Category: Uncategorized

Camino de Santiago – Silence

by Gerry Palermo, posted in Catholic, Penitential, Pilgrimage, Uncategorized
Pilgrim beacon to rest and be restored

Traditional catholic Albergues welcome all pilgrams. The standard is they present a las credentiales, showing the progress of your journey. Theoretically a person is briefed when receiving the booklet prior to the journey.

Social Room. Dormitories are stacked bunks, co-ed with little room but to sleep.
View of Bay, Vigo, Spain.
Portuguese Coastal route

Tomorrow plan.

Silence. I mean this in multiple ways. I could not send Saturday blog due to connectivity. Silence in that these walks offer significant timespans of worldy silence. Here are a few photos so you can imagine how.

But I want to focus on Divine Silence.

Let’s take the Incarnation, discarding a falsehood first. In the incarnation the Father was silent but he was a supreme gift giver: the second and third person of the Holy Trinity. During the Incarnation, the Holy Spirit Permanently came to live in the Blessed Mother, then (simultaneously or in sequence depends on your bias) Jesus was incarnate by the Holy Spirit. All by the silent desire and silent dreams of God.

Please reference Leonardo Boff, Thoughts and Dreams for deeper take.

Saint Joseph is given no speaking lines in the New Testament. Did he speak, yes, two ways. Like the Lord he dispensed divine silence in his action roles. He also spoke words as that’s the only way we know. Know he dreamed.

God dreams of you and then acts on it. Joseph dreamed about Mary and then acted on it. Dream, please.

So I mentioned that this is a penitential pilgrimage. So included in that is a continuous recollection and recounting of my faults and failures. But God went silent. It is tempting to be annoyed with him, yes?

But each fault I brought up silence spoke otherwise. In the silence I went deeper. If you are okay with Freudian or Jung psychology you may recognize the process as root analysis.

Me: I am impatient, Silence: you don’t feel respected. Me: I am prideful, Silence says you covet things you think I will take them away from you.

It is good to confess objective actions as these are the doing. But Silence wants to fix the root cause. The root cause may also be sinful but MORE LIKELY the sin of our refusal to engage the silence that dreams dreams and acts on them.

Comforting Images that only speak when you consider them.

Laundry every other day.

Peace be with you,

Deacon Gerry

Habitat Dedications

by Barry Jankord, posted in Uncategorized

A few hours north of where Deacon Gerry ended his latest pilgrimage, there was a, “Now, here’s the rest of the story,” as Paul Harvey used to broadcast over the radio. My part in the story started over five years ago, when seeking to volunteer at Guadalupe Valley Habitat for Humanity. It has been a joy to make connections with a least a dozen families, while helping them build their homes. These parents put in a minimum of 200 hours of sweat equity, after going through a rigorous application process. Afterwards, they end up with an affordable mortgage for the next 30 years. Saturday was our first double dedication. We built two homes at once for two, unrelated families of five with the same last name. The picture of the family I hope to post has roots in Mexico. The wedding cookies they shared after the dedication were brought from their Mexican hometown, five hours away. This family endured multiple rejected applications from Habitat. You would not know it from the picture, but she was not a single mom when the sweat equity hours began with her and her husband. Like all new Habitat homeowners, parents tell their story. The one she told the crowd in Spanish, included the passing of her husband the father of their children. You see, after they were accepted and started their sweat equity, he passed away from covid-19.

How do Habitat volunteers celebrate? They raise the roof.

What happens at a Habitat dedication? God is invited to live under the roof.

Now you know the rest of this story.