After 8 Days on the Camino

After 8 days walking in which I’ve covered 154 miles, a routine has developed. I get up around 6am and onto the Camino by 6.30-7, with my head torch on. At the earliest opportunity, I stop for breakfast including strong coffee. There will be at least one more stop for lunch. By 2pm I hope to have found a bed for the night. If an albergue is full, I move on.  Once settled in, I shower, change and then wash my walking clothes. Hopefully, they’ll dry in time for the next day!

Sometimes, I walk alone and other times I chat to others. Conversations can become deep very quickly. Although not all pilgrims will journey to Santiago, we have a common direction – east to west - and many of us have a common destination.  On my first day, one woman shared that she was hoping to reconnect with God after suffering abuse in an outwardly respectable Christian marriage, and losing faith.  Yesterday, an American pilgrim told me how he found faith. He was searching for meaning in life.  He saw an ad in a newspaper lying on the ground. It asked, ‘Who is God?’ He rang the telephone number and his faith journey began.

Of course, I share my story too.  I also speak of Toybox, seeking to improve the lot of street children around the world.

At the time of writing, I am staying in a lovely village albergue. The owners are Brazilian, and have connections to the writer, Paolo Coelho. In a short while I will enjoy a shared meal with other pilgrims. It’s smelling delicious!

Please keep praying for me. My feet are blister-free, but my left ankle and right knee have today become a little swollen.  It would be good to experience healing!

Holy Kissing?

That caught your attention, didn’t it? And I thought it was a suitably enigmatic title for my first blog.

Let me explain. I am recently returned from a trip to the Holy Land, and in the 7 days I spent there I have visited more churches and holy sites than I care to mention. For me, this was a pilgrimage and a profound spiritual experience but I stopped short of the response of many pilgrims. Not for me the bowing before and kissing of places which may (or may not) have been the place of Jesus’ conception, birth, manger, healing miracles, death and resurrection. Perhaps it offends my Protestant sensibilities, but such veneration of place and object seems to lie somewhere on a scale between simple superstition and outright idolatry!

I cannot deny, however, the sense of the sacred that seemed present in so many places. Perhaps it is the association with events in the life of Jesus, or the worship of pilgrims down the centuries? It was deeply moving to observe the varieties of liturgy at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem, early on a Sunday morning: Franciscan, Orthodox and others co-existing and worshipping in the same building at the same time. It was awe-inspiring (in the divine sense of the phrase) to share in the Lord’s Supper on the Mount of Olives and overlooking the Sea of Galilee. It was truly faith-building to walk in the footsteps of Jesus.

In the end, that may be what it’s all about. To be a pilgrim is to follow Jesus and to journey with him. If visiting biblical sites and touching, even kissing, awakens and strengthens us for the pilgrimage, it can after all be holy!