Oct 3, 2012. Pamplona

Made it to the fabled city of the running of the bulls and Ernest Hemingway. The old city is beautiful and charming with so much history rooted in the basque culture.
October 3 is important for Franciscans around the world since the Transitus of st Francis is celebrated : on October 3 around 1225 AD Francis made the "transition" from this world into the next, the great transition we all must experience. All the little transitions we go through are preparations for our own great "Transitus."
This camino journey is filled with a number of transitions from one type of terrain to another, from village to village, to the interior transitions from feeling connected with the other pilgrims to intense loneliness and from a sense of satisfaction to a question as to why go through all of this.
In the early cool morning hours as the walk was beginning, in the quiet hush of pre-dawn light, my eyes just welled up with unplanned tears, not the tears of sadness or joy, but tears living in and through transition, memories of unresolved moments surfacing.
"Let go," are the words of a wise Jesuit, aren't they all wise, saying that the most powerful phrase on my spiritual journey will be to let go of all from the past that weighs down the human spirit. Those words, that phrase, was spoken to me in August of 1989 on an ignatian 30 day retreat. That very retreat prepared me to start this particular journey of letting.
And to think, exactly 800 years ago,st Francis made this same journey to Santiago. His spirit guides all of us in our own unique and mysterious journey through life, filled with transitions that can be summed up with the paschal mystery: from death into new life. Burn camino. Fr frank