ABANDONING MY POST (S) TO BE A PILGRIM (First published in 'NZ Catholic, October 18)

 

 

I apologise to all my readers for abandoning my post (or rather, posts) at Carmelite Canto Fermo for two months - and more.

As I explain in the following NZ Catholic column, I was in Spain.  I made a pilgrimage to Avila for the 500^th centenary of St Teresa of Jesus, and pilgrims don't have time to post ...

 

So read on:

 

 

European holidays are for people with family there. Or so I thought. Actually, after our OE eighteen years ago with 4 year-old Rosanagh I thought, never again.

It was always my dream to go to France. And we did. We drove straight through France, at speed, at the height of summer, with ‘im indoors’ brother and his wife from Basingstoke in their two-door BMW. They’d been to France before. They wanted to go to Italy and I, in the grip of post-natal depression, incapable of making plans, went along for the ride.

It wasn’t until years later that I discovered Spain, or more specifically, the woman Spaniards revere as La Santa. From Primer One I’d heard the ‘black Joes’ lauding the Carmelites as the crème de la crème of religious orders and eventually - those humble Sisters of St Joseph of Nazareth having wisely not invited me to join them - I became a lay Carmelite.

Then last November I opened an email announcing a pilgrimage to Spain for St Teresa of Avila’s 500^th anniversary celebrations. Without thinking I flicked it to ‘im indoors, who’s always thinking and always Scottish. ‘It’s very reasonable,’ he said. ‘You should go.’

‘Not without you,’ I said, and before bob was our uncle we were booked for Spain.

Then at a family wedding a relly who’d nearly died on OE in London told me I was being ‘a bit selfish’. He was probably thinking of the airfreight for a coffin. But at the same wedding was our Melbourne son, a health and fitness Nazi who brought his father up to speed on the latest diet, and ‘im indoors started fasting two days a week. (I’d been doing that for years, but never mind.)

Then a long-lost friend surfaced on the net with pix of his new house in Buendia, Cuenca, and said he’d meet us at Madrid airport.

After two knee replacements ‘im indoors was wont to say his doctor had forbidden him to walk, don’t y’ know, but as his weight dropped his legs started working. Now friends say he’s a shadow of his former self and he’s walking the distance from a monastery bed to the plaza de la cuidad.

We booked house sitters. Bosy and Orlando sitters, really. The dog and cat being elderly, ‘im indoors thought they could die before we left, but even so I’d rather not come home to swallows and starlings in the roof tiles. And the prospect of house sitters had a startling effect - while ‘im indoors planned and packed, I furiously spring-cleaned. In winter.

I should be writingl this in the third person. When Teresa wrote (only under obedience, while I’m just showing off) of her experiences, she’d say, ‘I know someone who …’. That’s humility. If I did that I’d sound coy. Anyway, no one would believe me.

It hurt, leaving our family. But with everything falling into place so sweetly, I’m convinced it was God’s will that we should go to Spain.