“The cave that we fear entering holds the treasure we seek” – Joseph Campbell
We spent a day walking through the hilly city of Porto
before the long walk to Santiago began.
I thought we were getting to know a city;
the city was already asking me to look deep within.
At Mercado do Bolhão, a chorus of voices rose
among fruits, flowers, seafood and sweets.
People moved through the bright market stalls
like the steady hum of a beehive.
At the Chapel of Souls, blue tiles
covered the walls with scenes of faith.
I stood before faith stories offered to every passer-by
and wondered how much I had really seen.
The Douro River led us towards its bank,
where we sat together tasting port wine.
Across the water stood century-old wine lodges;
around us, visitors filled the cool, sunny afternoon.
The wine had travelled from up the Douro Valley,
where vines grow along steep inland slopes.
Its story carried hardship, distance and change
long before the glass reached my hand.
As I raised my glass, a voice reached us
from a street performer nearby.
He was singing Paul Simon’s “The Sound of Silence”
amid the beehive of noise, and I paused to listen.
The song rose above the conversations,
the footsteps and the clink of glasses.
Its warning about people losing touch
with one another seemed meant for that crowded place.
“People talking without speaking, people hearing without listening”
We were free to hear the singer.
I wondered whether we would listen.
I watched people pass, then caught myself
returning too quickly to my glass.
For a moment, he seemed a prophet
standing in the midst of our pleasure,
asking what might be lost beneath
all the things we had come to see, feel, taste, smell and hear.
I could not know what stirred in anyone else.
Perhaps someone walking past was listening intently.
The question the song posed to me was:
“How’s God speaking in the silent sound of the Douro River?”
The vines that gave us this wine
grew far beyond Porto’s busy waterfront.
To know something of where it came from,
I had to take the inland journey upstream.
So too, perhaps, with my own life.
What grows beneath the days I display?
What have I carried through difficult seasons?
What grace is ripening where I seldom look?
Soon I would follow yellow arrows
away from Porto towards Santiago.
Yet I could walk every mile of the Camino
and still avoid the road into my heart – up the proverbial Douro Valley.
The singer’s voice stayed with me
as we left the river behind.
He had sung for tourists and pilgrims alike;
I received his song as a call to conversion.
“Jesus, meet me beyond what I can photograph,
beyond the wine I can taste and describe.
Give me courage to enter the places within
where I have grown afraid to listen.”
“When I rise tomorrow to begin walking,
let each step make room for silence.
Teach me to see the people beside me,
and to hear You in what they share.”
I came to Porto expecting a day of sightseeing.
On the banks of the Douro River, a prophetic stranger gifted me with a question.
May I carry it along the road towards Santiago:
Am I listening deeply to the sound of silence with my whole heart?
