One of the things we are dealing with in the early stages of the camino is how to communicate well. Mostly, we do pretty well. But there are three of us. We are different ages, different sizes, different athletic abilities. And we have different needs and priorities. And how do we express our wants and needs in a way that is communal. How do I share what I need/want without being demanding and insensitive to the needs of everyone else? And how do I support the others without making incorrect assumptions about what they want and need?
For example, we were looking for a place to eat dinner. Eric really wanted roasted lamb. I was hungry, and I like lamb, so I'm fine looking for a place to eat lamb. Rachel doesn't want lamb, but figures she will find something else wherever we find the lamb. But all of us are tired and want to find a place fairly close to the hotel.
It's not long before we realize that roasted lamb isn't on the menus. We find a restaurant and Rachel and Eric are looking at the pilgrims menu. I scan it quickly, see that there is no lamb and I am ready to move on. What I don't realize until we sit down at a burger joint is that both of them had been interested in eating at that restaurant. And I find out when I express my own desire at eating at a similar restaurant at some point down the road. They thought I wasn't interested, but I was. I had just skimmed the menu because I was still trying to find Eric's lamb. So here we are--all three interested in eating at the same place, but none of us doing a great job of communicating and all of us trying to be sensitive to the needs of others.
In similar fashion, we have already discovered that our paces and focuses on the path are different and we are making an effort to communicate needs along the trail. When I get tired, my pace slows down. When Eric gets tired, he just wants to keep moving until he gets to the destination for the day. When Rachel gets tired, she isn't really tired, the bottoms of her feet are killing her, and she needs to stop and rest. Three different needs and priorities. So we work it out daily. And we are already getting better at saying what we need and learning how to pace together. And I'm sure we will get better as we journey farther together.
As we pace, I notice that we follow the same general path, but are on different parts of the trail. We all find the space that suits us best--sometimes to the left, sometimes to the right, sometimes on a small detour. And we’ve gotten better and moving farther apart and coming back together. We can’t walk in lock-step.
It's easy to see these things out on the trail, when it is just the three of us. But isn't this true for all of us living in community? Within our families? Roommate situations? Work communities? Faith communities? We just can't see it so clearly because we are distracted by life.
But I think we are all challenged to make sure we communicate well with those around us and remain sensitive to the reality that our wants, needs, desires, abilities are different. But we can find a way to pace together. To be community.
Even in life, we all walk different paths, see things a little differently, stray away for a while, but come back together.
Blessings and Buen Camino!
Great Message!
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