Get Down and Dirty

The Second Rule of Pilgrim Life is, “Get Down and Dirty.”

Check out my previous post for the first rule.  Getting Dirty is a natural – inevitable – result of the first rule, if you do it right.  I could and will add “Get Wet,” because that happened on every journey.

• Drenching rain between Carlisle and Bowness on Solway, walking Hadrian’s Wall
• Pounding rain along the Camino Ingles to Santiago
• Heavy rain in the Nahal Dolev Nature Reserve on the way to Jerusalem
• Clouds of mist and spray at Victoria Falls, Mosi-oa-Tunya, in Zimbabwe
• Rain overnight along the Inka Trail to Macchu Pichu
• Near floods in Suzhuo China
• Drizzle along the Kumano Kodo

And where there is rain there is…

Mud.  Often this lasts for days after the rain.  I’ve sacrified two walking sticks to mud that held on when I pulled it out.  The remains of one are in that Israeli Nature Preserve, the remains of another a few miles north of Reims.  Not a day of the 600km already walked along the Via Francigena did not involve some mud.  To illustrate this, here is what I wrote in Israel:

“On my 70th birthday, in February 2023, I was in the Nahal Dolev Nature Reserve west of Jerusalem.

It is raining. Down in a narrow ravine with no cell coverage I had to cross a wadi and climb up the other side, which is entirely mud. There was a stout tree branch. If I could that I might be able to save myself from sliding down. I grab the branch. My feet slip and slip. Hanging on to the branch I think, ‘Well, this will make an interesting obituary.’ With a mighty effort I get beyond the mud. My shoes and pants are caked.”

Pilgrim Life seizes the physical elements – earth, air, fire and water

Not as metaphors but by actually getting dirty, getting cold, getting wet, getting dark.  Our bodies help us remember our limits and vulnerabilities.  And what are we pilgrims doing but exploring our inner as well as outer limits?

For those seeking the Pilgrim Life in familiar surroundings, getting “Down and Dirty” means accepting the messiness that comes when stepping away from the familiar paths we tread in life.  I walk as often as possible, which means encountering those who live on the street, dodging automobiles and bicycles who treat me as an obstacle not a person, feeling the rain or heat or snow or cold.

The pilgrim knows that physical discomfort, inconvenience, and personal indignity are not only inevitable but necessary to the spiritual journey.  Medieval Christians saw this as part of the penance pilgrim journeys were about.  If not formal penance, pilgrim life invites humility, which comes from the same root as humus, earth.  The pilgrim is down to earth.  Penance or not, pilgrim life requires you to be on the ground, which means submitting yourself to something else, something larger than your own powers.

The Pilgrim Gets Out.  The Pilgrim Gets Down and Dirty.

Two down, Three To Go

There are only five basic rules for the Pilgrim Life.  You have two.  Be patient.