After our recent twenty-one mile “Walk to Mary” from Green Bay to the Marian shrine at Champion (with a 25 mile bus trip in between after mile fourteen) I brought up the idea of the famous five- hundred mile Camino de Santiago in France and Spain to my wife and son. Both said “no,” with an additional comment by my son: “No way, but you go if you need it for your ego.”
After looking up the Camino, I was convinced not to go – too crowded and commercial and noisy – but I did not wince at my son’s biting put-down. He just doesn’t understand pilgrimages yet. Yes, there might certainly be ego involved – I know that many who walk the Camino proudly sport the scallop shell they receive after completion on their backpacks – but just like running a marathon, some pilgrimages are so demanding that the drive of the ego is lost in the process. With a marathon, it becomes a contest between comfort and will; and with a pilgrimage, between living for the world or for the spirit. That is what it comes down to in the end.
In this, a pilgrimage affects one very much like a fast done for spiritual reasons. In both cases, one is denying worldly comfort for spiritual discipline and strength. On fasting, here is what Richard Foster had to say in his excellent book on spirituality, Celebration of Discipline: “Anger, bitterness, jealousy, strife, fear – if they are within us, they will surface in fasting. At first we will rationalize that our anger is due to our hunger; then we will realize that we are angry because the spirit of anger is within us. We can rejoice in this knowledge because we know that healing is available through the power of Christ.”(pg. 55)
Talk about spot-on. The day of our pilgrimage was perfect – temperature around seventy degrees, a cool breeze off of Lake Michigan, a bright sunny sky, and the bursting out of the flowers and leaves of May. But it was all on hard-top, and as one seasoned hiker wrote, “I would walk forty miles in the mountains rather than twenty on pavement.” Although a few people seemed unaffected, for most of us our feet became swollen stumps dotted with painful blisters. Is was grueling. On top of that, for some reason (maybe the novelty of the pilgrimage) I was hyper as all hell the night before in our hotel room. Because of this, I drank five beers to sleep, and then woke up pretty much for good at three when the alcohol wore off. I thus had a bit of a hang-over and a horrible lack of sleep for the walk. Add to this the pain of the feet, and I was impatient outwardly and worse inwardly. The funny thing was, I knew that it wasn’t just the hike, the beer or the lack of sleep that was causing these bouts of bad humor. Hour after hour as the pilgrimage plodded on, I realized more and more that the bad humor, as Foster put it, was in me already. It was just waiting for an excuse to come out. I realized this even as I felt the bad mood, and was glad for the realization. It was a gift of the walk. Because I was doing this as a sacrifice for spirit, what was bad became very good, a valuable insight that will help purge me of at least some of my inner demons.
This is what a pilgrimage is for – to purge spiritual toxins, to suffer and to overcome, and to contemplate and realize what one is and what in life is really important. Like my son, many people believe that the best we can do for our soul and the world is to give time and/or money for those in need. Certainly these outward forms are good, but how good would my pilgrimage have been if I were snarly the whole time and did not have my realization? How much less the good, then, when giving is done out of resentful obligation. In this way, we can see why the disciplining of self is so important spiritually: it helps to cleanse us of blockage to allow the entrance of the good. This makes us more willing, and certainly more spiritually attune, to give, so much so that the practical person might say, “Sacrifice the self in pilgrimage and fasting so that one might become more generous.” But that is a footnote – although an important one – to the story of living. By doing that which cleanses, we become less affected by random events and emotions, and more in tune with divine will. In divine will, we do what is best for ourselves as well as for everyone else and the universe, to boot - and we ourselves discover a greater joy that elevates not only the self but everyone else around us. Life, then, becomes at least a little bit better for everyone regardless of how the divine spirit calls us to act.
No Camino de Santiago for me, but some other adventure in sacrifice and/or spirituality calls. It always has and always does, for me and I think for us all, all of us offered ways to clear our own blockage and become part of the solution, for both ourselves and for others. I can’t wait to see what it will be, but the gift of spiritual discipline might insist that I do.
After our recent twenty-one mile “Walk to Mary” from Green Bay to the Marian shrine at Champion (with a 25 mile bus trip in between after mile fourteen) I brought up the idea of the famous five- hundred mile Camino de Santiago in France and Spain to my wife and son. Both said “no,” with an additional comment by my son: “No way, but you go if you need it for your ego.”
After looking up the Camino, I was convinced not to go – too crowded and commercial and noisy – but I did not wince at my son’s biting put-down. He just doesn’t understand pilgrimages yet. Yes, there might certainly be ego involved – I know that many who walk the Camino proudly sport the scallop shell they receive after completion on their backpacks – but just like running a marathon, some pilgrimages are so demanding that the drive of the ego is lost in the process. With a marathon, it becomes a contest between comfort and will; and with a pilgrimage, between living for the world or for the spirit. That is what it comes down to in the end.
In this, a pilgrimage affects one very much like a fast done for spiritual reasons. In both cases, one is denying worldly comfort for spiritual discipline and strength. On fasting, here is what Richard Foster had to say in his excellent book on spirituality, Celebration of Discipline: “Anger, bitterness, jealousy, strife, fear – if they are within us, they will surface in fasting. At first we will rationalize that our anger is due to our hunger; then we will realize that we are angry because the spirit of anger is within us. We can rejoice in this knowledge because we know that healing is available through the power of Christ.”(pg. 55)
Talk about spot-on. The day of our pilgrimage was perfect – temperature around seventy degrees, a cool breeze off of Lake Michigan, a bright sunny sky, and the bursting out of the flowers and leaves of May. But it was all on hard-top, and as one seasoned hiker wrote, “I would walk forty miles in the mountains rather than twenty on pavement.” Although a few people seemed unaffected, for most of us our feet became swollen stumps dotted with painful blisters. Is was grueling. On top of that, for some reason (maybe the novelty of the pilgrimage) I was hyper as all hell the night before in our hotel room. Because of this, I drank five beers to sleep, and then woke up pretty much for good at three when the alcohol wore off. I thus had a bit of a hang-over and a horrible lack of sleep for the walk. Add to this the pain of the feet, and I was impatient outwardly and worse inwardly. The funny thing was, I knew that it wasn’t just the hike, the beer or the lack of sleep that was causing these bouts of bad humor. Hour after hour as the pilgrimage plodded on, I realized more and more that the bad humor, as Foster put it, was in me already. It was just waiting for an excuse to come out. I realized this even as I felt the bad mood, and was glad for the realization. It was a gift of the walk. Because I was doing this as a sacrifice for spirit, what was bad became very good, a valuable insight that will help purge me of at least some of my inner demons.
This is what a pilgrimage is for – to purge spiritual toxins, to suffer and to overcome, and to contemplate and realize what one is and what in life is really important. Like my son, many people believe that the best we can do for our soul and the world is to give time and/or money for those in need. Certainly these outward forms are good, but how good would my pilgrimage have been if I were snarly the whole time and did not have my realization? How much less the good, then, when giving is done out of resentful obligation. In this way, we can see why the disciplining of self is so important spiritually: it helps to cleanse us of blockage to allow the entrance of the good. This makes us more willing, and certainly more spiritually attune, to give, so much so that the practical person might say, “Sacrifice the self in pilgrimage and fasting so that one might become more generous.” But that is a footnote – although an important one – to the story of living. By doing that which cleanses, we become less affected by random events and emotions, and more in tune with divine will. In divine will, we do what is best for ourselves as well as for everyone else and the universe, to boot - and we ourselves discover a greater joy that elevates not only the self but everyone else around us. Life, then, becomes at least a little bit better for everyone regardless of how the divine spirit calls us to act.
No Camino de Santiago for me, but some other adventure in sacrifice and/or spirituality calls. It always has and always does, for me and I think for us all, all of us offered ways to clear our own blockage and become part of the solution, for both ourselves and for others. I can’t wait to see what it will be, but the gift of spiritual discipline might insist that I do.
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