8 apr

Walked another 47 kilometres, from Sarria to Palas de Rei, making a total of 1371 kilometres.
Was chasing my buddy Frantisek from Slovakia, or Francisco as he likes to be called. ‘That was the name of my grandfather, he says’. I thought I lost Francisco several times. First a week ago. I passed him while he was limping. A blister, he said. It really hurts, just walk on. After walking more than 40 kilometres that day I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw him showing up at the place where I had coffee the next morning. I just changed shoes, it made all the difference, he explained.
He has been struggling ever since. We only walk together for short periods. He not only walks slower, but also prefers to walk by himself. He’s a truck driver and is thinking deeply about the deeper meaning of love. That takes time. I know, although you don’t have to think too much about it once one has found it. He likes to walk by himself, but it is always fun to see each other again. He showed up quite unexpectedly at both of the albergues where I stayed in the past few days.
Santiago is approaching rapidly. I passed the 100 km sign today. There are markers every 500 metres, in fact. While I didn’t like them when they said 571 km to go, now these signs are quite nice. They started when we entered Galicia, at about 140 kilometres from Santiago. That distance is oversee-able. I want to be in Santiago on thursday, just in time to attend the pilgrim’s mass at 12 noon.
I have come to terms with my thoughts about believing. They haven’t changed too much, I am afraid, but they are clearer. I was always kind of in awe of people that believed. I find it a kind of magic, but wonderful magic. Believing is a blessing, although I suspect that many people have a confused belief in which they think that there can be things that can be proved about believing. Which is a contradictio in terminis, of course. But it is not believing that matters, I have decided. It is behaving that matters.
In order to behave well there needs to be a new appreciation of sins. Not in the determined way of some of the Reformed churches, but also more serious than I have always treated the subject. Most sins (vanity, pride, lust, jealousy) are okay to a certain point. It is best not to have them at all, of course, but it takes a monk’s life, with very little societal responsibilities, to achieve that status.
But what is that certain point? Always stepping over the fine line that is defined by enough vanity, enough lust and enough pride, and enough of all the others, that is the challenge of life we are facing. Realizing to have stepped over that fine line is sinning, and trying to improve in the future is taking sinning seriously. Living is sinning, as everybody knows. But life can only be worthwhile if the fine line of enough is continually challenged. Not challenging the fine line leads to unsatisfactory results if not to boring lives.
I remember a comment from Martin O’Brien about the fine line of thinking enough about others and enough about yourself. It is the Philip Larkin dilemma of being selfish and altruistic enough. There is no definitive answer. The challenge is to redefine the fine line of enough selfishness and enough altruism continuously. The challenge is to fail, in order to be able to improve.
One easily walks 45 kilometres or more thinking about these kind of things.
Another one. Although I have pretty much decided that belief doesn’t matter, I have grown fonder and fonder of religion. Not the version in which ‘believing’ is used to put oneself above somebody else. I have read enough of Christopher Hitchins ‘God is not Great’ to see the real danger of that kind of religion.
But I do not see a real good alternative for the kind of desirable communal inspiration that religion offers. And then again. Many of the churches that have been built over the last 1000 years are so beautiful in many ways, it is a pity not to use them. The religion that I am seeking, focuses on the realisation that living is sinning and offers inspiration to improve on one’s own life. Mark: it is not about establishing a kind of feeling that ‘we’ are doing well, while ‘the others’ are failing.
Ah well.
I’ve changed my accounting system. According to my unreliable guide I was 108 kilometres from Santiago yesterday. The clearly more reliable road markers indicated it was 112,5 kilometres. There’s a post outside here that indicates that there are still 66 kilometres to go. Like I said, 1,5 day to go.