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| The scallop shell symbol of the Camino De Santiago |
Hi All,
So it is back to the Camino for me today. I love the idea that we are all pilgrims; "People of the Way". And I am constantly being reminded of our interconnectedness!
My Camino experience started in 2016, when our Parish Church (Santiago De Compostela) held its first "Lake Forest Camino." That is where I met Annie O'Neill, and bought her book Everyday Camino With Annie.
I loved Annie's book, and decided to send her an email to thank her:
"I continue in "my own Camino” of surrendering with the aide of your book, Everyday Camino with Annie.The whole experience continues to be life-changing!"
I also sent Annie a sea glass necklace, and this was her reply:
One of my most frequent sayings with all things PHIL'S CAMINO is, "We can't help ourselves." Truly our lives are as intertwined as marionettes stored carelessly in a box! And once again, here's another example:
Sea glass has great significance to me since my husband and I used to walk the beach and collect it when we were dating. In fact, when he proposed, it was on the beach after we had been gathering beautiful bits of sea glass. He presented me with a mussel she'll full of sea glass and my engagement ring, saying here are some pretty stones for you.
See what I mean!?!!
We can't help ourselves!
Thank you.
Peace-
A
My Camino experience started in 2016, when our Parish Church (Santiago De Compostela) held its first "Lake Forest Camino." That is where I met Annie O'Neill, and bought her book Everyday Camino With Annie.
I loved Annie's book, and decided to send her an email to thank her:
"I continue in "my own Camino” of surrendering with the aide of your book, Everyday Camino with Annie.The whole experience continues to be life-changing!"
I also sent Annie a sea glass necklace, and this was her reply:
One of my most frequent sayings with all things PHIL'S CAMINO is, "We can't help ourselves." Truly our lives are as intertwined as marionettes stored carelessly in a box! And once again, here's another example:
Sea glass has great significance to me since my husband and I used to walk the beach and collect it when we were dating. In fact, when he proposed, it was on the beach after we had been gathering beautiful bits of sea glass. He presented me with a mussel she'll full of sea glass and my engagement ring, saying here are some pretty stones for you.
See what I mean!?!!
We can't help ourselves!
Thank you.
Peace-
A
Here are two more personal examples of our connection to one another:
When I attended our Lake Forest Camino symposium in July 2016, there were little rocks on our tables. At one point, Father invited everyone to pick up a rock and follow him outside to drop it at the foot of the cross. As Annie writes in her book, "Tradition states that you leave a rock here, signifying something that you are leaving behind on your Camino."
For some reason, I did not follow everyone outside to leave my rock... I decided to hold onto it and kept it in my purse. I was obviously not ready to let go!
Mark Murphy found out that Patrick Murphy (our great-grandfather) was a shoemaker in Ireland, but records from Joe Murphy showed that he was a bartender in Butte. Sadly, he passed away in an "insane asylum" at age 58..... no doubt from alcoholism.
Sean and I went to Ireland in the fall of 2016. Mark's research led us to Ardgroom, County Cork; the birthplace of Patrick. Here was their family Church and a statue of Mary in the garden.
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| Church of the Resurrection, Ardgroom, Ireland |
If you look closely, you will see my tiny white rock to the left of the bottom of the pot. I still had it in my purse... I decided that this was the perfect place for me to leave it! That rock symbolized the fight I've battled with the family disease of alcoholism and codependency.
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| A common marker on the Camino |
So... yesterday, I received a text from my niece, Michelle, Marty's older daughter... she has been doing amazing work in healing with such inspiring messages and videos on her Facebook page.
Incredibly... she ended her text message with ONWARD!!
See... what Annie said is true! WE JUST CAN'T HELP OURSELVES!
Onward Loves,
Reenie
Reenie, your message about Interconnectedness reminds me of the summer of 1977 when I took a Fortran class at the University of Illinois. A standard programming exercise at the time was to write the Game of Life, a simulation game of "living dots" on a checkerboard, invented seven years earlier by the British mathematician John Horton Conway. You place dots into initial configurations on the checkerboard and -- with only 4 rules governing Birth, Life, and Death -- watch how your population evolves over time. Sometimes your dots die out. Sometimes they get stuck in a fixated position. But sometimes, for no apparent reason, your population miraculously morphs into a beautiful, living creation. (Check out examples on the wiki.) Dreaming up weird situations, making up rules, and deriving logical consequences is fundamentally what math is all about. Conway's game of Life was not my first miraculous mathematical experience! :)
ReplyDeleteToday's models of the spread of COVID-91 are nothing more than extremely complicated versions of Conway's invention. E.g., a "birth rule" I've heard is that each infected person can infect 2-3 other people. As a consequence, the models predict the explosive growths we see around the world. The models also say that by superimposing an additional "reduced-Interconnedtedness rule" (ouch!) we can slow the growth of the dots. Let's stop those dots! We can do this!!
So, I know we Just Can't Help Ourselves, but please, today, tomorrow, and for a while after that, be extremely careful whose breath and surfaces you share! ESPECIALLY YOU OLD GUYS AND GALS -- you know who you are!!
LYM
Thanks for sharing!
DeleteLovely! I'm starting to look forward to these every day. No pressure but be sure and keep it going when the mood strikes you. It will be a pleasant surprise.
ReplyDeleteP.S. Enjoyed the anonymous comment too.
You're welcome, Luke.
ReplyDeleteDad
Hello,
ReplyDeleteReenie, thank you for tracking me down and letting me know about this amazing site. You know what makes it amazing? You and the rest of the Murphy's who are committed (and doing this almost every day) is a commitment of love and legacy. It's funny, I sign off on my texts with ONWARD!
Regarding a website for ONE CONNECT, I have taken it down. Like my life's journey with twists and turns, ONE CONNECT has had many iterations. However, what has remained true is we are interconnected, and the COVID-19 virus has reminded us of this truth, in case we had forgotten. I am in the process of developing ONE CONNECT programs for healing, especially for women in the health care, service industry, those women who don't practice self-care and put others before them. The quote I'm basing all of my programs on are from Ram Dass' quote, "We are just walking each other back home."