Day 9: Wise Persons and Wisdom

I look forward to meeting and discussing interesting things with people on the. Camino.

In the last few days I have learned about

The virtue of restraint;
God’s active intervention in life to save people;
How we as Christians should focus on helping others and being less judgmental; and
How concrete Christian practices can be used to help in big changes in life.

Patrick is a 30 something science teacher from Boulder CO who is walking the Camino with his sister Ann Marie and a Swedish doctor named Cecilia. We have seen them off and on since our second day. At dinner last night he discussed the virtues of restraint. Not over spending, over committing, or over investing. By keeping within his means and being careful he had avoided the economic downturn and a host of other calamities that befall people.

Mark the 60 something educator from southern Californian and his wife Chris walked with us for two days. On our last night together in Logrono we introduced them to Pinchos (tapas) bar crawling.

Mark had a very serious injury last year on the Camino that resulted in 50 stitches to his head. He and Chris were helped by two Spaniards, one who found them on the trail and got them into a town with a clinic, and the other who bundled them into a car and rushed them to the clinic as it was closing and the doctors were leaving. Mark spoke openly about his belief that God had intervened in his calamity and sent Angels to save him. Saved by God’s grace, not because he earned it, but for some unknown reason.

Then today we walked with David and Lorna from Australia. David and Lorna are open minded, conservative, evangelical Christians.

David said that rather than emphasizing the negatives, everything Christians might oppose in the secular world. We should focus on helping people and not judging them. By helping others and listening to their perspectives we demonstrate the core of our faith, and we humanize and learn about people who do not agree with us.

Lorna at dinner talked about her faith and how hands on they have to be at times to figure out what to do. They did Daniel Fasting for 9 weeks as David left one career and started a new one. Her lesson of concrete approaches to life issues through her faith practices was just great.