This weekend I did a Lenten quiet day for the church's chapter of the Daughters of the King. I used my journey on the Camino de Santiago as my example and extrapolated some reflections from it. The first is here.
+
The day on which one starts out is not the time to start one’s preparations.
Nigerian folk saying
Five years ago when I was thinking about sabbatical, a first for both Saint Mary’s and for myself, I cast about how I might spend the three months away from the daily routine of parish life. I knew somehow that I wanted to be physically challenged, spiritually engaged and participating in some form of outreach.
I had thought of doing an Outward Bound program about which I had heard from our neighbour who had led it once upon a time. It involved cross-country skiing and camping in Minnesota in the winter, a solo trip in extreme cold and simply being out there. What intrigued me was her description of sleeping on the ice of a lake and hearing it ‘talk’ throughout the night. Even though I feared for my digits, I thought it would be neat to do, to push my body in ways it never had been before, to get away from civilization and to experience beauty that otherwise was inaccessible. But the timing and the cost of the program made it impossible so I laid aside that idea, waiting for the right one to come along.
At the same time, I was trying to figure out the outreach component and spiritual engagement piece of sabbatical. The spiritual seemed the easiest to work out: I had long wanted to experience Holy Week at the Convent of Saint Helena in Vail’s Gate. It would be my first Holy Week not in charge of everything in a decade and that also would be a change. Getting a room at the convent was easy and so that part was all set up.
Likewise, the outreach part of sabbatical seemed to present itself without much thought: go to El Salvador and live there, doing whatever the bishop wanted me to do. Again, those pieces fell into place rather easily: we agreed on the dates, there was a room where I could stay and when I got there, we would figure out what I would do.
But what about the physical challenge part of sabbatical which seemed so important at the time? I was running into dead ends until a dear friend, Debbie, who wanted to go on pilgrimage said: What about the Camino de Santiago de Compostela? All of a sudden, little bells started to ding in my head and I remembered how in 1984 I had encountered churches along the Camino as a group of medievalists and I travelled through northern Spain. More bells went off: of course! I had written my Ph.D. dissertation on the Song of Roland, which describes the ambush of the rear guard high up in the Pyrenees. The Camino starts at Roncesvalles, the site of the massacre.
It all made sense and the sabbatical was then in place: I would spend six weeks in El Salvador, return, go to Saint Helena’s for Holy Week and then we would take off on the Camino for two and a half weeks.
Getting the itinerary and timing was step one in the sabbatical process. Then it was preparing the congregation for the time away, lining up who would do what in my absence (as I called it, ‘the little things that just happen’) and making sure there was supply clergy for the Sundays I would be gone. With help from vestry members, those needs were also taken care of and I felt I could leave for sabbatical without worry.
One can prepare for El Salvador only so much because life there is so unpredictable. I could take a big suitcase with me (back in the days before the airlines charged so much money) with enough clothes for six weeks; I didn’t have to worry about money because El Salvador uses the dollar and therefore using ATMs wasn’t an issue. The actual agenda down there was a whole other matter and I knew from experience that one just went with the flow and tried not to let it wear oneself out.
Preparation for the Camino was a whole other matter, however. And being in El Salvador got me off the hook; it was Anne who did all the work. As I was trying to keep my head above water with the cultural and linguistic challenges, I was getting emails like these:
I have tried on six different boots so far. A couple are possibilities…. Am also checking out rain jackets. There is [one] that is about $100 that looks good. The best is another, but it is $179. The store has a medium on sale for close to $100 that would probably fit you…. There is yet another one that looks interesting that the person at the store said is in between the other two quality wise. They only had large and all of them are blue. Might work for you.…
Are your eyes crossing? Think about reading these words when it’s 90 degrees outside and you are sitting in an office in front of an air conditioner.
Another note said: I am obsessing about the backpack situation. It seems dumb not to use the ones we have but I think they are too big and too heavy. The new one I got is light enough and it is quite comfortable but it is also big. I have put a bunch of clothes in it, and I realise that though the pack is far from full, it has way more in it than we will carry in Spain. So I have gone back to researching light packs.
OK, there was less disconnect simply because I wasn’t thinking about jackets. I could understand backpacks, sort of though I couldn’t really imagine what 20 pounds felt like since I usually haul that much around in books and laptop.
Then she started to write about the weather: I found a site that has temperatures for Spain. I copied into a Word document the average April and May temps for five or six cities on the Camino…. Looks like it will be fairly cool and probably rainy. Good walking weather if it isn’t too rainy.
Well, it was moving into the rainy season in El Salvador so I could relate to the dampness but not the idea of cold rain.
Then it was onto our sleeping bags.
I got your sleeping bag out today. It does not say what it weighs, though it says it has 20 oz of fill. But unless you think it might be too hot, I think it is probably light enough to take. I don’t think it can be over 3 lbs whereas mine is between 4 and 5.
Did this make any sense? What is three pounds any way? Why would that matter? I couldn’t imagine what the difference of a pound would make even though I knew she was right. Weight seemed to be a big problem.
In another email, I read: I do want to weigh your sleeping bag and if it is not too much more than 3 lbs, I’d say it will be OK. The refugios might be cold. D emailed this morning and said she had a bag that is 3.75 lbs. It is a big heavy one but it may not make sense to pay for another one. Mine is just too huge and heavy.
My head just wasn’t getting the weight business. I knew it was important; I have hauled 30 pounds of stuff up the NH Whites, all of it necessary, but that was short bursts of putting out energy, not day after day.
Having pretty much settled on the equipment, Anne then started researching plane tickets, train schedules and anything related to ground transportation. She also started working on our calendar — how many kilometers we would walk each day, from where to where and how long it might take. That sounds easy but it meant looking up a lot of things on the web as this email said:
The current plan is to meet D at the airport. The bus to Roncesvalles leaves the center of Pamplona at 6 but it seems to me we would be better off taking a taxi. D’s friend suggested staying in Burguete which is a bout 2 miles on the Pamplona side of Roncesvalles, and walking to R for the pilgrim mass which is at 8pm, having dinner and then walking back. She said the refugio at R is cold and cavernous. So we could take the taxi to Burguete, stay in a decent place since we will all be tired, walk to R for the mass and back, and then start out on Thursday. I am thinking we might walk to Estella (four days) and then take buses to the place we chose for the last part. Anyway, things are coming together!
The next thing I need to find out is the train and bus situation to get through the parts we won’t walk. The guides have a bit of info but I want to see if any schedules are accessible on the web. If I find some I can’t understand I will send you the addresses and you can check them out.
In her research, Anne found a neat place down in North Carolina that sells maps and guidebooks and so she ordered a few. Armed with maps (gold!) she now could get down to details.
When I came back from El Salvador, she had figured out the entire walk, where we would skip by bus and train, where we would pick up again and how long it would take. It was a labour of love that ultimately made for a far less stressful pilgrimage. As the adage says The day on which one starts out is not the time to start one’s preparations.
+
Preparation for an endeavour like this — walking 260 miles — is essential. Joyce Rupp who wrote Walk in a Relaxed Manner: Life Lessons from the Camino, says: ‘Reflecting back I now laugh at how needing to prepare for the Camino never occurred to me. I thought I would simply take a backpack and a pair of hiking boots, get on a plane to Spain, and start out. If I had actually done that, I would probably not have lasted more than a few days. She writes how her spiritual director said to her: “Remember, the preparation is as important as the journey itself.”’ (1)
Another Camino pilgrim, Arthur Paul Boers, in his chapter, ‘Your Pack’s Too Big,’ realises in his preparation that the key to surviving is: Simplify, simplify, simplify. He remembers the directions from Jesus to the disciples as recounted in the gospel according to Matthew (10.9-10): Take no gold or silver, or copper in your belts, no bag for your journey, or two tunics, or sandals or a staff: for labourers deserve their food. (2)
+
This past week, just three days ago, we observed Ash Wednesday, a moment when we look at our limitations and our mortality. It is the first day of a season that asks us to become pilgrims in the walk of love. To become a pilgrim, we have to make ourselves humble, humble like dust and ashes. We have to understand that there is no direct way to this love, to God, we have to make the way as we walk.
In some ways, our route is already laid out ahead of us with distinct markers in place (Sundays). There’s no surprise about where we are going… or so it would seem. But not until we start walking will we find out if it is that straightforward or if God is going to write straight on the crooked lines of our paths. Part of the journey is the preparation; part of the journey is simplification. How do you prepare?
END NOTES
(1) Joyce Rupp: Walk in a Relaxed Manner: Life Lessons from the Camino (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2005), 43.
(2) Arthur Paul Boers, The Way is Made by Walking: A Pilgrimage Along the Camino de Santiago (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2007), 57.
PHOTOS
What was to go into the pack... and the pack put together.
