patience

“Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.”

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Quote found on Picturing God website

Pilgrims on a journey

  Ultreia Gîte, Moissac:- Hosts: Rom and Aideen

"We are pilgrims on a journey
We are brothers on the road
We are here to help each other
Walk the mile and bear the load

I will weep when you are weeping
When you laugh I'll laugh with you
I will share your joy and sorrow
Till we've seen this journey through"

~from "the servant song"

by Richard Gillard

Rom and Aideen have moved from their homeland of Ireland

to serve the needs of pilgrims on the route to Compostela.

This gîte is their home

where they offer warm hospitality

and genuine care for pilgrims. 

I count them as friends, and hope to return to visit them one day.

There are several moving verses in this song,
but I chose the one about laughter and tears 
as they are two things I think most pilgrims come to know well....

Step by step....

With my Quebec friends- first day on the Meseta

"......concentrate on only the next step; and keep walking.

Think about what is working well

- not about your aches and pains.

Don't think about the total number of kilometres you are walking.

Only think about what you are walking today.

Right now.

Step by step, hill by hill, rest stop by rest stop

- that's how you accomplish your goal."

Lynne, from Santiago Forum

I carried these words of Lynne's with me -and on some of the hard early days

when the rain was heavy and the tracks were like streams

and my feet were tender

I repeated these words to myself, and they got me through!

(until finally, thankfulness took hold...)

"Patient Trust" - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin SJ

St Martin sharing his cloak, Moissac cloister, France

"Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We would like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something
unknown, something new.
And yet, it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through
some stages of instability -
and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually - let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don't try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time,
(that is to say, grace and circumstances
acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming in you will be.
Give our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete."

"Patient Trust" - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin SJ