Singing to the pilgrims

Some of you may have walked long pilgrim distances

along tracks to sites like Compostela de Santiago.

Journeys of the soul which can give unexpected gifts.

Late this afternoon, three of us decided to walk

up the mountain, past two minute churches

and visit the cave of the Holy Fathers.

We're talking 3 km here, not

hundreds and hundreds of miles.

We didn't take the map (which also serves

as a menu at the local Alpha-Kafenion!)

since we felt we knew the way.

Oh, how we were misguided!

The further from home we got,

the less certain we were of where we were

despite the rather rusty signposts

to the cave we were seeking,

seeming to point to at least

2 different directions at once!

Finally at one point where the signpost could be seen as

pointing anywhere from straight on to straight up (to Heaven?)

I asked my inner voice "Where now?"

"Straight on!" it said, and so "on" we walked.
Very doubtfully - we were supposed to be going
up and here we were going decidedly down!

A local man was walking towards us, walking stick in hand.

We understood he was asking us where we were going.

"Caves?" "Yes!" we said, and he walked with us

back from where we had come, and then

walked with us up the track where the signpost

really pointed. I wondered,

"Why did my voice say Straight on!?"

I caught a few words - "It's late in the afternoon!"

and then after a while he stopped and pointed

his stick at the winding path we should now follow -

a kind of labyrinth up the mountain-side

through gorse and wild flowers and

multi-coloured bits of stone and rock.

We thanked him and he was about to go -

I was still holding his hand -

when he began to sing a pilgrim song.

I felt tears welling up inside as the music

of hundreds of years of orthodox tradition

were sung to me face to face from this old man.

(I learned later that he is the local "kantor."

Now I understood why we were sent

straight on!)

We never quite made it to the caves.

We were too late in the afternoon,

and there were too many newly-erected fences

to keep the sheep and goats out.

(Were we the sheep and goats?)

We would have been walking long past

nightfall.

But the man's song has stayed with me,

filling my bones with music passed down

from age to age and now sung to me.

We arrived back in the village

and the cafe was full of people celebrating.

Ouzo has seldom tasted so good!

Blessings

John