You know your becoming obsessed about the weight of things you carry on Camino when you look at a particular rosary and actually calculate it's weight and opt between one vs another one. I'd have consider this is on par with sawing the handle off a toothbrush as is often done by folks prepping to do the Appalachian Trail.
I've only ever recently stopped to think about the weight of what I carry in my heart. Just within the last few days, I've discovered I have some funky and truly antiquated baggage. Dusty, moldy. Unhealthy. Some of it I've been schlepping along for years and years. Worthy of and needing to be discarded, yet for some reason still solidly and firmly in my possession. I can almost feel them like stones or anchors holding me in places I no longer fit, and no longer even want to try to fit myself into.
So if I need to lighten my load, how do I go about it, physically, mentally and even spiritually. I know people often take stones from home with them, representing either a prayer or perhaps a sin or burden, to be left at the Cruz de Fero along the Camino Frances. Some bring things they symbolically burn at the shore line in Finisterra along with their pilgrim clothes. There are also small cairns along the road, where people leave stones, indicating I guess, the leaving of a burden or vice, or perhaps a prayer for someone. If I carried a stone for each of the things that I've been brooding or mulling over lately, my pack is going to be too heavy to carry and have little room for real essentials!
So I guess over the next few weeks and months, I need to consider how to load my pack with only the essentials for the road, and my inner pack only with what will be good for me on the road. As I spend time actually weighing the day to day items on my nifty little scale, I need to take the time to assess some of my mental pieces of baggage. For the things I cannot quite manage to ditch, I need to think about how to carry them as lightly as possible. How to find a way to leave them, hopefully once and for all?
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| Cairn at Cruz de Ferro |
I don't want to end up pulling a Hansel and Gretel, and end up following the trail back to where I began. I want this to be a journey forward, upward and onward!
