Yesterday, on my first morning back, jet lagged but happy, I went to have my usual Saturday morning breakfast with one of my Cursillo groups.  One of my groupies asked, what was the most memorable part?  I knew he was asking about a place, but a place was not my answer.  Without hesitation I said, the community piece.

I had never traveled in a group before on an organized tour.  And being a solitary wanderer in all of my trips since starting this blog site, I would be living the polar opposite of that.  I can honestly say I spent a lot of time trying to mentally prepare myself to accept whatever pace was given, knowing when to remind myself that it’s not about me, and embracing the idiosyncratic notions that all groups probably have.

I mentioned in early posts that there were five couples in this group that were close friends to me, and to each other.  That was about twenty five percent of the group.  In addition, most of the group was from the same parish community because their Pastor, Fr. Tom Krenik, was the “leader” of the pilgrimage.  That’s him pictured celebrating Mass in my previous post.  I put “leader” in quotation marks because, in my view, to his great credit, he traveled with us like a friend and fellow pilgrim, and not like a tour leader.  In all of that there was certainly the potential for cliquey behavior, but there was none that I felt or witnessed.  I can say sincerely that there wasn’t a single thing about this experience that fell short of my hopes.  The group seemed to move together smoothly, with people helping others when it was needed.  And most made a concerted effort to engage the people in the group that they did not know ahead of time.  It was not simply a positive experience.  It was pure blessing.  I was proud to be part of the way this group became community.  It’s what happens when nice people do stuff together. 🙂

So that’s it.  That closes this chapter.  In a matter of days I will be heading to Guatemala for a couple of months.  I will be writing again fairly soon.  For my regulars, I promise that I won’t regale you with all the same stuff I wrote about last winter while in Guate.  I’m going to be selective.  For any new readers, (I know there are some out there), if you want to get some of the flavor of Semana Santa, and see the spectacle of the processions, scroll back through the pages on my site until you get into the stuff from Guatemala last year.  The beginning will be posts dated toward the end of January 2018, and they will lead up to the Easter Season.  And if you’re a real gluten for punishment, you can go all the way back to the beginning and read about my camping adventures through the first two years of my retirement.  I’ve been thinking about doing that myself someday.

Lastly, as always, I so appreciate you being out there and sharing this with me.  What started out to be a simple way for my kids to follow my traveling adventures and see all my pictures, morphed into something I never expected.  The satisfaction I get from trying to write stuff I think will be interesting to people, and trying to take photos that will also be interesting to folks, has been an unanticipated blessing.  And the affirmation I get from you is beyond priceless to me.  Thank you.