Camino de Santiago

On Roles and Companions

( My Camino...)

Oh, my joy. I am going to walk the Camino !!!

My heart was racing wildly. I wasn’t thinking about the costs, the effort, or the gear… only about the fact that in my dream, St. James himself had called me to join him.

I am not of the Catholic faith. I am an Orthodox Christian, baptized in the Church of the Holy Trinity in my hometown. I grew up in a family, in a time, when religion was not exactly looked upon kindly, and where I was taught that the church was nothing more than the opium of the people. My late mother kept, hidden behind a curtain, an icon of St. Luke, the protector of our home, and on the day of our family’s patron saint she would always prepare a slightly better meal. Quietly. Just the way faith asks of you.

The patron saint celebration, or krsna slava, is a unique Serbian religious and cultural tradition and one of the most important family holidays. It is dedicated to the saint who serves as the protector of the family. Observing the slava involves a family gathering, a festive table with the traditional slava bread and wheat, and it stands as a symbol of identity, tradition, and respect for ancestors.

When my country entered a period of nationalism after communism, we became believers with a capital B in honor of the saints. The same happened with Catholics and Muslims in my country. Each in their own way. All trapped in their own opinions and convinced of their own righteousness.

Where, then, was the meaning lost?

In the roles.

I know quite a bit about roles, because I am an actress by profession. When I was younger, I played princesses, and children loved me. Then I entered my mature years, and the roles of mothers—and even stepmothers—came to me as an honor. But that honor of playing the wicked woman with her two spiteful daughters was not viewed kindly by the youngest audiences for whom I still perform in the theater.

Where, then, was the meaning lost?

In belief.

And so, intertwining, belief and roles merged into one grand theater on the Camino.

I bought a ticket for a box seat on the balcony and watched my companions. I had the honor of not participating in the performance. Years and years of work on myself, chasing the wilds of my soul in pursuit of my own shadow, had set me apart from the play. It was comfortable in the box, I must admit.

Sometimes, in my own self-satisfaction and self-congratulatory wisdom, I would lean too far over the railing. I would easily slip onto the stage, mingle with the performers in a senseless argument, correcting what I had presumed the right to correct… and in no time, exhausted, muddy, angry—but righteously so, oh, the delusions—I would find myself in thoughts that misled and guided me… NO. Return to the box and observe. And do not lean out the window.

(If this blog were not for an English-speaking audience, I would have added: “Selma, do not lean out the window,” and for those interested, I would leave a link to the song.)

And so the Camino became a magnifying glass, revealing who truly hides behind the roles they play in life. Until yesterday, the wise and spiritual, and those new-age words—aware, awake, enlightened—were discovering their delusions and dead ends. The more the kilometers stretched out, the more the struggles with blisters, the rush for accommodation, the exhaustion… the thinner the roles became, and my companions remained exposed, just as they were, before God, Buddha, or Allah, before the Universe, where we are all love. In relation to 528 Hz, we stood naked as the day we were born, and most did not dare to come close.

Faced with that—again, new-age thinking—“what you radiate is what you attract,” many stayed stuck at their own level, frantically searching for a mask, a role, a script… anything, anything but themselves.

And I, aside from those few times I slipped out of the box, passed elegantly and, after the morning rain, wept in front of the cathedral. Whether I had disappointed my Orthodox God or offended the Catholic one, I do not know. I will write about that in the next blog. I only know that I am grateful, for I had the chance to see myself without a role. It was as if, during that journey, I had reset my inner GPS and seen from a drone’s perspective where I truly am now.

After receiving my Compostela, I went to one of Santiago’s squares and treated myself to lunch. In honor of the saint, 528 Hz. Just as I had learned from my mother. Quietly. Just the way faith calls for.

next step link Stamped in Faith… (Overi o veri)

Buen Camino.

“Selma, do not lean out the window,”White Button

If you feel called to stay a little longer in this quiet space,
you can find my novel Whispers of Veloria here.

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