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...