At the end of Day 1 on the Camino de Santiago, I sent home a selfie with this caption: “Don’t believe the smiles. I don’t know what I was thinking, embarking on a first Camino, let alone a second. The distance of time makes you romanticize it, but it’s f***ing arduous. Today was a relentless 15km of gasping uphill, then five relatively flat kilometres, then 5km of pounding downhill. It’s literal abuse to the body. So why do I feel so exultant?”
The Camino de Santiago is not one route but many different pilgrimage paths originating from various starting points in Spain and throughout Europe. The paths lead to Santiago de Compostela, a city in northwestern Spain whose cathedral is said to be the final resting place of the apostle St. James. The Camino Francés (French Way) begins in France, crosses the Pyrenees, and winds its way approximately 800 km to Santiago. This spring, I walked the Camino Francés for the second time.
When I prepared to walk my first Camino in 2019, a year after I retired, I thought it would be the most selfish thing I had done in decades. Instead of being responsible for my children’s wellbeing or my students’ learning, I was responsible only for me. Priest-psychologist-pilgrim the Rev. Canon Susan Haig taught me that my walking the Camino was self-care, not selfishness.
When I told Susan that I was soon to embark on a second Camino, this time with my 26-year-old son, David, she encouraged me to “take it slower this time, smell the roses, and savour every numinous moment.” She wanted me to be unhurried and to feel the hand of God in my surroundings. I’m glad she gave me that charge, because it made me pay attention in a way I may not otherwise have done.
With awareness heightened to the hand of God at work, David and I savoured many numinous moments. A notable one happened on our second day.
There was a lovely inn I stayed at in 2019. I’d walked longer that day than I probably should have, and I started being plagued with self-doubt about still being on the trail when almost no one else was. But then I arrived at this wonderful, friendly inn in Zuriáin. I loved it. So I wanted to go again with David. Again this year as the day’s walk stretched on, I doubted myself. Was I making a terrible mistake and dragging David with me? Knowing I’d walked this distance five years earlier didn’t make it any shorter. Then, the inn I’d aimed for was full, so we had to walk another three kilometres to the next possibility, and hope it had space. Fortunately, it did, and it ended up being the greatest blessing we could have hoped for.
The lodging we ended up at, the albergue at Zabaldika, was a beautiful, out-of-the-way pilgrim hostel run by nuns of the Society of the Sacred Heart. They know how to make pilgrims feel special. The volunteer hosts welcomed us with cold water and warm hospitality. At the communal dinner table, the lively multilingual chatter of guests and hosts reinforced our bonds as pilgrims sharing a path.
David and I accepted the invitation to a prayer service in the choir loft of the 13th century church that adjoined the albergue, and the experience was transformative. About 20 of us sat in a cozy candlelit circle. Sister Mary set the tone with a quiet, contemplative song on her boombox, then invited a few participants to read a pilgrimage-related Bible passage in a few different languages. After some time for silent reflection, she invited those who wished, to share why they were on this journey. In this safe setting, among people who had been strangers only hours earlier, pilgrims opened up about challenges they were processing, losses they had experienced, and hopes they were holding. We included everyone by translating for each other. And we felt the warmth of God’s caress in each other’s support.
After we left the albergue the following morning, we never saw most of those people again, but we’d shared a bond that we’ll carry with us forever. Wherever two or three or 20 have gathered in God’s name, God is eternally in their midst.
Those blessed moments came in many guises.
Our typical day on the Camino involved about eight hours of walking, punctuated by breaks for a café con leche, a bite to eat and a chance to rest our feet. The stop in Azqueta was not so very different from any other but, for me, somehow numinous. It provided warm shelter on a cold morning, delicious coffee and food to sustain us on our journey. There was an old-fashioned jukebox playing up-tempo Abba songs nonstop. I’m not normally an Abba fan, but all of us were smiling in this infectiously uplifting place. In that moment of pure joy, I think God was rewarding the challenge we had undertaken in walking the Camino.
The signs of God’s bounty on Earth were always there to be seen and felt if we were open to them. That doesn’t mean the Camino was always easy – arguably, it was never easy – and it wasn’t always fun, but it was always worthwhile.
This was a cold, wet spring in Spain. Our fellow pilgrim Francis commented that the weather in his native Ireland was warmer and sunnier than where we were. On one of our days approaching Burgos, we struggled through a biting 8°C wind. Trudging along a boot-sucking mud path that made every step twice as heavy, we experienced driving rain with occasional hail and thunderclaps. But the sun broke through and we were treated to a glorious rainbow that filled the sky, both ends touching down at the horizon. All of the hardship became nothing more than noise.
That’s the marvel of the Camino. It pulls pilgrims out of their day-to-day lives to immerse them in something different. And that immersion starts as soon as we let it. The pilgrimage is not only the time spent walking across Spain – it’s everything leading up to it as well.
For me, the seed was planted in 2018, a few months before I retired, when my niece Maria posted a few photos from the Camino she was then walking. Something clicked. I had to do it. I read and researched. I walked. I tried to figure out what gear to take and, more importantly, what to leave behind. I took Spanish classes and a First Aid course. I confess, I didn’t really think much about a spiritual dimension.
But then, as I walked, I found myself going deeper and deeper into myself, sharing more and more with my fellow pilgrims, revelling in the beautiful and changing scenery, and relishing the meditative peace that can come from the monotony of walking. Appreciating the numinous. Feeling God’s goodness in the people and landscapes around me. By the time I reached Santiago, I knew I had to come back.
I don’t know when David’s pilgrimage started, but, somewhere in the planning process, my second Camino became our Camino. Maybe my first Camino helped to plant a seed in him as Maria’s Camino had done for me. David got time off work, and I got to spend over a month with him.
It was wonderful walking and talking, or just walking without talking. It was wonderful breaking bread with David and friends we met. It was wonderful being able to appreciate the thoughtful, capable, compassionate man he is. When I got sick and took a taxi ahead to León while David walked there, it was heartwarming to hear how well he connected with other pilgrims and then to learn firsthand how incredibly well-suited he is to his career as a nurse when I was his patient. He took great care of me. What a blessing!
David wasn’t the only blessing. In the courtyard of the albergue at Foncebadón, Taiwanese pilgrim Tina spoke of her uncomfortable feet. “Uncomfortable” was a major understatement. When she peeled off her socks, we saw that she had massive blisters under the balls of both feet and, after having stopped trekking for the day, could barely take a step without agony. American pilgrim Robert had not met her before that day, but he dropped everything to help. He cleaned and bandaged Tina’s feet. He helped her develop a plan now that she couldn’t continue walking. He phoned a taxi to bring her to a city where she could rest, get medical attention, and make plans for getting home. In that moment, he put aside all of his own needs and wants to help a fellow pilgrim with greater needs.
It was inspiring to see Robert live the dictum attributed to St. Teresa of Ávila that “Christ has no body now but yours, no hands, no feet on earth but yours.”
It was inspiring each day to be among pilgrims and hosts living that dictum in ways large and small.
As we neared Santiago, I kept thinking of those pilgrims from Day 2 who had talked so openly about the people they had lost and about their hope to have the opportunity to process their loss in the course of their Camino. After four weeks and 800 kilometres, I prayed that the journey had served them well.
It made me think of our standard greeting to fellow pilgrims: “Buen Camino.” (Good Camino.) We’re not wishing for people not to have to walk the path they’re walking, nor to be relieved of the weight they’re carrying. We’re just wishing for them to have the strength, with God’s help.
In some ways, the Camino de Santiago is not the real world. We choose to place ourselves on a path of hardship, knowing that we could, if we chose, abandon this hardship at any moment. And yet we press on. As one of the pilgrims in Lydia Smith’s documentary Walking the Camino says, “The Camino, with all of its challenges and all of its difficulties, is kind of an intermission in our real camino, which is our life.” We hope that we can carry the grace, splendour and inspiration, the openness, vulnerability and mutual support from the Camino to our lives. We pray that we may have the strength, with God’s help.
Buen Camino.
The Reformation, five hundred years on