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I am finding exactly that in the planning!Thank you for posting that Deenise, I look forward to reading the replies .. for me it is more the 'way beyond coincidence' experiences rather than miracles in the strict sense.
Following.
Trust me the going is motivation enough. It is going to be hard so you better be really motivated to go. Also why fill you head with other people's "miracles"? THere is a very good chance these stories will just create expectations that are counterproductive and can lead to disappointment. Just go and take one step at a time. Let things just happen. Forget everything and breath. Isn't that miracle enough?Please share your stories of Camino miracles that you experienced. I’ll be there this Fall and those stories get me motivated!Thank you Deenise
Good point thank youTrust me the going is motivation enough. It is going to be hard so you better be really motivated to go. Also why fill you head with other people's "miracles"? THere is a very good chance these stories will just create expectations that are counterproductive and can lead to disappointment. Just go and take one step at a time. Let things just happen. Forget everything and breathe. Isn't that miracle enough?
A little disappointing but some good points about my expectations as wellSo many cynics ...... on a Catholic pilgrimage forum ..... I find it rather sad ...
Agreed. I am fascinated by others' miracles on Camino, and I enjoy discussing my own. However, the negativity of this post has persuaded me not to post.So many cynics ...... on a Catholic pilgrimage forum ..... I find it rather sad ...
I'll share my miracle with you. A couple of weeks ago I was in Bilbao and went to the Cathedral of the virgin of begonia to get my stamp. After getting the stamp, I went in and mass was being conducted so I sat on the back row for a while. I sat my plastic sleeve with my credential and US Passport on the bench beside me ( like a dummy). After a while, I stood up and walked away. Within 30 seconds to 1 minute I realized what I had done and I ran back and my passport and credential were gone. I went to the gift shop to ask if anybody had returned it. The lady at the gift shop did not speak English but someone there helped interpret and she said no. We went back into the cathedral and looked around again and the person doing the interpreting asked a few people if they had seen it. One person said she saw a lady pick it up and walk out the door. The people at the gift shop helped me call the police and report it. They suggested I call the US embassy in Madrid and report it to them as well. They suggested I call back in the morning and see if anybody had turned it in. I decided to wait to report it to the embassy until the next morning to see if it was turned in. I am a person who believes in God and believes in prayer. I asked my family to pray that I would be able to get my passport back. My prayer throughout the night was that God would soften the heart of this lady and influence her to return it the next morning.Please share your stories of Camino miracles that you experienced. I’ll be there this Fall and those stories get me motivated!Thank you Deenise
I can say it was a miracle, and I'm going to tell others.I experienced a very odd medical mystery walking the Camino Portuguese . I was determined to walk despite having been diagnosed with a solid tumor in my right knee joint a month before my departure. I had physical therapy to strengthen my leg, was fitted with two different knee/leg braces, and was scheduled for surgery upon my return. I walked, albeit slowly and on many days in a lot of pain. I had been prescribed medications, was using kinesiology tape to support the structures around my knee, ice ( and a glass of wine at day's end )
When I returned home I had a second MRI in order for the orthopedic surgeon to plan my surgery.....and to everyone's disbelief, it was gone!
Of course, no one but the church can say this was any kind of miracle ( but the surgeon was convinced it was )
Tremendous!!!!I'll share my miracle with you. A couple of weeks ago I was in Bilbao and went to the Cathedral of the virgin of begonia to get my stamp. After getting the stamp, I went in and mass was being conducted so I sat on the back row for a while. I sat my plastic sleeve with my credential and US Passport on the bench beside me ( like a dummy). After a while, I stood up and walked away. Within 30 seconds to 1 minute I realized what I had done and I ran back and my passport and credential were gone. I went to the gift shop to ask if anybody had returned it. The lady at the gift shop did not speak English but someone there helped interpret and she said no. We went back into the cathedral and looked around again and the person doing the interpreting asked a few people if they had seen it. One person said she saw a lady pick it up and walk out the door. The people at the gift shop helped me call the police and report it. They suggested I call the US embassy in Madrid and report it to them as well. They suggested I call back in the morning and see if anybody had turned it in. I decided to wait to report it to the embassy until the next morning to see if it was turned in. I am a person who believes in God and believes in prayer. I asked my family to pray that I would be able to get my passport back. My prayer throughout the night was that God would soften the heart of this lady and influence her to return it the next morning.
The next morning I called the police office and no one had turned it in. I waited in my Albergue until after the gift shop opened at 10:00. Upon returning to the gift shop, the same lady was there that was at the gift shop the night before and when she saw me she started jumping up and down and clapping. I immediately knew that my passport had been returned. She could not communicate very well with me but there was another person in the gift shop that helped communicate. Her story was the lady returned that morning with tears in her eyes saying I'm sorry I took this. She then said that God told her to bring it back. The lady at the gift shop kept making the motions of tears flowing down the the lady's face.
After obtaining my passport and credential, I went into the cathedral and sat on the back row and said a prayer of gratitude to God for being aware of me and helping me. The song Ava Maria was playing in the background and I sat there basking in the love God has for me and also for the lady who took my passport but was open enough to God's influence to return it. That was a modern day miracle and I believe they are more common than we realize. Thanks for the opportunity to share.
How wonderful! Thank you for sharingTremendous!!!!![]()
How was it in December? Such a lovely story! Blessings to your wife!I think the miracle is found in one’s becoming interested in doing a Camino. I read about it, researched it, thinking well, that would be fun, but I doubt I ever do it. Two years ands 60# lost, surviving a devastating cancer diagnosis for my wife and getting her through the surgery and treatments to have her say, “Only one step left in my treatment…. Portuguese Coastal Route Camino!”. I booked it for her for Christmas this year. We leave Porto on December 29!
No miracles! Preprare, work hard, take responsibility!Please share your stories of Camino miracles that you experienced. I’ll be there this Fall and those stories get me motivated!Thank you Deenise
David, I hope to meet you on the Camino some day, or otherwise.The universe is an interventional universe … whatever this reality we are a part of is it is not just random, mechanical, it is not as it seems, not at all as it seems … interventions happen all the time, way beyond coincidence, but those who are running on ego, or are closed, or are cynics (or all of of those) never notice and if something is told to them about one they dismiss with “just a coincidence” ..
Carl Yung understood that what are commonly labelled coincidences are in fact proof of synchonricity and is quoted as defining synchronicity as “meaningful coincidence of two or more events where something other than the probability of chance is involved.”
I think that these become more apparent on Camino as everything else is stripped away, that other home life is gone and it is a backpack and openness so that what is always around us, those odd things, become more easily noticed (let alone that it is a deep religious path whether a person considers themselves religious or not – they were still called to go for ‘some reason’).
Now, miracles do happen but Santiago isn’t Lourdes and there are no racks of discarded crutches in the cathedral (would be ironic if there were!) - but ‘lesser’ miracles? Oh yes.
Being a Unitarian (non-Trinitarian, not universalist) Christian makes me very much a heretic on the Catholic Camino but when out doing my first aid I start each day by praying that I be ‘used’ .. not my will or decisions but something else acting through me .. and often this happens. I get the feeling when about to leave a cafe that I must wait, even though I want to get on, so I wait and in comes the pilgrim in tears, or in a village I ‘have’ to turn off Camino down a side street and then find a distraught pilgrim who needs help sitting by a fountain .. this has been happening for 18 years, each year, every year – way beyond coincidence .. I know who it is that does this but this forum is not the place to discuss it. The one time (to my knowledge) that I have saved a life came about through an irrational few route changes to meet that person.
So miracles in the big sense, I’m sure they do happen but most visible on Camino are those smaller ‘coincidences’, that synchronicity … oh yes, all the time.
But one has to be willing to be open - think that you are but still don't think you miss the magic around you because it doesn't exist? Then watch this - see if you can count how many passes the white team actually make.
I suggest as an ex Catholic that Catholicism and cynicism go hand in hand!So many cynics ...... on a Catholic pilgrimage forum ..... I find it rather sad ...
Good point thank you
Just a silly story but not a miracle,but itthe "Way will provide" but fits how I found my journey.I was sitting having breakfast and at the same table a lady was fiddling with her mobile.Clearly worried. I asked her. problem,and yes new phone only a few months old and black screen and for the last five days nobody can get it to open or even reponsed. Phone held all data for trip hotels flights contacts etc. She was going to Leon to reconfigure all the rest of the trip and flights back to USA. May I have look I asked. Yes you guessed got all here contacts and Data back and the 79 emails from worried family. Not a miracle ,but after waiting for 5 days she was able to relaxed and finish her journey.Please share your stories of Camino miracles that you experienced. I’ll be there this Fall and those stories get me motivated!Thank you Deenise
I love it!I lost my only pair of glasses and hunted for them everywhere at the albergue. It was a Sunday, so I would not be able to go to an eye doctor and get a new prescription and glasses in the tiny town I was in. I had given up hope and sat down on a bench. I could barely make out that a pair of glasses was on another bench nearby. No one was around. I assumed they were sunglasses, but decided I would pick them up and found that they not. With nothing to lose, I tried them on. They were perfect. I was shocked and couldn’t believe it. Later on the Camino, I saw someone who knew that I had lost my glasses. “You found them!” She said. I explained what had happened and said “The Camino does provide!” She laughed and reminded me that I had told her while we had walked the previous day how much I love bright , “The Camino must have heard you!” It was true. The glasses I had found had bright yellow rims. I had a few other miracles on the Camino that I still find almost impossible to believe.
@David, I am now for many years a psychotherapist ( pretty much reality based ) , but spent a few decades as an emergency room nurse ( hard core believer of science ) ,then hospice. You'd be hard pressed to find medical professionals in those settings who don't believe in miracles.The universe is an interventional universe … whatever this reality we are a part of is it is not just random, mechanical, it is not as it seems, not at all as it seems … interventions happen all the time, way beyond coincidence, but those who are running on ego, or are closed, or are cynics (or all of of those) never notice and if something is told to them about one they dismiss with “just a coincidence” ..
Carl Yung understood that what are commonly labelled coincidences are in fact proof of synchonricity and is quoted as defining synchronicity as “meaningful coincidence of two or more events where something other than the probability of chance is involved.”
I think that these become more apparent on Camino as everything else is stripped away, that other home life is gone and it is a backpack and openness so that what is always around us, those odd things, become more easily noticed (let alone that it is a deep religious path whether a person considers themselves religious or not – they were still called to go for ‘some reason’).
Now, miracles do happen but Santiago isn’t Lourdes and there are no racks of discarded crutches in the cathedral (would be ironic if there were!) - but ‘lesser’ miracles? Oh yes.
Being a Unitarian (non-Trinitarian, not universalist) Christian makes me very much a heretic on the Catholic Camino but when out doing my first aid I start each day by praying that I be ‘used’ .. not my will or decisions but something else acting through me .. and often this happens. I get the feeling when about to leave a cafe that I must wait, even though I want to get on, so I wait and in comes the pilgrim in tears, or in a village I ‘have’ to turn off Camino down a side street and then find a distraught pilgrim who needs help sitting by a fountain .. this has been happening for 18 years, each year, every year – way beyond coincidence .. I know who it is that does this but this forum is not the place to discuss it. The one time (to my knowledge) that I have saved a life came about through an irrational few route changes to meet that person.
So miracles in the big sense, I’m sure they do happen but most visible on Camino are those smaller ‘coincidences’, that synchronicity … oh yes, all the time.
But one has to be willing to be open - think that you are but still don't think you miss the magic around you because it doesn't exist? Then watch this - see if you can count how many passes the white team actually make.
OK, I’m a cynic, but 4 people pray that a lost phone be found and two people go and look for the phone, and find it! And the 4 who prayed claim it was their efforts that led to the phone being found rather than the 2 who had the common sense and gumption to go and look for it?Six of us arrived in St Jean Pied de Port mid-morning. We explored, walked around, went shopping.
Late afternoon one of us suddenly realised she didn’t have her smartphone. We all looked everywhere, we all phoned it. Nothing. Gone. Everything was on that smartphone. The lady was distraught and in tears.
My 4 friends are very religious and so they sat together in the dorm and prayed. And they prayed.
My other camino buddy and I set off up the streets revisiting everywhere we had been to that day. We finally found the phone on a shop counter top. We wondered why the assistant hadn’t answered it when it had rung, as it had obviously been left there by mistake, but anyway . . .
. . . back at the gite the other four were amazed that their prayers had been answered.
OK, I’ll go along with that. Maybe. But, whatever, the phone was found, which was the most important thing at the start of their camino.
And before you call me a cynic, there are “miracles”, and there are miracles, for example, I have no reason not to believe in the happenings at Fatima – but their saying that our finding of the phone was a “miracle” is pushing it . . .
. . . I am not a “camino provides” person – I hate that phrase – I am a Plan B person.
But I have great respect for my friends who put all their faith in God; they are very special to me, as they make me feel humbled. They have “something” that I don’t have.
Yep. So was it their prayers, or us looking for it?OK, I’m a cynic, but 4 people pray that a lost phone be found and two people go and look for the phone, and find it! And the 4 who prayed claim it was their efforts that led to the phone being found rather than the 2 who had the common sense and gumption to go and look for it?
While I disagree that everyone’s experience walking is going to be hard, the thought about expectations reminds me of a Camino I walked where another pilgrim was talking about their intense spiritual feelings when visiting a particular tomb. Someone in my party was inspired by this and was very much looking forward to visiting the same tomb so they could have a similar spiritual epiphany. When we arrived, they were disappointed when they didn’t feel anything like that while visiting the very plain and humble tomb. I enjoy hearing about other’s experiences, but I try to remember that my experience might be vastly different. I also enjoy the discovery, and I do find that even after hearing other’s experiences, it’s always a unique experience for me when I live it myself.Trust me the going is motivation enough. It is going to be hard so you better be really motivated to go. Also why fill you head with other people's "miracles"? THere is a very good chance these stories will just create expectations that are counterproductive and can lead to disappointment. Just go and take one step at a time. Let things just happen. Forget everything and breath. Isn't that miracle enough?
@David, I am now for many years a psychotherapist ( pretty much reality based ) , but spent a few decades as an emergency room nurse ( hard core believer of science ) ,then hospice. You'd be hard pressed to find medical professionals in those settings who don't believe in miracles.
** I'll also attest to that 'pause' you experience, as if a hand on your shoulder says 'stop a minute, slow down, sit a minute longer, look around...someone is struggling'. I carry excessive amounts of first aid on long treks and have tended to everything from simple scrapes to near battleground surgery. Countless medical interventions over 8 walks. But in my capacity of a psychotherapist ( and Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner ) , these 'pauses' are more intense. I walked with countless broken souls suffering from sexual abuse as a child...these pilgrims in their 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's, still trying to heal. Most often it is someone who simply shows up beside me while walking. Many I'd not seen before that moment. What are the chances they they suddenly find themselves walking in the middle of nowhere, speaking to a stranger, disclosing secrets of shame, guilt, pain ? How is it that this person finds me? How is it it that I have decades of education, training, experiencing and an open heart to welcome them in the middle of nowhere?
No. It's much more than coincidence. And to this day, I remember each one by name, all of the details of their trauma, and a sense that they were on their way to healing.
It all sounds rather fantastical to the non-believer I'm sure.
Actually, that is pretty funny.@fitmelissa: an alternate interpretation of the event is that you took someone’s glasses.
I was just going to post this same request. I have my own experience and to me it was very valid and still resonates even after doing 2 more times= 3 in total. 3 and half if you count my attempt at the Via Fracigena but I am desperate to hear anything anyone has to share .. I believe in God and I believe in the Camino. It is powerful and cathartic . I just know Denise. you have to believe you are the miracle. you and your intentions and how you treat the people you meet along the way ... it is not a 'right' to be there it is a privilege, a blessing. Too many people treat it as if it's their 'right' to be there. it isn't. Humility and Charity are still very much part of the equation. Just be open to what you are experiencing. Dont try to control it or the outcome. It is not a race, but a journey and believe me when I tell you.. The Camino will give you what you need... Not what you THINK but what it IS that you need. let me know.. best wishesThank you for posting that Deenise, I look forward to reading the replies .. for me it is more the 'way beyond coincidence' experiences rather than miracles in the strict sense.
Following.
I. Love . This.... super big hugs to you ... how incredible you are..Sophie, you are a true Camino Samaritan (Luke 10:37 "Then go, Ye, and do likewise") .. thank you for sharing your experiences, your heart .. yes, it is odd (but not odd) how those who need to unload find us, sit next to us, or we them, or we are placed next to them for that exact purpose.
Here's a thing. A few years ago I was on my first aid mission on Camino with my little Berlingo, driving from Pamplona to Roncesvalles to meet exhausted pilgrims arriving. For no reason whatsoever as I passed the viewpoint stop at Alto de Mezquiriz I suddenly knew I had to stop there and as I passed suddenly braked and swept in, almost too late. I remember shouting "Christ! Give me some warning!"..
I had a coffee at the new caravan cafe and put my kit on a table. I helped two Germans with minor blisters and then nothing else and wondered if I had been mistaken, made up the need to stop in my head? ... I was leaving and a pilgrim called me back, said an Italian woman had just arrived with a bad knee, so I walked back.
Her knee (descents are so bad for knees!) was bad .. I massaged, added Ibuprofen gel, put a good compression knee sleeve on and told her I would take her down to Zubiri where she needed to rest a couple of days (oh, she had perfect English) - you know how when you touch someone you can feel their blocks? She was blocked and really holding a strong fence around her.
She said that she needed to walk down to Zubiri and onwards so I told her to be careful and slow and started to leave again ... another pilgrim then ran up to me at my Berlingo and told me that she was a diabetic and had realised she had left her kit on her bunk at Roncesvalles. I went back, offered her a lift back to go and collect.
On the journey up she told me why she was on Camino. Her mother had died but whenever she tried to grieve her husband or one of her adult children would interfere, get her out of her room, try and get her involved in something, for some reason they were afraid of death and therefore afraid of her grieving - so she decided to go on Camino, to get away and grieve and to Santiago and light a candle and pay for a Mass for her mother ... and here she was, disabled, in terrible pain on day three and she told me that she felt that God had abandoned her.
We arrived Roncesvalles and it only took a short while to get her diabetes kit and we started back down the mountain. I persuaded her to let me take her all the way to Zubiri so she could rest. Now ...
now ... I did not say this ... this 'me' said this but I swear, on oath, it was not me speaking, it wasn't even my normal voice .. we sat in silence the first few minutes and then "I" said .. "Your mother, I grieve with you, for you, but what happened was that she fell out of her broken body and up into the arms of waiting angels, and now she is well".
Then I went silent, rather shocked really. She looked at me, stared at me, then turned away and burst into tears, and all the way down the mountain from Roncesvalles to the refugio in Zubiri she wailed and wailed fountains of tears ... complete release, healing. The whole 17 miles and over 30 minutes.
We sat outside the refugio in silence and then she said "When my knee gave out and I thought I could go no further I thought that God had abandoned me and I sat there in the deepest sadness I have ever felt, and then you arrived, and now I know that I had to stop there as I had to wait for you as you were sent by God, sent for me, and God has not abandoned me" .... then we got out of the car and hugged, she took her pack and walked away (well, limped away), and I never saw her again - and I am crying as I write this, even though some years ago - there are miracles, small though they may be, and God uses us for his purposes - if we let him.
So my opinion on this. So just one of my experiences![]()
If that is your approach who am I to challenge your right to express this as an opinion although it does come across as a wee bit authoritarian. Respect is usually reciprocal especially when we disagree. I won't use exclamation marks, but others may have a different perspective and a gentler form of expression might be appropriate.No miracles! Preprare, work hard, take responsibility!
We, my husband and I did 2 legs of the Le Puy way and before we started we visited Lourdes. I have loved Mother Mary all my life.... but the overwhelming wave of emotion that erupted from my heart and reduced me to tears at her grotto , was something even I could not anticipate.. I rejoice with you on your healing. My daughter is having her right knee reconstruction surgery on July 8th.. It is my fervent prayer that she will one day walk the Camino. Visit Lourdes and find her own journey of Faith and love and healing.. but I am truly so happy you have found yours. God BlessMy conversion story is a bit too complicated for this type of forum, and it did happen on the Camino.
So a different story.
In about 2009 I became very ill with three successive serious flus, being mostly bed-bound over a period of about six months.
I lost a great deal of muscle mass, and then after it finally ended, I tried to start walking again, but then first my right knee gave in ; and then my second.
It became almost impossible to walk, not even to the bus stop, but just to the toilet. Up to 15 minutes sometimes just to get out of bed.
I could force myself out every few days using my hiking staff as a crutch to get the bus, get some shopping done, bus home, then collapse for eight hours just to recover.
Then I switched to a carnivore diet for four months, slowly got better, started walking first 100 metres ; then 300 ; then a kilometre +, slowly began forcing myself back into it, and eventually got two articulated knee braces and started walking a bit further, then got it into my head -- let's see if I can't force myself into being able to do a Camino ...
I trained for a whole year, which was only possible thanks to the knee braces, and in-between I made a vow that if I became capable of it, I would walk from Lourdes with my knee braces to Santiago.
Finally, in 2014 I set out, and I made my prayers and devotions at Lourdes, then off I went, with my knee braces. I prayed for enough strength to finish that Camino.
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Well, my knees felt a bit strange immediately upon setting out, and I realised I was walking better.
On the third day, I tried walking without the braces.
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I have never used them since.
So glad you shared this amazing miracle with us.My conversion story is a bit too complicated for this type of forum, and it did happen on the Camino.
So a different story.
In about 2009 I became very ill with three successive serious flus, being mostly bed-bound over a period of about six months.
I lost a great deal of muscle mass, and then after it finally ended, I tried to start walking again, but then first my right knee gave in ; and then my second.
It became almost impossible to walk, not even to the bus stop, but just to the toilet. Up to 15 minutes sometimes just to get out of bed.
I could force myself out every few days using my hiking staff as a crutch to get the bus, get some shopping done, bus home, then collapse for eight hours just to recover.
Then I switched to a carnivore diet for four months, slowly got better, started walking first 100 metres ; then 300 ; then a kilometre +, slowly began forcing myself back into it, and eventually got two articulated knee braces and started walking a bit further, then got it into my head -- let's see if I can't force myself into being able to do a Camino ...
I trained for a whole year, which was only possible thanks to the knee braces, and in-between I made a vow that if I became capable of it, I would walk from Lourdes with my knee braces to Santiago.
Finally, in 2014 I set out, and I made my prayers and devotions at Lourdes, then off I went, with my knee braces. I prayed for enough strength to finish that Camino.
---
Well, my knees felt a bit strange immediately upon setting out, and I realised I was walking better.
On the third day, I tried walking without the braces.
---
I have never used them since.
Hey David When are you walking again? I might go in September if I can plan it that fast.Thank you for posting that Deenise, I look forward to reading the replies .. for me it is more the 'way beyond coincidence' experiences rather than miracles in the strict sense.
Following.
Your story is an excellent illustration of my point that many of us share.While I disagree that everyone’s experience walking is going to be hard, the thought about expectations reminds me of a Camino I walked where another pilgrim was talking about their intense spiritual feelings when visiting a particular tomb. Someone in my party was inspired by this and was very much looking forward to visiting the same tomb so they could have a similar spiritual epiphany. When we arrived, they were disappointed when they didn’t feel anything like that while visiting the very plain and humble tomb. I enjoy hearing about other’s experiences, but I try to remember that my experience might be vastly different. I also enjoy the discovery, and I do find that even after hearing other’s experiences, it’s always a unique experience for me when I live it myself.
I actually got 6 weeksIts a miracle my boss gave me a month off .
OK, I’m a cynic, but 4 people pray that a lost phone be found and two people go and look for the phone, and find it! And the 4 who prayed claim it was their efforts that led to the phone being found rather than the 2 who had the common sense and gumption to go and look for it?
I really like what you say here about cynicism and mentioning it in your post. It can be very destructive and many of us fall prey to it at one time or another during our lives. I have a brother who is very cynical and negative about almost everything. No words of encouragement lift him up and his clouds never have a silver lining.Cynicism is a choice. And it is a choice which I, to my regret, often make. It is borne of our difficulties, disappointments (with ourselves and with the realities of life itself) and the hardness of life itself. But it is still a choice--something of which I need to remind myself each and every day. That doesn't mean that I easily see miracles, either. But I recognize my own need to choose to see them where they are and to accept them with gratitude. I hope that doesn't make me naive or foolish.
Thanks to all of you for sharing your stories, even for your disagreement and cynicism, as they remind me that I am not alone!
Peace to all of you.
and a glass of wine at day's end
and to everyone's disbelief, it was gone!
I had two things happen… 1) when we began planning 9mo prior to our Camino, I was having left knee issues. Already had both hips replaced- a godsend. Had a hyleronic injection a week before we left.Please share your stories of Camino miracles that you experienced. I’ll be there this Fall and those stories get me motivated!Thank you Deenise
Oh yes!I had two things happen… 1) when we began planning 9mo prior to our Camino, I was having left knee issues. Already had both hips replaced- a godsend. Had a hyleronic injection a week before we left.
Our first 3 days we played tourist in the Porto area. Our first day walked up and down 28k steps - oh, I live and trained in flat FL. What a wake up call! Iced every night and was worried. Got my tracking poles in Vigo (we started there) and the first 2 km my knee felt better with every step. Then every day was great. Even the spiritual variant climb! In the rain! Maybe the training finally kicked in.
My miracle occurred while we were walking the path of stone and water. After 5 days of nonstop rain, we finally saw a break in the rain - then sunshine. It was a glorious walk - and I turned to my right and my dad (who died over 45 years ago) was walking with me. Smiling. It only lasted for about 2 minutes but I was just in paradise.
There are no heretics out in the big empty, there are only people naked to the world. You cant hide what is plain to see in that all illuminating place.The universe is an interventional universe … whatever this reality we are a part of is it is not just random, mechanical, it is not as it seems, not at all as it seems … interventions happen all the time, way beyond coincidence, but those who are running on ego, or are closed, or are cynics (or all of of those) never notice and if something is told to them about one they dismiss with “just a coincidence” ..
Carl Yung understood that what are commonly labelled coincidences are in fact proof of synchonricity and is quoted as defining synchronicity as “meaningful coincidence of two or more events where something other than the probability of chance is involved.”
I think that these become more apparent on Camino as everything else is stripped away, that other home life is gone and it is a backpack and openness so that what is always around us, those odd things, become more easily noticed (let alone that it is a deep religious path whether a person considers themselves religious or not – they were still called to go for ‘some reason’).
Now, miracles do happen but Santiago isn’t Lourdes and there are no racks of discarded crutches in the cathedral (would be ironic if there were!) - but ‘lesser’ miracles? Oh yes.
Being a Unitarian (non-Trinitarian, not universalist) Christian makes me very much a heretic on the Catholic Camino but when out doing my first aid I start each day by praying that I be ‘used’ .. not my will or decisions but something else acting through me .. and often this happens. I get the feeling when about to leave a cafe that I must wait, even though I want to get on, so I wait and in comes the pilgrim in tears, or in a village I ‘have’ to turn off Camino down a side street and then find a distraught pilgrim who needs help sitting by a fountain .. this has been happening for 18 years, each year, every year – way beyond coincidence .. I know who it is that does this but this forum is not the place to discuss it. The one time (to my knowledge) that I have saved a life came about through an irrational few route changes to meet that person.
So miracles in the big sense, I’m sure they do happen but most visible on Camino are those smaller ‘coincidences’, that synchronicity … oh yes, all the time.
A lovely post.Camino Serendipity
I walked the Camino for Flora my dog who I'd lost 6 months previously. I had many amazing things happen on my walk, but one was just so amazing, too amazing to just be what some might refer to as coincidence.
And so I'll try and explain so it makes any sense without anyone falling asleep reading it. . .(will probably fail)
I love NW Spain and me and Flora had spent over 8 years exploring what became our second home, and hence how I now came to the Camino having criss crossed it's paths on many occasions. I'd already been to Santiago twice, but the only other place on the CF that I'd spent time was an overnight stop at Molinaseca a couple of years previously with Flora and my then long-term but now ex-girlfriend. And so Molinaseca became an increasing bogeyman on my walk which I was worried about the emotions and the memories it might invoke of happier times and souls no longer near for differing reasons.
So, as Camino serendipity would dictate I'd met a girl (J) walking the Camino with her dog Sepia (had to happen right?) and we'd walked on and off together for about 10 days before Molinaseca. I'd become very fond of both of them, and especially Sepia for obvious reasons. J was camping so we'd often end up in different places at the end of the day, but would generally meet each other the next day. The day before Molinaseca I'd ended up in the Albergue in Riego de Ambros (the hospitelero is the spitting image of Stanley Tucci), and I hadn't seen J at all that day, and I'd also got a really bad shin splint coming down from Cruz de Ferro and my shin was red and swollen - I didn't even know if I'd be able to continue and went to sleep depressed and rather dreading the next day.
So the next day dawned (actually it was still pitch black), I decided I'd try walking with the shin splint and set off in the murky grey dark at a snails pace trying not to aggravate my shin. I arrived at the edge of Molinaseca just where the track joins the road as the morning started to dawn. Last time I was there with Flora and my ex we'd done the usual walk around, ate dinner had a beer etc, and we'd walked as far as the church that is just on the right as you walk down the road towards the bridge. So as I approached the church everything was coming flooding back, amplified by my depressed mood - it felt like I was about to be swallowed up by the past. As I drew level with the church I heard distant shouting far back up the track and I looked around to see Sepia the dog running towards me. It seemed she was walking off the lead when she had picked up my scent (not difficult when you're a pilgrim in the same clothes for the last 3 weeks) and ran off from J to find me. It seemed Sepia had decided she wouldn't let me walk through this maze of memories alone.
So that was the first Camino serendipity, the second was J eventually caught up and decided she needed coffee. The place she randomly chose was the same place me, Flora, and my ex had stopped for dinner.
Then post Camino the third bit of Camino serendipity transpired. On my way home from the Camino whilst on the train I was thinking about this day in particular, and it made me look back up my photos on Google photos of when we'd been in Molinaseca that first time - it was two years to the day that I'd walked in on my Camino.
I'm not religious in any way, but things like this for me prove that there's much more to life than we will ever know, or ever need to know - we just need to be present for it and embrace it without questions.
Congratulations if you made it this far.
We walked the rest of the way together to Santiago. So two years since I was last sat in that square with Flora watching the pilgrims arrive, thinking one day I'd love to do that - there I was with Sepia without whom my Camino would have been very different. And I know that my Flora had a hand/paw in that.
Me and Sepia at the end of our Camino
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Me and Flora two years previously
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I enjoyed reading your story, @davejsy; part sad, part upbeat, and also @Bristle Boy's response to your post of his recent loss.Camino Serendipity
I walked the Camino for Flora my dog who I'd lost 6 months previously. I had many amazing things happen on my walk, but one was just so amazing, too amazing to just be what some might refer to as coincidence.
And so I'll try and explain so it makes any sense without anyone falling asleep reading it. . .(will probably fail)
So sorry to hear about your Oscar @Bristle Boy . I know fully where you are coming from. Losing Flora hit me harder than any other loss I've had, animal or human, and I've had too many. I don't know why it hit me so hard, but the Camino was basically my last throw of the dice.A lovely post.
I have just lost my furry soulmate Oscar a few days ago so can empathise and understand your reason to walk...I am still at the heartbreak stage and the emptiness it brings. To have another as company is a great comfort and companionship that only a dog owner understands....obviously Sepia understood.
Keep walking David...from one to another.
There's a quote from a book that I just finished reading that struck me as helpful. Perhaps others may find it so:What I can say though, unequivocally, is that they never ever really leave you - nothing you love does. They reside in your heart and soul, and you theirs, and while our hearts one day stop our souls never do. We become mosaics of everything we have ever loved through many different lifetimes.
OK - - time to share this in here.My conversion story is a bit too complicated for this type of forum, and it did happen on the Camino.
So a different story.
In about 2009 I became very ill with three successive serious flus, being mostly bed-bound over a period of about six months.
I lost a great deal of muscle mass, and then after it finally ended, I tried to start walking again, but then first my right knee gave in ; and then my second.
It became almost impossible to walk, not even to the bus stop, but just to the toilet. Up to 15 minutes sometimes just to get out of bed.
I could force myself out every few days using my hiking staff as a crutch to get the bus, get some shopping done, bus home, then collapse for eight hours just to recover.
Then I switched to a carnivore diet for four months, slowly got better, started walking first 100 metres ; then 300 ; then a kilometre +, slowly began forcing myself back into it, and eventually got two articulated knee braces and started walking a bit further, then got it into my head -- let's see if I can't force myself into being able to do a Camino ...
I trained for a whole year, which was only possible thanks to the knee braces, and in-between I made a vow that if I became capable of it, I would walk from Lourdes with my knee braces to Santiago.
Finally, in 2014 I set out, and I made my prayers and devotions at Lourdes, then off I went, with my knee braces. I prayed for enough strength to finish that Camino.
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Well, my knees felt a bit strange immediately upon setting out, and I realised I was walking better.
On the third day, I tried walking without the braces.
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I have never used them since.
Wow. May God blessOK - - time to share this in here.
It's happened again.
I have spent nearly three weeks making my way towards what will be my "proper" starting point in Ponferrada, and during that mostly hitch-hiking journey I decided to let the Way take me where it would.
That turned out to be Lourdes.
Despite the fact that I have no longer needed knee braces for ten years, my knees were still in constant pain that could only be alleviated with not just the anti-inflammatory, but also a certain amount of beer every day.
Well, I went to the Grotto, and poured the water on my knees and ankles, and I drank some of the water, passed through the Grotto itself, crossed myself with the water coating its surface, and ate a scrap of the "herbe" growing nearby, as Saint Bernadette said.
Prayed 12 Ave Marias. Asking for intercession from the Father BTW in case anyone's wondering.
And now that pain in the knees is basically gone. This was about ten days ago.
I need no beer to get rid of it as it's just gone, indeed I can simply drink far far less than I have needed to in the past 15 years or so.
One of these is extraordinary. Two ? Absolutely wonderful.