72…
If I had known that 72 would be so much fun I wouldn’t have put it off for so long!
Peace Everyone! Pete
Author: Pete Schloss
Dear Britton.
In a little more than 10 weeks we depart for France and Spain! There is plenty of time yet to fine tune your pack to less than 18 pounds. At 15 years old and in shape from football, wrestling, and now lacrosse, you may not need to train for the 525-mile hike, but I do. There is, however, an important task that you should start to consider:
At the highest point (4,940 feet) on the French Route of the Camino de Santiago is a house-sized pile of stones sprouting an overlarge telephone pole that is capped with a small iron cross. This is known as the Cruz de Ferro (the Iron Cross).
Tradition holds that pilgrims on the Camino carry a small stone along the journey and in prayerful meditation deposit the stone at the foot of this cross.
The stone represents one or more of the little burdens we unconsciously accumulate in life. These are not the big intentional obligations such as education, work, family, or finances, but the smaller ones that we gather without thought. Anger, resentment, envy, jealousy, to name just a few.
At 15 years old you have few of these weighing you down. At 72 years old, I have collected a truckload!
Just as we are called to be mindful of these hidden burdens while walking the Camino, so should we each seek a stone that resonates with us, a metaphor of those burdens which weigh down the spirit.
The stone should be small, barely noticeable in your pack, just like the troubles we unconsciously carry. But consider the emotional weight during our lives. There are over one million strides taken along the Camino. If the stone you select weighs only 2 ounces, then that insignificant weight carried each step of “The Way” represents over 125,000 pounds!
The stone should be attractive in a way that makes it not easy to abandon, even though it is just a rock. Similarly, we convince ourselves that we are justified in our anger, resentments, spite. It is a human failing, an uncomfortable acknowledgement, that we are responsible for our own feelings. Justified or not, we are not benefited by harboring these sentiments, yet it is difficult to let them go.
Good luck in your hunt for that special stone, and for the deeper search for the peace that comes from the release of the burdens that it represents.
Love, Grandpa.
PS. The prayerful meditation at the foot of the Cruz de Ferro often takes form in these words:
“Lord, may this stone, a symbol of my efforts on the Pilgrimage that I lay at the foot of the Savior’s cross, one day weigh the balance in favor of my good deeds when the deeds of my life are judged. Let it be so, Amen.”
Bursting with enthusiasm upon our return from Spain in 2013, Christine and I were passionate to spread the message of the Camino in Kansas City. We founded the local group that would formally become the Kansas City Chapter of American Pilgrims on the Camino (KCAPOC). As time and other responsibilities redirected our focus we withdrew from active participation in the group.
Fast forward to March and we received an invitation for Britton and me to be recognized for our coming hike across Spain and to participate in the KCAPOC monthly Pilgrim’s Hike.
On March 9th we joined members of the group for a Pilgrim’s Blessing and Shell Ceremony. Along with 13 other “pilgrims” who would be walking at various times this year to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, we received scallop shells, a group blessing, and the good wishes of the larger membership. This shell is the symbol of a pilgrim on the Camino.
KCAPOC has grown! There are now more than 200 active members, nearly 40 of which assembled on the cold Saturday morning for the hike in the woods of Overland Park, Kansas.
This was grandson Britton’s first experience being embraced by the kinship of Camino Pilgrimage. It is just the beginning.
Peace Everyone! Pete
In 2022 my posts to this site from the Portuguese Camino took the form of open letters home. These were well received and provided me with a natural, conversational, way to communicate that hinted at the relationship that Christine and I share. I was writing to her, yet aware of the larger audience. A side benefit for me was that I felt her presence as I penned each word. It was a relief from the shadow of being alone.
This coming June my 15-year-old grandson Britton and I will depart for 6 weeks in France and Spain. Life and fate willing, we will be hiking the 500+ mile “French Route” of the Camino de Santiago. This will be the longest time that I have spent away from Christine and the longest spent with any of our grandchildren. It will be the longest that he has spent apart from his mother and siblings. Britton is one of three surviving quadruplets. He has been with brother Simon and sister Delaney 7 months longer than he has taking breath in life. (Their births came very early, and they were very tiny.) Think about it. There is also his 6-year-old sister, Lennon, who will certainly feel his absence.
I have no doubt that he is up to the physical challenges. Britton is nearly 6 feet tall and is a muscular 190 pounds. However, the trials for both of us go beyond the physical requirements of walking many miles, day after day. We are separated by 58 years and 2 generations. He must learn and adjust to my peculiarities and I to his.
It is my hope that Britton might contribute an occasional paragraph to his grandmother and mother, giving insight to his own unique perspectives. However, recalling the focuses of my own teenage years I will not hold my breath.
Peace Everyone. Pete
Written January 12, 2024, MLK weekend, at Alma, Colorado.
I had heard of him, but I knew little about him. He was born a slave, escaped and became an abolitionist, finally he became a revered national figure. In my ignorance Frederick Douglass was a shadow who lacked substance. That has changed. More on this in a moment.
LibriVox (LibriVox | free public domain audiobooks) is an online resource for those who enjoy audiobooks. Its distinguishing feature is that the books are all in the public domain, the copyrights having expired. The books are read by volunteers. Many of the readings are excellent, even approaching professional quality. LibriVox has an excellent iOS app that facilitates searching the catalogue and allows for downloading to smartphones and similar devices so that one can “read” off-line. I understand that there is a Google Play app, but I am not familiar with it.
The LibriVox catalogue consists of over 40,000 books and continues to grow. The great majority of the selections are read in English, but a sizable number are in German, French, Italian, and a host of other languages.
Most readers are familiar with H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, to name just two authors. Most readers recognize their most popular works such as “War of the Worlds, “The Invisible Man”, “The Time Machine”, “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”, “Journey to the Center of the Earth”, and “Around the World in 80 Days”. However, on LibriVox there are 71 titles by Wells, and 81 by Verne, all free to read.
The quality of the readings can be variable. I have found a number of narrators that are exceptional. Among them are:
Mark Smith whose readings include: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Call of the Wild, Great Expectations, Robinson Crusoe, and Swiss Family Robinson.
Karen Savage whose readings include: the Anne of Green Gables series, The Scarlet Pimpernel series, and Jane Austen’s books.
Ruth Golding whose readings include: Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, and Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence.
There are others.
I came upon a strong recommendation to read The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, an autobiography, narration by Lee Smalley.
Born into slavery in 1816, (or 17, or 18, slaves were not usually allowed to know their birth history) in secret he taught himself to read and write. He details his life as a slave, his escape to freedom, and his subsequent ascension in the ranks of abolitionists. He became an international celebrity while fearing for his life and possible recapture. He associated with such luminaries as John Brown, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Presidents Abraham Lincoln, Johnson, Grant, Hays, and Garfield, to name just a few. To consider him a genius may be an understatement. Having no formal education, his prose is that of the most highly educated person. His commentary is straightforward and striking. His voice reaches from the 19th Century, across the 20th, and speaks today with an eloquence that is decidedly relevant in our fractured society and politics.
To name just a few of the modern controversies that he directly addressed nearly 150 years ago: The efforts to negotiate an avoidance to war, whether there was any benefit to the enslaved by virtue of their servitude, and identification of the issues that resulted in the Civil War. He didn’t speculate, he was central to and lived the times.
This is his third autobiography, the previous two having been written before the Civil War. In those first efforts he could not fully tell the story of his escape to freedom without endangering the lives of those who had helped him. This third effort covers the scope of his life from birth, his early years in bondage, his escape to freedom, through his growing activism and celebrity, the Civil War and post-Civil War reconstruction, and his Presidential appointments as the United States Marshall of the District of Columbia and as U. S. Minister to Haiti.
This is an exceptional read, and my recommendation is all the more appropriate on this holiday weekend that honors the life of Martin Luther King.
Peace Everyone. Pete
