Holyscapes
After a plane, two buses and a high speed train, I arrived in Pamplona, the city I had decided to start my pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago, French Way. I flew into Barcelona from LAX and spent a few days there. My experience of Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia Cathedral was profoundly affecting and I hope to return there again someday.
From Barcelona I headed northwest to Zaragoza, where there is a church devoted to Our Lady of the Pillar, a fascinating bit of Saint James hagiography where Our Lady appeared to James atop a pillar to encourage him in his evangelization.
While in Spain I began to brush up on my Spanish, and learn the basic responses and prayers of the Roman Mass. Although, while I was in Barcelona, one of the Masses was said in Catalan, which had me completely lost, despite its close relation to Spanish (Castellano).
On June 1, I took my first steps out of the Municipal Albergue and onto the stream of ancient prayer that is Camino de Santiago. Some pilgrims had begun in San Jean Pied de Port, others as far as Germany, Lourdes, and Belgium. I would begin in Pamplona, and walk approximately 678 kilometers (422 miles) to Santiago de Compostela, the reputed resting place of the bones of the apostle to Jesus. Certainly I could have started in San Jean, but I wanted to skip the section where Emilio Estevez dies in the film The Way.
The first couple of days were good, as I got the hang of the rhythm of walking, thinking, finding places to eat, and locating my next albergue. The weather was very mild, and the typically dry and brown landscape was lush green, and bursting with wildflowers. Despite the near total cultivation of the landscape, hilltops and hedgerows were wild with familiar and unfamiliar plants, wild roses, rosemary, red poppies, stinging nettle, blackberry, elderberry, scotch broom, wild oats and grasses, fennel, and wild mustard. In addition to the crunch of my feet on dirt, paved and gravel paths, and the occasional greeting from a passing pilgrim, the birds were my constant auditory companions; swallows, sparrows, hawks and so many more that I wish I knew. I walked through remote rural areas, small villages and large industrial cities. Trying to stay present to what each offered.
After a few days however, I was confronted with some all too familiar demons. My feet began to hurt, I worried that I walked too slow. I began to doubt my ability to finish. After a couple of awkward conversations with fellow pilgrims, I began to worry I was unliked, even unlikable. I also began to chafe with self-righteousness at the mostly secular pilgrims who just did not appreciate the sacredness of the path. I mean, it was not like we were walking to the United Nation´s Shrine to Generic Self-Discovery and Acceptance. This was a Christian pilgrim path to a Christian sacred site!
I heard people relate familiar tropes and prop up familiar straw men about why religion just wasn’t for them, why they were spiritual but not religious, why the churches were beautiful, but they didn’t need a church to connect with God. I began to feel like an outsider among outsiders. The physical pain and a sense of unwanted loneliness began to settle in and I considered calling the whole thing off.
Sixteenth century Spanish mystic and poet John of the Cross talks about the Dark Night of the Senses. A period were God purifies us of our sin and attachments in preparation for the Dark Night of the Soul. The first two weeks of my Camino have felt very much like a kind of purgatory, a time of purification and frankly just some good old fashioned toughening up. I expected to relish the solitude and feel spiritual highs in the churches and hilltops. Mostly I felt a lot of self-pity and resentment and then guilt for feeling that way!
But even in the midst of all this, grace has a way of breaking through, especially in such a beautiful place, a place saturated with prayer, dreams and self-examination. There are many examples I could give, one more recent that is just too raw to share. But on another occasion, at the top of a difficult hilltop, after several hours of soft rain, the clouds opened and the sun shone on an ocean of barley and wheat. The Meseta, the bread basket of Spain, is flat and monotonous, but its long views invoke a sense of eternity and lift the eyes toward the distant horizon. As I stood resting and taking in the view, a small white butterfly flew past me and rested on a red poppy. Then, I noticed another, and another. The fields were alive with white butterflies, silently wafting among the billions of heads of grain. It was a moment, as Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, that was charged with the granduer of God.
In the last five days or so, I have been lifted up by good people, beauty, and unexpected moments of effusive grace. I don’t say this to balance out my dark night, I didn’t earn it. But bit by bit, step by step, my heart has softened as my feet have toughened. Now that I am over half way to Santiago from Pamplona, taking a rest day in Leon, I admit I am eager to finish, but I feel a deepening in my heart that I thought I was sure to miss out on. My feet still hurt, but I am taking more time for rest and stretching and being more patient with myself. Truly the Camino provides. Thank you for your prayers and encouragement, I feel very privileged to be walking this path, and you are all here with me.
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