Walking the Camino de Santiago
Thoughts about the spiritual aspects of the Camino.
Serge sure puts on a spread! Dinner with the other pilgrims in the gîte was enormous, and enormously fun, even if most of the conversation was in a language I can’t understand. Breakfast was similarly generous, and I had a hard time getting out the door. We finally left about 7:00 AM. My goal today was the city of Moissac, […]
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We sang vespers with the sisters last night in Gramat. I have prayed Vespers frequently in both English and Latin (and more usually, a combination of the two), but this is only the second time I’ve prayed them in French. This is the mother house of their order, and the sisters here were few in number and gray haired. This […]
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Today was a day of beautiful forest trails and way too much roadwalking. I left the gîte at about 6:20 this morning in search of a café for breakfast. The sky was just beginning to lighten, and I hoped to luxuriate a bit with a cup of café au lait and a pastry. It was actually chilly enough that I […]
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Y’all It has been a day and it’s not even lunchtime. Date: 16 August 2023 Place: Pistachio House I am really trying to blog but I am out of practice. Bear with me as I catch you up… because reasons. 5am. Awake. See a plethora of messages from Thom about missed connections. Once again… he pledges never to fly through […]
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Introduction These rules are hard-won through experience. The emphasis here is on practical – these will not necessarily ensure a more spiritual or fruitful pilgrimage, but perhaps a less needlessly difficult one. If you’re looking for some of the spiritual lessons I learned, those are on the page titled Cultivating Pilgrim Spirituality. And obviously, these rules don’t include your everyday […]
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There’s just something about a cloister that invites contemplation – and photos. They are, after all, meant to evoke Eden. This is the cloister of the Monasterio de la Magdelena, now an albergue rather than a monastery. Spain’s government seized all Spanish churches and monasteries in the 19th century in their own version of what Henry VIII did in Britain. […]
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We are all now finally back from our Camino. Those of you who have been following along know that – in addition to the physical and mental challenges – the Camino is a powerful tool for discernment. I’ll get back to what we were discerning later, but I was again reminded that walking the Camino is truly a time and […]
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It’s Galicia, and that means rain! Mostly of the cool, drizzly variety familiar to those of us living in the Pacific Northwest. Started the day early, and I completely failed to get breakfast or coffee. I broke the cardinal rule of the Camino Primitivo: stop in every café. And for this, I suffered. Lovely quiet trails through the Galician forests […]
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Today we crossed from the principality of Asturias into the province of Galicia, which was itself a kingdom of old. We had planned to be out the door by 6 AM, and had prepared accordingly with prepackaged breakfasts and a handle on where the coffee maker in the albergue was. In the event, it was 6:40 before we made it […]
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May the second looms large in my life. On this day in 2013, Francine and I walked into Santiago de Compostela for the first time, at the end of our first Camino. At this point, Francine had been walking for almost two weeks, and me for more than a month. I can’t describe the joy of that day. Arrival in […]
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