Reflections
One difference between pilgrimage and a walking adventure is that while everyone may be treading the same physical path, the pilgrim is also on an inner journey: walking mindfully; living simply; accepting rather than avoiding challenges; being open to lessons along the way. On my first Camino de Santiago, walking mindfully along the eight hundred …
In the historic town of Carrión de los Condes in northern Spain, a diverse group of weary guests gathered in the vestibule of the albergue (pilgrim hostel) at the convent of Santa María to join some of the nuns for an evening sing-along before the nightly Pilgrim Mass. Most of us were strangers, united only …
Continue reading “A Musical Interlude on Camino – Spain 2016”
“When the fresh showers of April have pierced the drought of March to the root…then folk long to go on pilgrimages.” (Geoffrey Chaucer in his Prologue to “Canterbury Tales” – loosely translated from the Middle English) Six and a half centuries after Chaucer led a diplomatic mission to the kingdom of Navarre, I passed …
Continue reading “Camino de Santiago – On the Frontier Between Faith and Culture”
Somehow I had imagined Spain’s Cape Finisterre – “End of the Earth” – to be like a finger of Europe pointing westward toward the open sea. But it isn’t. It’s more like an appendix, hanging “down” from north to south. And that’s part of the magic. The pilgrim who augments their Camino de Santiago (the …
Continue reading “A Walk to the End of the Earth – Galicia, 2023”
A few more days and I’ll be leaving for another camino; walking a pilgrimage toward the great 12th Century cathedral in Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain. This will probably be my last post until September, so I’ll leave you with some personal thoughts on pilgrimage in general and the camino tradition in particular.
Five years ago, lingering over a last glass of wine and aftertaste of delicious Basque cooking, I was savouring the ambience of a little courtyard restaurant tucked under the medieval walls of St. Jean Pied de Port at the foot of the French Pyrenees. Calling for the bill, I jotted a few final notes in …
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