2011

 Today I enter The Meseta, the high flat tablelands (from the Spanish mesa for table) which extend from Burgos to Leon. Often derided as the most boring bit of the Camino I've heard people make plans to skip it by catching a bus, or as I was tempted to a few days ago, to cycle it. But, I'm now here, and walking it. 

An early morning meant that I was up a low hill in time to watch a stunning sunrise. The treeless plains of the Meseta mean a long horizon and amazing sunrises and I hope, sunsets. My potato of a phone camera didn't nearly pick up the intense burnt orange of the horizon fading up through the colours of the rainbow even with a tinge of green where the yellow met the blue, and iridescent streaks of cloud and contrails lighting up the sky. 

Today was a great walk. My feet, both blisters and tendons are healing well and I felt that I could roll my foot through a natural range of motion rather than take awkward steps to avoid pain. 

Mykey and I had a plan (thanks to Ingrid) to come to the ruins of the 14th century San Anton monastery in which you can stay in a tiny 12 bed albergue with no electricity or hot water. We're both so excited for this we planned yesterday's destination to give us the right distance to arrive here early enough to get a bed. But in the last 5km I saw a stream of 25+ people walking ahead of me and feared that we wouldn't get a bed. With my feet again functioning well I put in a burst a speed to overtake them all, only to arrive at 1pm and discover that I was the first person to check in after all, with everyone else just having a look before walking through to the next town. As I write this at 4pm there's only 10 of us here.

There's about 600sqm remaining of 12m high sections of wall with no roof, and the view looking upwards from what was the sanctuary of the chapel is amazing even in the day, watching the clouds go by. 

But the hope is for tonight, that after a candle lit dinner with the group, if the skies are clear that it will be an amazing place for stargazing as it is 10km from even the nearest small town, and no street lights. There is a a telescope here ready for us. 

A lot of my thoughts today were still with my encounter with the nun yesterday. It turns out her name is Sr Maria Jose of the Sisters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul, and there is a a convent of 7 equally tiny, beautiful and elderly nuns in the town. We were invited to join them for evening prayer  / vespers last night in their chapel and it was clear that each of these amazing woman had the same charism of joy and love that overwhelmed me in Sr Maria Jose. 

Later I moved on to remembering 2011, and World Youth Day in Madrid was a big part of this year. Not just because of the three week event, but a clever lead up to it by the diocese. 

Every 2 or 3 years the Pope invites the young people of the world to join him in a different city of the world. A million plus young people come. Dioceses and parishes and school love to send young people to the event, usually with unrealistic expectations about how transformative it will be. Young people of varying levels of faith are keen to attend a mostly free trip overseas, even more so if there's time out of school. So despite the best of intentions, usually there's not a whole lot to show afterwards. Going to a youth festival is not going to automatically equip a young person to come back to their parish and start a youth ministry. People who are engaged by the dynamism and scale of having a million young people around them in amazing liturgies are often let down by coming back to the normal life of their parish were they are often one of only a handful of young people still there.

So in 2010 in the lead up to WYD Madrid our diocese launched the ministry internship whereby young people would be sponsored by the diocese for WYD in return to doing a ministry internship in their parish for the 12 months leading up. We had a dozen young people in Hornsby Parish doing a range of ministries and then fortnightly reflection sessions which built the group up. It was truly a gift from the diocese to any parish which wanted to engage with it. The relationships in the the parish and the engagement in ministry could be formed before WYD, and then hopefully follow through afterwards. 

As always, the week leading up to WYD whereby we travelled around Spain seeing sacred sites (of which Spain has many) was probably more impactful than the WYD week itself, much of which we didn't attend because of overcrowding and overheating, but sometimes the pop up stations of the cross we did in a park or the spontaneous prayer and worship sessions were wonderful in themselves. Pictured below is Bishop David, Deacon (now Fr) Paul Durkin and me celebrating Mass together for our group in one of the many beautiful churches.