I have a confession: I have spiritual amnesia. It’s a selective forgetting, an involuntary loss of graces and lessons and gems from God. It often comes on swiftly and unexpectedly in such a way that I don’t even notice until much later, such as weeks into a new job, when I’ve taken on an precedented schedule and new worries and pressures and my old tendency to control. Sigh. But as I’ve said before, the biggest grace of my transformative Camino was this: I can live like I did

I’ve just got to start with the salad. You see, this was no ordinary salad. It was the first of its kind I’d ever made. Red leaf lettuce and mixed greens, chicken, cucumber, strawberries, avocado, corn, egg, feta. Topped with freshly ground pepper and the creamiest balsamic dressing in all the land. There I was, eating my salad alone during my brief lunch break at a picnic table on a perfectly sunny, breezy, lovely day, people-watching and pondering as I chewed. And then ther

You know those little winks from God? Those hidden moments of sheer grace that only you can fully appreciate and rejoice in? I was the happy recipient of one just the other day. As I feel my way through a new routine, scheduling and prioritizing and learning by failing, I've found a perfect window of time for prayer in the morning, before I do anything else. And it was in that sleepy, peaceful window this week that I was meditating on the current state of my heart. It's been

Two weeks felt like a lifetime. There was birth and growth and death, a marked beginning and a definite end, profound emotion and deep friendships and priceless lessons and utter fullness. My trip felt like a lifetime, but I also felt as if I were dwelling outside of time. As if each day, from calm and cool and quiet sunrise to restful, relieving, radiant sunset, was an eternity. While I wore a watch on my wrist, and had the task of translating kilometers to miles and checkin

I miss making five new friends a day. Okay, that may be an exaggeration, but the truth is, the habit of instantaneous friend-making among all pilgrims walking the Camino is simply unparalleled. As I walked kilometer after kilometer, stopped for coffee or cerveza, lay in rickety bunkbeds in albergues of varying quality, massaged my sore feet, and washed sweaty clothes with my meager soap supply in deep sinks, I met people from all over the world. Mortiz from Germany and Sillia

I wasn’t supposed to meet Katie. My flight from New York to Madrid wasn’t supposed to turn around two hours in because of malfunctioning air conditioning. We weren’t supposed to wait another two hours, until 2 am, to depart again. I wasn’t supposed to miss the bus I’d bought to my Camino starting point, or the hostel I’d paid for. I wasn’t supposed to spend a night in Madrid. I wasn’t supposed to go to Avila. I wasn’t supposed to leave my adapter in a Telepizza in Avila and h