Pilgrims' Home

Week 1 photos I write almost everyday, but the weekly update is simply a few snippets from the week’s writing. I am working from a small screen and a poor interface, so my typos may be more abundant than usual. Day 1: Day one of the Camino is not something one can prepare for. One pilgrim said, the Camino has three parts. The first is physical, the second emotional, and the third spiritual. I wish i could have skipped the first and simply gone to the third, but then again, maybe not. I left Saint Jean at 645 today and began the initial ascent toward Roncesvalles. It was straight up 400 meters in 2 miles. By 9 am , i was 4 miles into the 16 mile day, and i was already above the clouds. Saint jean sits at 170 meters above sea level. By the end of the walk, i had seen the mountains and the valleys from 1400 meters above sea level. In less than 13 miles out, i had walked almost one mile up.  The first leg is as difficult as all the guidebooks say. Just when i thin...

I am traveling by train today to Saint-jean-pied-de-Port. The train has wifi so I downloaded a few episodes of Jerry Seinfeld’s, Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. I love this show. It has a needed levity and joy. Jerry enters with playful curiosity with his guests. He (mostly) releases his grasp for control and allows conversation to flow. The give-and-take is delightful.  The last several days have felt a bit of release for me. I have no emails to check, no todo list to manage, and the only items in my possession fit in a 42 liter backpack. I’m no Jerry but i have sensed a freedom to enter into conversation and enjoy where conversations go.  I think this is a key to the pilgrim’s life. I’m not fully free from my own grassiness yet but am moving in such directions. I look forward to what this allows me to learn on the Camino. I won’t be driving a 1973 Citroen with a Maserati engine, but I’ll have my own specially discovered shoes alongside the other pilgrims and their...

The phone rang and I picked up. She is a kindred spirit and wise soul. We skipped pleasantries and entered into free and honest speech, both of us seeking to understand the other. She said, "when it comes to this place, I feel abandonment, suspicion, and harm. I feel the need to protect the unprotected.” I sensed that I resemble that comment. The resonance was strong that as much as I seek to help and protect some it is against another. She had no idea that I awoke at 4am thinking these same things but she articulated the sense of her current reality with better clarity. I sensed that these words - suspicion, abandonment, and harm - awakened my own feelings of fear and sadness. I do not want to engage each day with suspicion or harm but with freedom and creativity. The phone conversation awakened what was unfolding in me the past 10 days since I started sabbatical. I feel my hands unflinching and my heart unfurling with each new day. My arms are stretching out, and I am begin...

I am of a theological mind that work was given to us by God as a gift. Work is not originally toil. We were invited, from the outset of creation, to till and to work the land. We were invited to name the animals in the fields. In deed, God made work of life in the first six days, and then God invited rest . Work is not an origination of Genesis 3 but Genesis 1 and 2; work is part of what is good. But like anything and everything, the mark of sin has tainted what was given to us as good.  Today, I experienced the goodness of work.   I love what I do, where I do it, and who I get to work with. Western Theological Seminary is part of God’s good gift to the world, yet like anything and everything has been tainted by sin; this is true of the institution and its processes, as well as its people. Even so, the mission of WTS is Christ-centered, and I am all the more aware today that the many people who make up the WTS workforce are equally so centered. I started sabb...

Maggie is leaning to ride her bike these days. Yesterday was a major breakthrough. With a slight push, she would begin pedaling all alone and cruising down the street. Cruising might be a generous term. She was pedaling down the street but her line-making efficiency would fail most engineering tests. We took our first family bike ride after three or four tests of ability. We rode through our neighborhood side-by-side on our five bikes. Micah and Madeline were cheering for their little sister, and Lindsay and I were rejoicing that from here on our three kids wouldn’t be left behind by friends for inability to ride a bike. We turned the corner a few blocks away, and Maggie joyfully screamed, “I’m doing it. I'm doing it!” Shortly after her exclamation, she wobbled left and right and ran helmet first into a set of mailboxes. Her bike crashed, we gasped, and we panicked. In this moment of fear where for a flash I imagined she would never get up and forever refuse to ride her b...

Friends have asked if I have an itinerary. Many are offering to pray and join me in the walk. I welcome your solidarity. Please join me.

I am already discovering through preparation that the Camino is a physical and spiritual journey. I am also learning that these two aspects can reduce the Camino to a sport or to an individualistic tour and vacation. As I ponder my own reasons for going I have pondered if the Camino is at all an escape, meaning Nineveh was calling but the Camino seemed a better second destination. Because 500 miles of walking is better than obedience to God’s calling. I have wrestled with the "why" of the Camino. Just yesterday someone asked, "Now why would you walk 500 miles? My friend did the Camino in four days - isn’t that enough why does it take you 34 days?”  I laughed at his question, even more at his comment. Why does it take me 34 days to do what his friend did in 4? Can't I get the pilgrimage experience more quickly? Can't spiritual journey be more efficient? An emerging question over the past months One of the questions in my non-published writings continue...

"He did not regard equality with God as something to grasp, but he gave everything of himself away and took the form of a slave." Today is my last day in the office. I will be giving my office to a colleague for a few months while WTS completes the construction. I felt the need to make shelf space for my colleague before she arrives. I spent a few days boxing up personal belongings and a few shelves of books. With each book boxed and each note filed, I felt a growing release from the tasks in front of me and a calling to the work ahead, namely recollecting, walking, and writing.  Paul’s words concerning Jesus were an invitation to me, “Let the same mind be in you as in Christ Jesus…. He did not regard equality with God as something to grasp, but he gave himself away and took the form of a slave.” I desire this mind and this practice.  The angels are saying, "Let go and breathe. Do not grasp at the world you are walking away from. Release your hands, and rece...

The road in the end taking the path the sun had taken, into the western sea, and the moon rising behind you as you stood where ground turned to ocean: no way to your future now but the way your shadow could take, walking before you across water, going where shadows go, no way to make sense of a world that wouldn't let you pass except to call an end to the way you had come, to take out each frayed letter you had brought and light their illumined corners; and to read them as they drifted on the late western light; to empty your bags; to sort this and to leave that; to promise what you needed to promise all along, and to abandon the shoes that brought you here right at the water's edge, not because you had given up but because now, you would find a different way to tread, and because, through it all, part of you would still walk on, no matter how, over the waves. - David Whyte  ©2012 http://www.davidwhyte.com/pilgrim/

Almost daily someone asks me, “Aren’t you on sabbatical?” I channel positive energy and respond, “Not yet. Not until July 1st.”  They are asking a generous question. It’s summer, and sabbaticals start in the summer; people expect me to vacate. My internal response, however, is battling with two emotions - frustration and fear.  I am frustrated because I have not yet started sabbatical and have a load of administrative tasks to do. I am frustrated because I have enough sabbatical-itis (eerily similar to senior-iris) that I do not want to disconnect before necessary. I am fearful because I wonder, “Do people want me to leave, now? Are people ready for me to get out of the building and go do something else?" The ride of emotions amidst trying to complete my work and deal with me is too much. Both my anger and my fear are unwarranted, and most days I can take a deep breath and appreciate both my love for WTS and others’ positive intentions in asking.  But...

The time has come to begin heavier training; “to take the first step, the step I don’t want to take” to quote David Whyte. This past week I committed to walking almost 10 miles as a training walk. Those who complete the Way of Frances advise that training for a pilgrimage is a dance between “taking a long walk” and “going on an inner journey.” I have been traveling the space of inner journey lately, which has been notable in terms of communion with God, others, and me. Yet now, I also need to be attentive to the walking portion of the pilgrimage. I laced my shoes; filled my bottle; and loaded my pack. It was 87 degrees. I double-checked the map on my phone to measure and clarify the route. I thought I was 7-8.5 miles away from home - my planned destination. Just over 90 minutes later, I learned I was wrong, and 9.5 miles is significantly more than 8.5 miles. I began the walk with strength and excitement. I wondered what would fill the quiet space of step-after-step. Though...

From the Sons of Korah God is our refuge and strength,    a very present help in trouble.  Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change,    though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea;  though its waters roar and foam,    though the mountains tremble with its tumult.            Selah   There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,    the holy habitation of the Highest.  God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved;    God will help it when the morning dawns. The nations are in an uproar, the kingdoms totter;    he utters his voice, the earth melts.  The  Lord  of hosts is with us;    the God of Jacob is our refuge.            Selah   Come, behold the ...

One year ago today I was sitting in Taize, alone. Taize worships at least three times each day. If you are over 35, the activities between worship are few. The schedule was slow and between worship services I would go for long walks alone, often walking in circles because I was afraid of getting lost. One day I overcame my fear and walked to Cluny, an old city centered around a convent. Funny things happened on the way to Cluny, including needing to use the bathroom but having no bathroom in site. I also calculated that it was a four-mile walk but 6.5 miles later, I arrived in the town. What was most fascinating was the verbal activity in my brain among the many steps I trod. I was alone but still “talking” or what I more often call “spinning.” I am sure no one can relate to this. The walking to Cluny and back gave too much time for spinning in my head. Sometimes interesting thoughts and questions would come to mind, but more often than not people and relationships, conflicts ...

The opening words of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy: When I had journeyed half of our life’s way, I found myself within a shadowed forest, for I had lost the path that does not stray. Ah, it is hard to speak of what it was, that savage forest, dense and difficult, which even in recall renews my fear: so bitter—death is hardly more severe! But to retell the good discovered there, I’ll also tell the other things I saw. I cannot clearly say how I had entered the wood; I was so full of sleep just at the point where I abandoned the true path. I imagine Dante wrote these opening words at the end of planning and writing the Divine C omedie . I write on the front side of what I hope is a comedic pilgrimage. Pain, loneliness, and suffering will surely find its home in me during the Camino, but might joy, laughter, and love also manifest in me? How will life become alive through memories, thoughts, and new connections along the way? This phrase of Da...