Deeper Meaning

CAMINO STAGE 7: Bilbao to Pobena Camino Del Norte Route – 15 miles El Camino De Santiago

A few years back while visiting the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, this lovely pear blossom painting captured my attention. We had just been to Provence, France, where Van Gogh had been inspired to paint a series of these flowering trees with delicate blossoms.

This afternoon’s camino through Portugalete on the way to Pobena, we passed by these white flowering bushes and trees which reminded me of the Van Gogh blossom painting and something he’d said that ‘ by really looking at things, we, not the object, have deeper meaning. ‘

“It is looking at things for a long time that ripens you and gives you a deeper meaning. ” Vincent Van Gogh

While our two sets of clothes have the potential to ‘ripen’ by the end of the 37 days of exertion on the Camino, I pondered how we were ‘ripening,” evolving and gaining deeper meaning as we had been looking at the trail and each other’s backpacks for a week now. It was “love” that circled back to me. Not the romantic dinner and flowers type of love but the dirty gritty type of love that offers to carry things in your pack when you are tired and offers to pop the blisters on your feet and bind them up. This love is strength on hard days and gets you up and down yet another mountain.

“It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done.” Vincent Van Gogh

But it’s also tender love that doesn’t mind slowing down from sixteen minute miles to 24 minute miles and love that lets you stop and admire Jersey cows, kittens, goats & sheep, el mar, (the sea), kiwi and all manner of fruit and flowers. Its also the type of love that shares the last of the food and chocolate, and puts on a brave face while in pain and smiles anyway. This type of love is your kids cheering you on… comparing you to a Roman soldier carrying their armor mile after mile. This is love done well,

While walking I also thought about parents and grandparents who have moved on to the next life. They are with me in my heart and mind and their love through time and space is what gives me the strength to keep walking day after day.

As Van Gogh says what is done in love is “well done” and what gives us deeper meaning .