Wild Cherry Tree

This morning mornings walk was very much on narrow trails through the country. I started even earlier than I ever have (7am!!) Paco at the bar had served me cafe con leche and let me take a photo holding his ginormous sword  Sadly left the pool behind. I am becoming quite fond of the idea of a pool at then endof a days walk. Somedays I am just walking and looking (either too tired to 'think' or just taking in the beauty of the counryside or city) I have noticed that almost all very introspective thought comes flooding through me in the morning walks w/ breeze. Idon't know why my heart and mind are most open at that time of day but it is. As Ipass through these many villages, so many homes have these gorgeous red pots of geraniums everywhere! They are a bright beautiful stark contrast to the white homes. When homes have bright pots of flowers they are everywhere; like 20 pots in the front of one home. Its so beautiful. Ihave stopped many times to take pictures and just to take in all that beauty. I am a flower lover and for me; flowers on my porch are a way of welcoming you to my home. It also a way for me to make my own home that I have shared with my kids for 20 years; special to me. I almost always killl the geranium. I do better w/ vinca's and winter pansies. So I was trekking yesterday alone again, down this trail with the sun at my back and a breeze on my skin. Quiet. Happy. This part of the trail had 3 very very very uphill sections (what felt like a 24% incline) tough and I have to take them slow. Still Iam enjoying the uphill which has never happened in all my mountain hiking. Parts of the uphill were stone & concrete from the locals to make the uphill more safe for peregrinos on their way to Santiago. The locals maintain parts of the trails to help us out. It is appreciated along this particular section i started noticing the cracks in the concrete and out of those cracks was where little yellow, purple, white, orange, wildflowers were growing and I thoughts about 'exactly why' I am here started to dance in my mind. I know this is a very spiritual place and camino and I am certainly a spiritual person but I am not a religious person. I started to think about my faith, whatever rules I understand exist about faith and whether or not I am living in accorance to those rules? I kept walking forward, still pondering these little wildflowers. I noticed that they grow through the crack and TOWARDS the trail? it is as if they are trying to grow in front of me (the peregrino) perhaps they know how hard and long my days walk will be and that I might enjoy the beauty they will bring along my slow pace. They are right. I smile at the energy they represent. The wildflowers are messy in that they are strewn about the trail in no real order, they seem very uninhibited and quite unlike the beauty of the geraniums planted quite beautifully in the pots of the city homes. Still, with all their wild abandon, they represent growth and life and beauty that came from a broken place. Then I start crying. Walking through the countryside, other peregrinos passin me, smiling and saying to me Buen Camino, but my tears are so real I cannot even speak back. Somehow others seem to know that for some people this camino is a place where hurt and loss are allowed the time to BE. I started thinking about my life and my own efforts to live a life that looked beautiful like the geranium in the pot. When I got married and had kids, I dreamed of that 'geranium life'. One that felt 'right' and could be appreciated from a distance. But as life happens, sometimes people and relationships change in ways that we don't expect or predict. And we have to accept and respect each persons desire for their own direction and dreams and allow them to be. Then my life was no longer the geranium. At that time I feel like it was just the crack in the foundation. Total uncertainty of how to put something beautiful together for me or my kids. My heart and spirit was actively dancing with God in a way I never had before. I was in a church and trying to learn and grow in His love. I met and fell in love with a friend and everything about our relationship was "appropriate" not that I can take credit for that, but he was certainly a man of values and did not even sway one inch away from those. I thought I could have married him. I liked that he did what always was right. God knows I don't. I though my wild spirit and his dependability would make a nice pair. As I am walking yesterday (I have honestly not even thought about this relationship for more than 15 years ) I remembered him saying "i love you but God would not give someone like me, someone like you." The 'me' he loved but the cracks in my life 'divorce' was a deal breaker. Love or no love. Not possible. Sometimes when someone loves us and it does not or can not work out, we move on and other times it's so painfull we shut down a little bit; afraid of feeling more of that pain.walking crying peregrino, I was quiet and just moving forward and realizing 2 very significant things; 1) his rejection was not as much about me as it was his own expectation or hope in what he believes God will do with/for him. I personally have always hoped he found the love he dreamed of. and 2) it's almost as if a voice in the countryside wispered to me; those were not MY WORDS about you. Even in my brokenness I believe the cracks that have shattered one kind of beauty, allow for a whole different kind of beauty to exist.... thus my life today feels very beautiful and worthy of love (not just the love that exists in man/woman, but Love on the whole life grand scale) I am living a whole life grand scale kind of love and have for many years.The other element of the broken cracks in my pot is that I have found my faith is much more experienced outside in nature. I don't have a a geranium worship practice. The wildflower spirit in my, that God is very aware of, worships outside in nature; on trails, in the ocean and currently walking across Spain. It was then I was walking up the 3rd (and last for the day) extreme hill and I stopped under a tree to breathe, drink some water and rest.... the tears had all been cried and parts of grief had came up and out and I was moving forward (well not at this exact moment) as I stood there, a taller peregrino walked by and said Buen Camino and I said Buen Camino and smiled. Then he came back at me with an enthusiastic smile and said something in Spanish I did not understand, I shook my head 'no understand' then he hopped over a small revine and reached up and picked and handfull of yellow cherries and handed to me to eat!!!! I was shocked! all that time I was standing under the shade of a wild cherry tree! It was such a positive omen that here I had cried for an extensive part of my journey today about my spirit being like the wildflower and that my spirit grows BEST in the wild and what do I find? Proof that CHERRIES REALLY DO GROW IN THE WILD AND THEY ARE PERFECTLY BALANCED; SWEET & TART. If that is not God talking directly to my pain and purpose then I don't know what it is. It's God. xxoo Wild Cherry Berry from Kansas.