my Camino, 10 years later--lessons from Santiago

 

It’s official.

As of this weekend, it’s been ten years since my dear friend Pat Stankus and I marched into the city of Santiago de Compostela—culminating  23 days of walking the ancient pilgrimage across northern Spain, el Camino de Santiago.

Pat and I made sure that our final day would only require a short walk into Santiago in order for us to arrive at the Cathedral in time to register at the Pilgrims' Office, and attend the legendary Pilgrims' Mass and blessing. Every Pilgrims' Mass begins with reading the number of pilgrims who have been received (in the prior 24 hrs) in the Pilgrim's Office, where the pilgrims come from, and where they started their pilgrimage.

Serendipitously, and by that I mean providentially, many of our Camino friends also arrived to Santiago at some point that morning. This in spite of the fact that we had been separated from one another at some point along the way during that final week.

One woman from Germany, with whom Pat and I had only been able to communicate by means of smiles, hugs, and hands, made her way through the ocean of pilgrims to our pew in order to sit next to us that morning. We held hands off and on throughout the Mass.

And yes, on June 22, 2003—the feast of Corpus Christi—our Pilgrim Mass included the incomparable Botafumeiro, the largest censer in the world. It only took eight red-robed guys, tiraboleiros, to pull the ropes and get it going into a full swinging motion across the enormous Cathedral! 

Aware of how smelly and dirty I felt in spite of having access to modern albergues with running water, I giggled when I got a whiff of the delightful incense aroma.  A thousand years ago, that incense fragrance must have had a very practical use at the Pilgrims’ Mass! 

From my Camino journal, 

Things I have learned this final week on the Camino:

1. a country church bell can be rung softly or loudly. I did both!
2. all of creation is an open book (St. Benedict), symbolically expressing—and   portraying, the sacred
3. at least for this pilgrimage, I was not meant to walk in boots, but in sandals
4. people in Spanish churches sing loudly, even at daily Mass
5. my grace is sufficient for you
6. eucalyptus leaves are a piece of heaven—and nothing like the ones you find at Michael’s
7. sheep don’t like to be sheared
8. I can still sing the lyrics to songs I learned in my childhood and have not sung since then
9. The butterflies and wildflowers play silent music with their colors. Remember!
10. I love Spanish food
11. I love Spanish wine
12. I may never fully understand why I did this
13. Bidden or not bidden. God is present
14. There is always shit on the path ahead. Old or new, shit always stinks
15. Every Camino experience, like every relationship, is different, unique. Every pilgrim will go home describing a different experience
16. Threading your blisters with a needle & thread and betadine really does work
17. You can get blisters on top of blisters
18. Creation’s beauty does not cost or weigh anything
19. Your heart sees and recognizes joy as well as sin in a cloister community through its mere presence
20. I doubted the guidebook. But, yes, cheese can be shaped to look like a breast with a nipple
21. I love Spanish cheese
22. Yo soy el Camino 

my nativities, No. Cinco

These are some of my MOST favorites...

Isn't this busty Mary beautiful?  A true new mother

Santiago de Compostela, España

Ireland

Santiago de Chile,  Chile

Following the Shepherd

Nine years ago, my friend Pat and I walked roughly two-thirds of el Camino de Santiago pilgrimage across northern Spain. 

For those of you who didn't see Martin Sheen's recent movie, The Way, El Camino (in English The Way of St. James) is a thousand-year-old pilgrimage to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, where, tradition has it, lie the remains of Jesus’ Apostle St. James the Elder. 

One early morning before the misty fog had lifted, Pat and I headed west through the town where we had stayed the previous night, following the Camino’s trademark yellow arrows. In the outskirts of the village we passed an old cemetery, and instinctively began to say out loud the Church’s traditional prayer for the dead: 

“Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord. And may perpetual light shine on them. May these souls and the souls of all the faithfully departed rest in peace. Amen.”

At the end of the cemetery grounds, we turned right and stood, literally, at the end of the town facing a forest--with no apparent yellow arrow or marker of any kind that we could follow. Pat and I stopped, looked at each other and at the pebbled path, which split two ways in front of us. 

Before either of us could say anything and seemingly out of nowhere, we spotted a man walking ahead of us and heading into the forest on one of the paths, and we followed him. He was walking at our pace, dressed like the local shepherds, and was holding a wooden staff--but no backpack or bundle on his back.

We followed the shepherd in silence. I don’t remember for how long. Suddenly, just as he had appeared when we needed help discerning which way to go, we looked up and he was no longer there. But the yellow arrow painted on the tree showing us the way was as clear and detectable as a blue cloudless sky.

Later that morning, as Pat and I commented how Providential it was that the shepherd appeared when we needed him most, we realized that we each saw different things. Pat saw a young man dressed as a shepherd walking with a stick. I saw an older man dressed as a shepherd walking with a stick. 

Today I read a quote from the Book of Revelations that reminded me of our Camino shepherd: 

“These are the ones who follow the Lamb wherever he goes.” [Rev. 14].

I want to follow the Lamb. I want to silently, without hesitation, follow the Shepherd wherever He goes, wherever He leads me.