The morning in Rubiães was cool,
sixteen degrees Celsius beneath a smiling sun.
We began climbing with the Glorious Mysteries,
our fingers wrapped around the rosary.
We prayed as the road rose steeply,
reciting, sweating and breathing heavily.
The glory on our lips met the strain in our bodies,
and prayer became as breathless as the climb.
We barely held on to the rosary,
yet perhaps the rosary was holding us –
each bead drawing us forward
when the mountain resisted our feet.
Along the way, two stories of cancer
entered our community’s conversation.
One friend received news of healing;
another died as our pilgrimage began.
Joy and grief walked side by side,
neither cancelling the other.
The Glorious Mysteries held both stories:
life restored, and life surrendered.
Soon afterwards, two houses appeared
on opposite sides of the road.
One stood old, broken and abandoned;
the other was still under construction.
The abandoned house held in its broken arms
decades of hope, grief, pain and joy.
Its silent rooms seemed to remember
the lives once sheltered within.
Across the road, the unfinished house
waited for stories yet to be lived –
for laughter, loss, welcome and departure,
for joys and wounds not yet imagined.
I stood between what had fallen
and what was still becoming.
The road reminded me that every human life
is both a dying and a construction.
Then white lilies appeared
within a sea of tangled bush in a gutter.
Their beauty had not waited
for the surrounding earth to become orderly.
They rose from the mess and muck,
clean without denying their origins.
Perhaps holiness also blooms this way –
not outside life’s confusion, but within it.
Along the route, a stranger told us
that his cousin was Trinidadian.
Far from the Caribbean, an unexpected connection
made the world feel briefly like home.
Today, most of us walked together,
pausing frequently along the way.
Within those pauses, words grew fewer
and the deeper journey grew clearer.
Only minutes after resuming from rest,
a Belarusian vendor left her cart
and stepped directly into our path
to tell us about her healthy foods.
We politely stopped, like an obedient flock,
and listened to her lengthy homily on food.
As her advertisement continued,
my patience began to wear thin.
Intolerance tightened in me.
Anxiety and anger followed close behind.
I resented being commandeered
and wanted to leave the group.
The voice of fear invited me to withdraw:
Leave them; continue without them.
Protect your time, your energy, and yourself.
You have no interest in any of this.
But another voice spoke more quietly:
Remain with the community.
Your irritation need not decide
who you will become in this moment.
I chose the voice of love
and stayed with my companions.
Nothing outside me had changed,
but something within me had been noticed.
On a rough, stony stretch,
I noticed a small pyramid-shaped mound of stones.
Human hands had gathered them carefully
and brought order to scattered pieces.
It became an image of Conversation in the Spirit:
the Spirit collecting what lies fragmented,
placing one experience upon another
until a new shape quietly emerges.
Not every stone in me is smooth.
Some are sharp with resentment;
others are heavy with fear,
or loosened by grief and exhaustion.
Yet, the Spirit of God, gather them.
Build an altar of encounter from them.
Let even the hardest parts of my story
become material for transformation.
We reached Valença, whose name recalls
the strength and vigour of valere.
I asked for strength to continue
this sun-piercing part of the journey into the cave of my heart.
“Give me the courage to remain there
when I discover what I would rather avoid.
Make me strong enough to face the truth
and gentle enough to receive Your mercy.”
Before crossing the border into Spain, we found an oasis
and rested for a long while.
Our bodies drank in the pause,
recovering strength for the road ahead.
We crossed the slow-moving Miño River,
leaving Valença in Portugal
and entering Tui in Spain,
crossing another threshold.
I thought of the river’s hidden source
in the mountains of Galicia.
Every visible current begins somewhere
beyond the place where we encounter it.
So too, the movements of my heart
flow from sources I do not always perceive.
The Camino invites me to travel upstream,
towards the origins of anger, fear and love.
Towards Tui, exhaustion returned.
My body grew heavy, irritable and anxious.
The cave of my heart grew darker
as the final stretch lay before me.
A light-hearted companion invited me
to place my face through the opening
of a cardboard mascot
and to join in a moment of laughter.
I answered tersely and moved on.
Only afterwards did I recognise
that my response stemmed from exhaustion,
not from anything she had done.
Weariness had narrowed my availability.
My feelings had taken hold of my voice.
Though my body remained with the group,
my spirit had begun to withdraw.
“Lord, when exhaustion envelops me,
help me remain integrated within the community.
Let me acknowledge what I am feeling
without allowing it to wound another.”
“Teach me to say, “I am tired,”
before irritation speaks for me.
Give me humility to receive an invitation,
even when I have no strength to accept it.”
Perhaps strength is not walking fastest,
climbing without strain or never complaining.
Perhaps strength is remaining open
when every part of me wants to close.
At the border between Portugal and Spain,
I crossed another border within myself:
from instinctive withdrawal to communion,
from fear’s command to love’s invitation.
The Miño flowed towards the Atlantic.
The lilies stayed among the tangled bushes.
The old house stood beside the new,
and the stones kept their quiet witness.
I arrived in Tui carrying them all –
death and healing, end and beginning,
irritation and love, exhaustion and laughter –
stones gathered along the road to form a pyramid in honour of God.
“Spirit of God, build them into a cairn
within the cave of my heart.
May each stone mark a place
where grace invited me to conversion.”
And when tomorrow’s road to Porriño becomes difficult,
give me the strength contained in Valença:
the strength to remain with You,
with myself and with my pilgrim community.
