Slept most of the afternoon after a lunch of hot soup and vino. At 7pm I walked slowly around the corner to the church for an evening service presided over by the nuns. There were 10 nuns and two noviates (I am guessing on this one - they were young black women wearing bleached muslin headdresses, instead of the traditional full black of the other, much older nuns). They lit candles, one played the organ, and they all sang and read from probably three different hymnals and books. Towards the end of the service, they invited the Pilgrims to come to the altar - there were three others besides myself. They began a blessing for Pilgrims to Santiago (that much I understood) and as they were in the middle of a lovely recitation in Spanish, a young German Pilgrim standing between the other two Pilgrims, passed out. Thankfully, they were able to catch him between them and ease him to the floor of the church. He was breathing but very pale and unresponsive. The nuns quickly sent someone to call for help. He aroused spontaneously and we learned he had walked 37km today and had not eaten much. The emergency crew arrived very quickly, checked his vitals and whisked him off the the hospital in Leon. The other two Pilgrims, a German couple who had just met the young man, have some English and explained to me over dinner that they would interrupt their journey tomorrow, collect his pack from where he is staying and take it to him in Leon.
Again and again, people renew my faith in humankind as they perform very humane acts of caring for total strangers. Is this the lesson I am to learn?
Along with my renewed faith in human beings, I am tonight feeling sad and missing Jim. I am feeling discouraged by my body's inability to keep up with my plan, anger bubbling under the surface. Carol writes to me "patience - let each day be what it is". Very wise words that see me through this night.
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