Ola,

We have made it through Leon and are in Astorga now. Leon was wonderful, the cathedral beautiful as they all seem to be in their own right. Having arrived early in the day we were able to walk around a good portion of the city. Seeing a lot of great architecture. Later in the day afte siesta we went with these two German guys that we have befriended to see the inside of the cathedral.

The next day (yesterday) we set off for our next destination, taking a wrong turn and ending up in a city we had not intended to visit, all worked out in the end though, we found a place to stay and got back on track today.

As we left Leon yesterday, we left behind our German friends that we had been travelling with for the last week or so. After we left them and had set out walking I realized that they were the last of the group of pilgrims that were still with us from when we had began.

You see the way the camino works is that you walk along with a group of pilgrims for a bit staying with them in the same albergues until eventually some people move ahead at a faster pace and others fall behind going at their own slower pace, everyone taking it at their own pace. Some time you will see these pilgrims again and sometimes you won´t. As we said goodbye to the Germans, I  found myself reflecting on all the people that have come and gone from my life as I have travelled this road, some entering my life for no more then an evening and other being apart of it for weeks, and even others like my friend I am travelling with and you all back home the entire thing. I thought about how that is similar in everyday life, where some people enter your life as briefly as to pour you a cup of coffee and others are there for weeks,months, and years, while other like parents are there for the better part of the journey. I thought about all the teachers, coaches, friends and other people that have come and gone from my life, and those friends who would be my age now, my uncle and grandparents, who were a part of my life what seems like so briefly, and left it what seems like so quickly.

I bean to ask myself why it is that I feel so blessed and changed by the people that I am meeting on this journey, while in my day to day life I tend to more often then not feel hindered. That is not to say I am not thankful everyday for the many people that are a part of my life but I think it is easy to take those aroud you for granted. I guess the answer that I came to was that it hasto do with mindfulness. On a journey like this it is easy to be more aware about trying to honor those people that come and go from your life, because in most cases they are not their long enough for you to take their presence forgranted.

Whether you are the one on the journey, or you, like the people of Spain are for the pilgrims, are the one ushering someone along on their journey, both people are privlliged to the experience of changeing the other persons life, both you and the other person, have something to offer, imagine if the next time you went to complete a simple errand like get a cup of coffee, and you treated the experience like it held at its core the potential to set your life in a whole new direction. Something amazing might happen hmmmmm....


content pilgrim,

Amanda