Happy Monday! I hope your corner of the world is as bright and sunny as it is here on the Carolinas. This is another post of loosely connected pieces and thoughts. We’re halfway through National Poetry Month and I feel I should write about poetry, but Saturday I finally got to play in the dirt, and my peonies are budding. I always look forward to my daffodils spiking up through frost, snow, and mud because they herald spring, but my peonies feel like the first flowers of summer (not sure why) and take me back to Ohio.

It seemed everyone in town had a peony plant or two around their yard, the deep green leaves on slender stalks, bursting into ruffled pink, red, or white blossoms, and the fragrance you could smell from two backyards away. I was always fascinated by the army of ants that arrived with the buds, those perfectly round balls that started out the size of a marble and kept expanding like a bubble. I used to think the ants were the ones that unfurled all the petals, slowing working their way into the center, fluffing out the tattered-edged petals along the way. Now I know the ants are simply lapping up special nectar, and at the same time protecting the buds from other insects. A win-win for the plant-animal world, but I still like the image of the ants working to open the blossoms. I’m a fan of Richard Scarry books so that might explain it.

I’m especially excited about the unfurling this year because I missed it last year. Last year I was walking El Camino. I knew I’d miss my family while I was gone, but I didn’t anticipate how disappointed I’d be to miss the peonies. The flowers’ life is fairly short-lived, only a week or two. When I realized we’d be gone during their peak, I told my family to swing by the house and look at them for me! Take a big, deep whiff, cut the flowers and take them home … all manner of appreciation in my absence. I’m not sure any of them did.

Then a miracle happened. Or maybe it was a ‘God wink’, one of those moments when you feel God is listening and sends something special just for you. Hubby and I were walking in a small Spanish village and the faint, but distinct scent of peonies came on a breeze. Not strong like I had my nose in the flowers, but enough it pulled me out of my thoughts. I started looking at all the houses–everyone grows roses over there, and the bushes are abundant with flowers–and finally along a fence were two or three peony plants in full bloom! I couldn’t believe it. I may have missed mine, but I caught these. I don’t know if the owner of the house was home, if they saw a pilgrim sticking her face up to the fence bars, but if they did, I’m sure they knew why. How can anyone resist the aroma of peonies?

Seeing my buds this year and remembering last year got me thinking about my pilgrimage. The one-year anniversary of our departure to Madrid is just shy of a week away. I still get emotional when sharing photos and talking about certain parts of the walk. Maybe even more so than when we first returned home. As I reminisced on Saturday, I figured out how to write about National Poetry Week.

Just six days into our walk, between Navarre and Najera, I found a poem. (Hubby found a golf course, not surprisingly; I found a poem, not surprisingly.) Many things were inspiring poetry, but this was an actual poem, painted on a wall in three large sections, this is one of them. It was written in Spanish, of course, but I was able to pick out a word here and there. Here’s the translation.

Poem of the Camino

Dust, mud, sun and rain

is the Way of Saint James;

thousands of pilgrims

and more than a thousand years.

Pilgrim, who calls you?

What dark force brings you here?

It’s not the Way of the Stars

nor the grand cathedrals.

Neither is it the courage of Navarra

or the wine of La Riorja.

It’s not the seafood of Galicia

it’s not the countryside of Castilla

Pilgrim, who calls you?

What mysterious force attracts you?

It’s not the people of the way

or their rural customs.

Nor is it their history and culture.

It isn’t the cockerel of la Calzada

Gaudi’s Palace

nor the castle of Ponferrada

Everything you see in passing is joy;

and the voice which calls me

I feel much more deeply.

The force which pulls me

that force that attracts me

I cannot explain it.

Only he above knows why.

Written by Fr. Eugenio Garibay Banos, Pastor of Najera, Spain. I found the translation on a Camino site where someone wrote that the poem had already been there over twenty years when he, the poster, had walked in 2008. The poem may now be least 40 years old. I’m not sure if someone regularly repaints the poem to keep it in good condition, but it remains a pilgrim touchstone on the French Way. A good poem is one that continues to resonate over time.

Father Banos’ poem still describes a pilgrim’s walk on the Way of St. James. As we entered Holy Week with Passover and Palm Sunday this weekend, I wonder if it can also describe our own pilgrimages on whatever spiritual paths we walk–it’s often not the things and trappings that compel us to take up a spiritual practice, it’s something inner. Sometimes we don’t always understand it, we simply appreciate and allow it to unfurl–like a beautiful peony bloom.

May your week be holy, no matter your practice or beliefs. I’ll be back on Monday!