CAMINO 2015 by Pierre Angleys   An armchair pilgrimage   Reading notes induced by the book written by Guy Trainar D.I.E.U. Sauveguide ? (published in 2014, Baudelaire Editions, France)

 

Preface

 

My nicest surprise at this beginning of 2015 was to receive and begin reading a book just published late 2014 by Éditions Baudelaire:

D.I.E.U. Sauveguide ? [G.O.D. Saveguide?] by Guy Trainar ¹.

 

I knew the author, an engineer working for ExxonMobil. He and I contributed to the training program for Caterpillar dealers about the value of special lubricants manufactured by his company.

 

Guy covered Africa, where I had also travelled in my younger days. Outside work hours, we had interesting conversations. Very knowledgeable, he shared the same views I had developed on many topics. We were both surprised to discover, during business dinners, our shared eagerness in “reconstructing a more perfect world…”

 

A native of Dauphiné [Alpine region of France around Grenoble], Guy lives in Nancy [another Eastern town of France] and also has a getaway house in the beautiful mountains of the Vosges. He has invited me there several times, though I’ve not yet been able to go.

 

When I retired, he congratulated me warmly for the website recounting my pilgrimage to Compostela from April to July 2005 (www.pxangleys.com) and wrote to tell me that it had greatly inspired him. He himself began to “make a pilgrimage” from his armchair.

 

One day, two years ago, he asked my permission to use some elements in my narration of the pilgrimage into a work of religious introspection that he was writing. I agreed, and this book was published at the end of 2014.

 

I rediscover in Guy’s book a taste for meditating. I have begun to read a chapter every morning: they are quite short, arranged as though each is a day’s stage of walking towards Santiago [Saint-James] of Compostela, starting from his native village near Morestel in Dauphiné.

 

I am even intrigued enough by his discourse that, sitting in my armchair, I make notes in the margins…

 

I share these notes with you here, personal paraphrases from his book that I strongly encourage you to read (if you read French)!

 

Pierre X. Angleys – Corsier (GE), Switzerland

 

 

¹ Guy Trainar has also published Miel de Sapin [Fir honey] in 2012 (Baudelaire Editions). This book is full of pleasant insights about ways of looking at the world, as much from a philosophical as from a scientific perspective. He has also published Papillon d’Afrique [Butterfly in Africa], in 2014 (Édilivre Editions). These are often burlesque recollections of his numerous travels and stay in Africa, where he went at different times as teacher, tourist, visitor and field representative in the oil industry.