Camino Pilgrimage
Sister Diana
The Camino is a challenge to anyone what ever their age – it stretches from St Jean- Pied-de-Port to Santiago and on to Finisterre if you want to follow the route of the medieval pilgrim.
I started the walk a little further in, at Logrono, walking solo but with our community at Zaragoza always on the end of a mobile phone (just in case). I followed the ‘French route’ staying in Albergues, walking through the La Roioja, Burgos, Palencia, Leon, Lugo and La Coruna.
Before I started I read Joyce Rupp’s book ‘Walking in a Relaxed
Manner’, visited the Confraternity of St James in London, received
plenty of practical help and studied the set of Beatitudes that a
friend sent me.
But nothing really prepares you for the walk – five and a half weeks of agricultural variety - vines, potatoes, corn, dairy and sheep. Paths that cut through vineyards, farmyards and woods alongside busy roads, rushing streams and the high plains of Leon, and the ups and downs of Galicia. Visiting cities of Logrono, Burgos, Leon and Ponferrada, not seeing the famous O Cebreiro as it was pouring with rain and shrouded in cloud – but I still managed to climb it!
To be a pilgrim was the aim, and taking the pilgrim’s Beatitudes with me I started on a completely new way of life:
Blessed are you, pilgrim, if you find that the Camino opens your eyes to the unseen
Blessed are you, pilgrim, if what concerns you most is not arriving, but arriving with others.
Blessed are you, pilgrim, when you contemplate the sights of the Camino and find them full of names and of new dawns
Blessed are you, pilgrim, because you have discovered that the true Camino begins at its end
Blessed are you, pilgrim, if your backpack empties of things as your heart doesn’t know how to fit so many emotions
Blessed are you, pilgrim, if you discover that a step backwards to help another is more valuable that a hundred forward without awareness of those at your side
Blessed are you, pilgrim, when you have no words to give thanks for all the wonders in every nook of the Camino
Blessed are you, pilgrim, if you search for the truth and make of your Camino a life, and of your life a Camino, after Him who is the Way, the Truth and the life
Blessed are you, pilgrim, if on the Camino you meet yourself and make yourself a gift of time without hurry, so that you may not neglect the image of your heart
Blessed are you, pilgrim, if you find that the Camino is rich with silence and the silence is rich with prayer and the prayers are encounters with the Father that awaits you.
(Hospitalera of the refuge of pilgrims “los Padres Reparadores” from Puente Reina)
These Beatitudes are the heart of the Camino – each person I met I felt was a person I was meant to meet; each incident could be reflected on and learnt from. There was sun, wind, snow, sleet, hail and rain, not necessarily in that order, and sometimes keeping positive was difficult and prayer became very basic, ‘Bed please God’, ‘Please get me to the top of this hill’! But walking towards the goal of Santiago, following yellow arrows, remembering that for centuries others have walked on these paths, was a tremendous experience, allowing the physical experience to become the prayer – the weight of the rucksack, the aches and pains, the warmth of the sun, the beautiful and bountiful wild flowers, birds, choruses of frogs, amazing storks, sharing a meal, sharing a burden, realizing that the 50 + nationalities all have one thing in common -we were all pilgrims the and arriving with other pilgrims at the final goal, emotional – and the good byes, exchange of emails and the pilgrims Mass each day at the cathedral, full to brimming with those that had made the journey and their friends and relations that waited there for them.
The reward a trip to Finisterre to enjoy the sea food, watch the stormy sea and the working fishing port, and more rugged country then a 12 hour train journey back to our very welcoming community at Zaragoza.
