message to eileen (and a happy Burns Day to all)

I just received an e-mail with an interesting question and a lovely quotation. Sent an e-mail in return. Got it back with notification of a "permanent failure" in the delivery. How terrible to have no hope; to be doomed to permanent failure. And what's worse, the person who sent me the e-mail would be left thinking me too lazy or callous to answer her question.

And that's when I remembered MY BLOG! Hopefully, Eileen will pass through here sometime and see my response to her question. (Let me know if you do, eh?)

So here's the message:

I have been planning to go [on the Camino] for the past 8 years...and still holding back. Some say, \"When the student is ready, the teacher will come.\" Wonder if it ever was the case for you the first time you set your heart out to walk El Camino.

To which I can reply (having counted it on my fingers) that it was a full nine years from the time I first read of the Camino (knowing at once that I would do it someday) and the day I finally took my first pilgrim steps (in the wrong direction, as it turned out.)

The proverb is apt to the Camino. Our feet find it when they're ready. Though in my case, I'd modify it: "When the student gets tired of waiting, he'll go find himself a teacher." There's plenty of them on the Camino.