Day 14 September 9 Livinhac to Figeac

26.1 km 571 ascent 599 descent 6:20 hr. 28⁰ C

So we heard about the Gretta Vosper decision.  I spent a lot of time today thinking about it. What follows are Lynn’s reflections. Russell has shared his thoughts on e-mail, which isn’t really working for me.

When I first heard about Gretta, she was calling herself an a-(dash) theist. I read an article about her in the United Church Observer. That very day we had a Vision Committee meeting, and I asked Peter and Christine (not knowing what she meant by a-theist) how an a (no dash) theist (aka, atheist) could be a United Church minister. They both seemed to wonder too, but probably had a lot more knowledge of what Gretta was all about.

I did more research on her. I read her book, ‘With or Without God’. I came to believe that she simply didn’t believe in a supernatural being in the sky pulling strings. I don’t believe in that either. There was nothing in her book that struck me as being too far from my beliefs, or those of the UCC.

Somewhere along the line Gretta seemed to drop the dash.

As a member of the UCC, we are members of the family of God. As Christians, we follow the Way of Jesus. To me that means that whatever you believe God to be, and let’s be honest, it’s a mystery, and whatever you believe Jesus to be, if you want to be a minister of the UCC, you have to believe in God, and you have to follow the Way of Jesus (which, to me, means your ministry has to be bible based so you can teach the stories of Jesus).

Gretta may have crossed over the line when she dropped the dash. She may have crossed over the line by never referring to God in her ministry (because the ‘word‘ God is interpreted as the super being . She may have crossed over the line by not using the bible.

I’m not happy about having an ‘Inquisition’. I think it’s too medieval and not a good direction to go in when the church is imploding for other reasons. But there is something important to sort out here. I don’t think the verdict is in yet. I hope Gretta appeals, and I hope she can see that she did go wrong, somewhere.

Back to the blog.

I had a very bad night last night in Livinhac. There were patio doors to our room that had shutters on the outside, and we were to put our backpacks between those two sets of doors overnight. This was the only opening to the room, so to leave anything open for fresh air would have meant leaving the door open to the outside. There was no lock on our door to the rest of the house, and the other couple’s room, and the toilet, were just outside.

We went to bed at 10:30pm and I fell asleep right away. 

Unfortunately, I woke up at 11:30pm, I was way too hot, and I was feeling very claustrophobic. I wanted to open the patio and shuttered doors and get some cool air in the room, but I didn’t want to leave the door open to outside.  There was also a darned fly or something that would buzz like a mosquito in your ear that I wanted to cover up against, but it was too hot, so I didn’t want any covers. Finally at about 2am I got up and opened the bedroom door into the house. That helped a bit with the claustrophobic attack, but nothing for the temperature of the room. I still kept throwing off the covers, and then covering up, depending on what the fly/mosquito thing was doing. I think I finally fell asleep around 5am, so I wasn’t too interested in getting up when the alarm went off at 6:45am.

Because our stuff was scattered all over, our backpacks were contraband and wrapped in plastic between the inside and outside, and the toilet was not in our room, our routine was in shatters.

We managed to get to the 7:30am breakfast at around 7:40am. I’m pretty sure the Belgium couple was there before 7:30am. We are beginning to learn that the breakfast start time is just a guideline. You can get there at least 15 minutes earlier and start eating.

It was a minimalist breakfast, but at least she had yogurt.

The Belgium couple were both Chaplains at a hospital. They were putting together a book of their Camino to share with their patients. This was their first stage of their Camino and were going to Aire sur l’Adour this time (which is 8 days away from St. Jean Pied de Port for us). They are planning to get to Santiago in three stages.

They told us they took turns selecting a word each day, which they would at first walk along in silence reflecting on. Later they would discuss what they had individually thought about, take notes, and that would go into their book. I asked what their word for today was, but it was the fellow’s turn and he hadn’t selected one yet. I asked what some of their previous words had been, and they said, joy was their word for yesterday, and peace, hope, love, 

controversy, forgiveness, etc. had been the word for previous days.

I thought about joy today. Joy was my mother’s name. Kristine Bertha Joy is our daughter’s name. We were planning to call her BJ, but that never happened. All day I kept singing the hymn in my head ‘Joy comes in the dawn, joy comes with the morning sun, joy springs from the tomb, and scatters the night with her song, joys comes with the dawn’. ‘Weeping may come’, ‘and God’s laughter will make us strong’. I wondered what brought me joy, a feeling of great pleasure and happiness. It is sharing my life with Russell. It was having my babies and watching them grow. It was my daughter deciding to be clean from drugs. It was my children graduating. It is walking through places made holy by the footsteps of many pilgrims.  

It was the usual drill today. 

A 200 meter ascent getting out of Livinhac, followed by walking though farmer’s fields, past cows, along roads, leap frogging with other pilgrims, grand views of hills and valleys.

 When we got to Figeac around 2:15pm, our hotel said it was closed until 3:30pm. The kiwi’s were just passing by and we checked out the Best Western bar across the street, it seemed to be closed, and they left, but really it was open, and I ordered Perrie and Russell ordered a beer. 

The lady from Quebec City crossed the bridge about a half hour later, and I kept trying to flag her down, finally with success. She joined us. It turns out she is a doctor of occupational injuries, and her camino companion is a Quebec provincial court youth judge. We told her about Kristine, and she said all families have stories like that. We ended up talking and drinking wine until 4:30pm. She wasn’t going as far as us tomorrow, so we had our Camino hugs and good-byes and wished each other a bonne chemin.

Our hotel today is again really nice. Our dinner was at another location, and was really good. We had a salad to start, a steak with pepper sauce and fries, and some eclairs filled with ice cream and smothered in chocolate hazelnut sauce and whipped cream. The steak was blue. I like steak well done, and even Russell said it was under cooked for his liking. But it was really good!

This was now two long day, with a lot of climbing, in a row, and tomorrow is over 30km. We both went to bed right after dinner, and both slept like logs.