. Their taxi was full. There was no room for me. I burst into tears and they did their best to encourage me and commiserate. I set off again to find the stupid town with the stupid bus, telling myself I didn't need my Spanish-speaking friend (another story entirely, but we had to part company that day) to get by in Spain. I could rely on myself and I could find this freaking town and I would get on this bus and I would do it on my own!

I got lost. Again.

This time I was screaming and crying in farmer's field in the middle of Nowhere, Spain, going: "Who the fuck do I think I am kidding?! What in Hell's name made me think I could do this?! WHY THE FUCK AM I HERE???!!! TO PROVE TO MYSELF I AM COMPLETELY INEPT AND CAN'T FINISH ANYTHING I START????!!!!" And other such self encouraging thoughts and frustrations.

I must borrow one of my favorite cliches here: It is always darkest before the dawn. I found the bus. I found some English speaking company, with an Irish slant, who I would share a room with in Burgos for a couple of days.

I got to Burgos, took a shower and went to sit on a patio and drink vino blanco. While there, I ran into one of my favorite Camino people, Gerry from Ireland, who sat down and told me about all the magical things he was experiencing and the wonderful people he was running into at all the right times. I realized he was the guy I needed to run into that day. He, too, had pushed himself to the point of exhaustion and I had helped cheer him up earlier on on the Path. And here he was doing the same for me now. I didn't run into him after that, but I would love an opportunity to thank him for being one of my Camino Angels (and there were many). Gerry from Ireland changed my Camino from that point onward. All of a sudden, I was looking for the magic that I hadn't been able to see because I was so focused on my pain, exhaustion and frustration. All of a sudden the Camino was a beautiful place with beautiful people and the Magic I had come to expect of it. It was there all the time, I just couldn't see it. Thank you Gerry. I owe you a debt, my friend, wherever you are.

So, after a couple of days of rest and sightseeing, I felt brand new. I adjusted my walking schedule, refusing to keep up with anyone else and went only as far as I felt I could. As someone not used to doing things for me and generally acquiescing to what other people need and want, I had finally learned a lesson.

I met some amazing people along the way. One, whom I will never forget, was a young woman from Edmonton I was very excited to run into, because, of course, she was Canadian and I used to live in Edmonton. I rapped with her a while and just happened to look down at her legs and realized one of them was plastic. She was doing a 780 Kilometre walk (she started in the mountains from St Jean Pied a Port) across some of the roughest terrain I have ever walked on. Some of the most gut splitting mountains I have ever climbed. And she was doing it on one leg. I was humbled. Annika was her name and she was one of the few people I walked with that I didn't witness walking into Santiago, because of the difference in our travel speed. But somehow, I know she made it.

I walked for about a week and half with a guy from Brazil who looked out for me and really kept me going. Wagner was a very heavy guy who had been in a serious motorcycle crash that had done major damage to his body, evidenced by the remaining deep gash in his leg. He pushed me along, sometimes too hard, but he got me through some pretty tough stuff. We shared about 8 words between us which made for some very comically funny exchanges and a few misunderstandings. On some days it was actually a really good thing he couldn't understand me as what I had to share was not fit for human consumption. I thought of him as another of my Camino Angels...he thought of me as his.

I met a crazy young Aussie who had been living as an illegal in Scotland and decided he was doing the Camino with his parents and some friends, while wearing a kilt, with a guitar strapped to his back and wheeling a golf cart carrying his stuff. He made it to Santiago. The Golf cart didn't.

I met some wonderful Americans who I initially shrugged off as American Republican Catholics...until they taught me another valuable lesson about assumptions. None of them were Catholic, one went to a New Age Religious Science church and another was a Sufi meditation teacher. Yes, a Sufi meditation teacher. I spent the last part of the Camino with these people, Norm, Porter, Sue, Ruth and occasionally Francesca. We all travelled to Finisterre together, drank champagne and celebrated our completion of this amazing journey. We talked for hours about spiritual issues and lessons learned.

One night we were in a restaurant with two women from Holland and the question was asked, "What have you learned from the Camino?" I was surprised to note that we had all learned the same lesson. One of the women from Holland said it best: "I was walking over the mountains in Rabanal and I saw some rocks (the white quartz very common in this area). The the sun came up and the same rocks looked like diamonds. I realized it was my choice. I could see them as rocks or I could see them as diamonds."

That was the major lesson for me, but there were many others, like dealing with attachment to people, places and things. On how I was fine before them and only upset after them, because of my attachment to them. Or the importance of living in the now and how having sore feet makes sure you are!

I tell people I didn't really learn any new lessons...I just experienced lessons I already knew on an intellectual level, but needed to experience myself to fully understand. I also did things, like climbing mountains I didn't know I could master. The pudgy middle-aged kid from the prairies managed in a country where she did not speak the language, a million miles away from home and she did it by herself.

Well, that's not exactly true.

I had an amazing support group back home consisting of my girlfriend who pushed my ass up mountains and my Camino Coach who pulled my ass up mountains. Without them I would not be here writing this note of success. To you guys...I owe an incredible debt of gratitude. And everybody on my email list who sent me messages of support and encouragement, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

I had many peak experiences like walking through a cloud on Rabanal. Or like soaking my feet in an ice cold mountain stream. Or encountering people who live their whole lives to support the pilgrims, the peregrinos of the Camino de Santiago. I shared the road, laughter and tears with people from all over the world. I also shared their stories, dreams, pain and glory. I climbed O Cebreiro, a climb described in the guidebook as daunting and very difficult. I did. Me.

I walked into Santiago on October 6th and was handed my compostela proving I indeed did this incredible thing. Some days it all seems like a dream to me, now. I still have some blister residuals and some foot and right wrist issues that I would like to lose, but right now they are a good reminder that I accomplished a feat I would never have known I could.

Yay me!