Walking 500 miles, day after day, sounds like an impossibly hard task and is not probably something that most people would think of as a "fun" way to spend their Fall. Yet literally millions of people have walked the various pathways and roads to Santiago over the past 1,000 years. OK, back in the "Dark Ages", when the Catholic Church dominated every aspect of European medieval life,when the millennium-closing "End of Ages" belief was accepted as an omni-present inevitability by almost everybody and people didn't have the global grounding of current events coverage that we are blessed with today - sure then it made sense to perform the obligatory pilgrimage to a Holy Place. The Holy City - Jerusalem - had been taken from the Byzantine Empire by the armies of the exploding Islamic faith in 637 and the way to Rome was done only by traveling through an ever-shifting Rubic's Cube of warring city-states, kingly relationships and feuding families in what is now modern day Italy. So most of the faithful in Europe looked to Santiago in Spain as their destination of pilgrimage and for absolution of their sins and fulfillment of a sacred duty, a holy pilgrimage then being one of the fundamentals of Christianity, as a pilgrimage to Mecca is even now of Islam.
But Joan & I live in more enlightened times and neither one of us is a Church person. Joan was brought up a Catholic and attended St. Charles church & elementary school in Woburn, Mass. Once her insatiable scientific curiosity got going in high school however, she was asked to leave St. Charles, it being suggested that perhaps Woburn High School would be more suitable for such an inquiring mind. Sam was raised a Congregationalist and attended sunday school and later church in Grafton, Mass, curiously enough, in the same old church that had been founded in 1738 by his direct ancestor, Rev. Solomon Prentiss, whose name Sam bears as his middle name. But even with all those churchly foundations, we are not undertaking this journey to fulfill any obligation to a church or to any particular "faith". But there is a spiritual element that is somehow there for each of us, a element that gives an as yet undefined sense of a much deeper meaning to our upcoming journey than just visiting old ruins or hearing legends about places where once, long ago, a miracle was reported to have happened or a vision of St. James as Matamoros - the Moor Slayer - turned the tide of a battle between the Christians and the Islamic Moors for control of Navarre and the rest of Iberia..
For me (Sam), there is something deeper I am seeking in my life, some dimly sensed thread connecting the web of my life, family, loves and "things" together in a meaningful way. Maybe this is a common feeling as one gets older and realizes, as I am starting to do now, that the end of my existence is closer - much closer - than we usually let ourselves think about. And somehow - and right now I don't have a clue as to how, why or in what form - I have a feeling that some of the answers lie waiting for me on the Camino. Maybe it will be a place or a person I meet.
But Joan & I live in more enlightened times and neither one of us is a Church person. Joan was brought up a Catholic and attended St. Charles church & elementary school in Woburn, Mass. Once her insatiable scientific curiosity got going in high school however, she was asked to leave St. Charles, it being suggested that perhaps Woburn High School would be more suitable for such an inquiring mind. Sam was raised a Congregationalist and attended sunday school and later church in Grafton, Mass, curiously enough, in the same old church that had been founded in 1738 by his direct ancestor, Rev. Solomon Prentiss, whose name Sam bears as his middle name. But even with all those churchly foundations, we are not undertaking this journey to fulfill any obligation to a church or to any particular "faith". But there is a spiritual element that is somehow there for each of us, a element that gives an as yet undefined sense of a much deeper meaning to our upcoming journey than just visiting old ruins or hearing legends about places where once, long ago, a miracle was reported to have happened or a vision of St. James as Matamoros - the Moor Slayer - turned the tide of a battle between the Christians and the Islamic Moors for control of Navarre and the rest of Iberia..
For me (Sam), there is something deeper I am seeking in my life, some dimly sensed thread connecting the web of my life, family, loves and "things" together in a meaningful way. Maybe this is a common feeling as one gets older and realizes, as I am starting to do now, that the end of my existence is closer - much closer - than we usually let ourselves think about. And somehow - and right now I don't have a clue as to how, why or in what form - I have a feeling that some of the answers lie waiting for me on the Camino. Maybe it will be a place or a person I meet.
But more likely it will arise from the simple experience of being with Joan as we walk together -step by step, mile after mile -across the mountains, high plains and pathways of this hauntingly historic Spanish landscape, through big cities small towns and empty spaces. I've found that we talk a lot now as we do our 'training walks" around New England and those times are very rewarding. The idea of doing the Camino is bringing us much closer together and every now and then I feel so happy just to be with her, walking through new places or pointing out to each other the little things we see along the way. maybe its a jack in the pulpit plant hidden away in the swamp we're passing. Or perhaps a sweeping vista of a hidden river valley that most folks never stop to admire. Sometimes we talk honestly and trustingly about our secret dreams and fears, the new pain in her foot that could be the start of something more serious or my hanging fear of another encounter with Death waiting for me along the road in Spain.
So getting the spiritual part ready is harder that the training walks or picking out the right gear. It's a work in progress. There will be more dispatches from "The Way" as we move ahead.
