By Mpmajewski - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6676030
In last Sunday's installment of David Whyte's lovely webinar, A Road Always Beckoning, he shared a story and poem, Camino. A story of the inner pilgrim. Of those who walk the Camino de Santiago in Spain... seekers, I call them. People like you and me.
Camino means "way." It could be road. It could be approach to life.
It got me thinking about where I live in Tucson. I live on Camino de las Grutas.
Literally, "the way of the grotto."
A funny thing to name a street in the desert.
Grottos are caves usually underwater and near water.
They connote places of rest, of shelter, or worship.
Their mix of rock and water combines with wood and plant to form a balance of elements.
Our rainy season, the monsoon, is the only time we really have water here.
But we dream of water and the ocean and fish.
My friend Jorg has painted every car since I have known him blue with fish, "The Sonoran Ocean."
An approach to life as if it were from a place of rest, of shelter, or worship.
I can step outside my cave door into a world of breath-taking ocean surges in my mind's eye.
I can see the desert landscape spread before me from my shelter in the rock.
I can worship the divine in each rock, cacti, bobcat.
I see now I chose the perfect place to live, the Way of the Grotto.
HT Jorg Hader