The whole idea of pilgrimage for me goes back a long, long time from the summer I spent with my cousins, living in the Netherlands. I bugged them all summer to go into Amsterdam so I could see Anne Frank's house, at the time in 1971, just made into a human rights museum. At age 14, I wasn't too clear about what 'human rights' meant, but I was clear that Anne had been a light for the world. I didn't get to spend nearly enough time in her house, going through the secret bookcase (something that pilgrims nowadays apparently can no longer do), and walking around in the rooms her family, friends and she inhabited.
Walking the Camino de Santiago is another form of pilgrimage, one that dates back to the 800s when a farmer looked up in the night sky to see a bright star that shone on the spot where the bones of Saint James were resting. Compostela, as in campus, field, stellae, of stars, became the destination for medieval pilgrims desirous of expiating their sins. (It was referred to as the Milky Way at one point in its history.) The Camino's popularity took off during in the 11th century but fell out of popularity until the 1990s when the United Nations made it a world monument. Now, thousands of pilgrims from around the world, make the journey from one end of northern Spain to the other, starting in the Pyrenee mountains where the medieval epic hero, Roland, Charlemagne's son, was killed in an ambush, and ending in Santiago, some 700+ miles later.
Three years ago, we three pilgrims, each for different reasons set off on the Camino. We only had time to do the first 100 kms and the last 250 or so, thereby skipping the middle section of the Alteplano, the long, flat, open and hot segment that we watched miserable pilgrims (or so it seemed) from our comfortable seats in a speedy train. Subsequently, we walked the Chemin de Saint Jacques, the Via Podensis, starting in Le Puy, France and ending in the Pyrenees in the French town of Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port.
So, now, this spring, we will walk the last 272 miles. And this time, it will be dedicated to Episcopal Relief and Development's Inspiration Fund. Every other walk we have literally carried people's prayers, handwritten on little pieces of paper. We will do that this time, too, but we will also leave in our path information about the Millennium Development Goals.
I am grateful to a colleague who also is walking the Camino (albeit in a different spot), who is raising money for an organisation that works with the MDGs. Thanks to her idea which got this one going.
That is a little bit of the big picture.
[As for the photo that accompanies this posting, it is taken from the top of the mountain ridge that separates Pamplona from the open terrain, with nearby Eunate, a Romanesque funerary chapel for fallen pilgrims of the middle ages. One hikes up the the Mont Pardon to find oneself alongside wind turbines — the province of Navarra prides itself on a large percentage of its energy being generated by wind — and a modern statue of a pilgrim and mule. It's quite dramatic.]
