In the beginning

I guess I should start with the way I ended up on the Camino....and how I ended up there with my mom! 

I heard about the Camino for the first time maybe two years ago when that movie came out, The Way, the one made by Emilio Estevez and Martin Sheen. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend you do, by the way. I wouldn't say that it depicts the Camino experience with absolute accuracy, but it definitely captures the camaraderie that you can develop with others along the way and the kind of growth you can experience by walking to Santiago. Also, the cinematography is absolutely stunning. Check it out.

The Way

Anyway, I saw the movie for the first time when I bought it on a whim for $10 at Target and brought it back to my home. I cried watching it. It was so beautiful. Something stirred inside of me, wanting to do this thing so badly. 

Around the same time, I met my lovely friend Beth during a service project for one of the local young adult groups here in DC, the Frassati Fellowship (this was also the day she met her husband :-) ). She told me about how she had recently returned from walking the Camino---she and her friend had spent 10 days walking from Leon to Santiago, over 300 kilometers. Over the next year or so, I thought on and off about trying to do the Camino after finishing my then current job, nannying for a family in downtown DC. While speaking about it during a hike with Beth one day, she urged me to just go for it. Save the money, set a date, and plan on doing it, she said. What have you got to lose?

She was right. So, that very day, I made a deal with St. James. I promised him that if he got me there, I would offer up my Camino for a good friend of mine who has been sick for many years. I wanted so badly to do this for her, because there is nothing else I can do. All of a sudden, I was able to start saving money, which is something I have always been terrible at. I planned on going in 2014. I figured that was enough time to plan and save, and that the little boy I was taking care of would be going off to daycare by then. But then, one day, my boss sat me down to tell me that she and her husband were moving to Germany in August of 2013. Suddenly, I had my window, and much sooner than I expected.

I don't know when mom and I had that first conversation about the Camino, but I was surprised to hear when I told her for the first time that she had been wanting to do it for years. She had heard about it years before while watching a travel show, and had been at her urging that I was interested in watching The Way to begin with. We started talking about going together. I don't even remember the moment when we decided. I think it's because, like most of the best things that have happened to me in my life, God slid it in there without me being able to get in the way. I can't explain the feeling, but it's the same one I got when I saw the tryout posters for girls' hockey in the high school hallway, and when I stood on Franciscan University soil for the first time. It's that feeling you have, a deep peace in the bottom of your soul, that says, "you are meant to do this." And finally, in July, we made the jump. Mom bought two tickets to Paris, I bought $250 worth of stuff at REI (and borrowed everything else from Beth!) and we began our preparations. 

So this one time, I went to Spain....

*In case you don't know what the Camino de Santiago is, I suggest you read this. Even Wikipedia can explain it better than I can!*

Well, it's finally time.

 It's been over two months since I landed back in the states, and nearly three since I finished the most amazing journey of my life: walking the Camino de Santiago, from St. Jean Pied-de-Port in France, all the way to St. James' tomb in Santiago, Spain. To some, it may seem strange that it would take me this long to really talk about it. But unless you've done it, unless you've been there, you don't know how it changes you. You can't put it into words.

Shortly after I returned, I was scheduled to give a talk at the Catholic charismatic prayer group I help to run here in DC, and I was taken aback to find that many people were surprised or disappointed when they found out I was not talking about the Camino. The truth is, I couldn't. I couldn't even explain why I couldn't. For reasons I cannot and will not go into right now, it was impossible for me to process anything that I experienced in Spain right away. As soon as I was back in the states, I had other things to think about, other problems to deal with....problems that I had spent a month on the trail trying to work out in my own head, mostly without success. 

The past two months have been rich with growth and full of excitement, changes, surprises, challenges. Some of it has been unbelievably good...some of it has been unbelievably painful. And through all of the things I have dealt with since coming home--endless job searching, family crises, adjusting to a long-distance relationship, and trying to re-acclimate to life in DC--I have begun to understand what it is that the Lord was showing me through all this time on the Camino. I have begun to understand that he was showing me a truth that I never understood in all the kilometers I trekked over the months of August and September: that life itself is the Camino....that we are all on a journey, a difficult journey, full of unexpected challenges and joys, with one goal. We seek his strength, depend on others, make friends we weren't looking for, and experience beautiful, powerful, incredible things....if we can just take our eyes off the pain and the long, dusty road ahead.

One thing's for sure: no matter why, when or how you do the Camino--and the variations are endless, I assure you--it changes you. And usually, it's for the better. I'm hoping that by sharing it with you, I can understand those changes myself, and maybe help you out on your own Camino.

 

I'll let the Codex Calixtinus close out this first post:

"The pilgrim route is a very good thing, but it is narrow. For the road which leads us to life is narrow; on the other hand, the road which leads to death is broad and spacious. The pilgrim route is for those who are good: it is the lack of vices, the thwarting of the body, the increase of virtues, pardon for sins, sorrow for the penitent, the road of the righteous, love of the saints, faith in the resurrection and the reward of the blessed, a separation from hell, the protection of the heavens. It takes us away from luscious foods, it makes gluttonous fatness vanish, it restrains voluptuousness, constrains the appetites of the flesh which attack the fortress of the soul, cleanses the spirit, leads us to contemplation, humbles the haughty, raises up the lowly, loves poverty. It hates the reproach of those fuelled by greed. It loves, on the other hand, the person who gives to the poor. It rewards those who live simply and do good works; And, on the other hand, it does not pluck those who are stingy and wicked from the claws of sin."

Buen Camino!