Day 35
Birth is a beginning and death a destination;
But life is a journey.
 A going, a growing from stage to stage:
From childhood to maturity and youth to old age. 

From innocence to awareness and ignorance to knowing; From foolishness to discretion and then perhaps, to wisdom. 

From weakness to strength or strength to weakness and often back again. From health to sickness and back we pray, to health again. 

From offense to forgiveness, from loneliness to love,
From joy to gratitude, from pain to compassion.
From grief to understanding, from fear to faith;
From defeat to defeat to defeat, until, looking backward or ahead: 

We see that victory lies not at some high place along the way,
But in having made the journey, stage by stage, a sacred pilgrimage. 

Birth is a beginning and death a destination;
But life is a journey, a sacred pilgrimage,
Made stage by stage…To life everlasting. 
Life is a Journey by Alvin Fine 

I heard someone describe the Camino as life when you start it’s like birth you are learning and growing into this journey. Then in the middle part it’s like youth and middle age you have some challenges (blisters and some pains). Then you move toward the end and you begin to have to say goodbyes so it moves into old age as you reach Santiago and death. And then when you reach Finisterra it is a resurrection as you move into life everlasting. 
I think I like Alvin Fine’s description of a journey is a fit one both for the camino and for life. 

“But life is a journey, a sacred pilgrimage,
Made stage by stage.”
It isn’t always easy; it isn’t always pleasant. There are challenges and setbacks, pains and heartaches. “From innocence to awareness and ignorance to knowing; From foolishness to discretion and then perhaps, to wisdom. 

From weakness to strength or strength to weakness and back again” it’s often not a straight line. Perhaps when we understand that it helps on the journey. 

These things are difficult for us when we want easy answers and solutions to each problem that we have. These concepts are about the slow plodding of a pilgrim on a journey and not in a hurry. 

“From offense to forgiveness, from loneliness to love,
From joy to gratitude, from pain to compassion.
From grief to understanding, from fear to faith;
From defeat to defeat to defeat, until, looking backward or ahead: 

We see that victory lies not at some high place along the way,
But in having made the journey, stage by stage, a sacred pilgrimage”

And when we accept our own complicity, our own faults; when we truly move from joy to gratitude and begin to live into forgiveness and love toward others the journey does indeed become a “sacred pilgrimage”. 

Buen Camino. 

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