Sin Dolor, No Hay Gloria

And when he knew for certain only drowning men could see him

He said all men shall be brothers then, until the sea shall free them.

-Leonard Cohen, Suzanne

There was a T-shirt that I saw for sale along the Camino that said in Spanish: "Sin dolor, no hay gloria," which translates essentially: "No pain, no gain," or more fully, "without suffering, there is no glory."  Lest you think that the Camino is all wine (or beer) and roses, let me just tell you that there is, for everyone a fair amount of suffering that comes with the journey.  Even when your body hardens and your feet stop complaining about the daily thrashing you give them, there is always the mental and spiritual sort of pain to step in and take the place of physical struggle.  You get homesick, you get road weary, sometimes you don't even know what's wrong with you, you just don't feel quite right.  As a matter of fact, you are every bit as vulnerable to random feelings of existential malaise as you might be back in the good old world, and you don't have your bed to crawl into or your TV to bathe you in inanity and insanity.
There is enough trouble to make you seriously consider why you're doing this thing to yourself, which is question you often cannot answer.  But ask it I did and I considered the nature of suffering.
As a Protestant, the Roman Catholic fixation with gore is a bit odd, but in every church there is a crucifix of some sort, and often a sculpture or a painting of the dead body of Jesus, either cradled in Mary's arms, or lying in the tomb.  Some of the sculptures were quite gruesome, and yes, I am aware that flogging and crucifixion were horrific and actually the statues even with all their bloody stripes and spear wounds probably don't come close to how ripped up he actually was.  What really got me though, was one day, when it was kind of rainy and cold and I was feeling just sort of dead in body and soul, I found myself looking up at one of these crucifixes, and I got it on the gut level.  I was standing there, sort of damp, with my pack on, and I saw Jesus bleeding on the cross, and I understood, beyond the intellectual way I had always processed it before, why so many people find the suffering and dying part of Jesus so blasted important.
See, on my good days, I tell myself that Jesus' teachings about love and equality and how the Kingdom is drawing near to us, despite our imperfections, to be rather enough reason to follow him.  Even if none of the supernatural stuff, the miracles, resurrection, the Trinity, was actually true, the fact that Jesus was anything like what the Gospels report would be enough for me to be his disciple.
Most of the time, I don't need him to be any more than the guy who said, "love your neighbor as yourself," and "let the children come to me," and "blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth."  Those things are light and life and they are big enough to challenge me to be better than I am.
But sometimes there is darkness and death, and then I need him to be on that cross and in that tomb, and especially I need him to come out again.  It is when I'm at the end of my rope that I need to know the Jesus that would get himself beat up and crucified.
It's when I face things that seem to be beyond redemption that I need to know a God who has other ways of dealing with brokenness and evil.  The crucified Jesus reminds me that everything has a purpose, even that, even the worst we can do, even death, even the tomb, even his grieving mother.  For what it's worth, I thought of all the people who lived in a world that was even more nasty and brutish than the one we live in now, a world where kings and criminals were constant and mortal threats, a world where a barbarian horde or a rival warlord could ride in at any moment and kill, rape and burn everything that you held dear.  I thought about all the people in the world who still live with some version of that reality, and I thought about how the crucified Jesus comforts them and tells them they're not the only ones who ever suffered, or suffered unjustly.
He reminds all of us that suffering can be redeemed and be redemptive.  Given what I know about the middle ages, when many of those churches were first built, it's not really that mysterious that people would appreciate a reminder of how God is with them when things are particularly bloody.
I know it renewed my soul.

Follow Your Nose

Ever since I got the first inkling of a notion that I should go to seminary and prepare to become a Pastor, I have lived with a word, which I think I have largely misunderstood and often misused.  That word is discernment.  For those of you who have never dipped a toe into the waters of theological education, you probably have no idea how much this particular D word gets fumbled around with by students and professors and church advisers alike.  From the very beginning they talk about discerning your call, meaning trying to become clear on whether or not you actually want to do this thing called ministry, whether it is actually God's Spirit moving in you or some misguided inner voice that is pushing you to follow a career path that it quite frankly not exactly a bed of roses.  Then you discern what sort of ministry you would like to pursue, then you discern where and with whom you are going to pursue it.
Every time someone says "discernment," this deep spiritual process moves across your heart and mind like a fog, and you think, "Ahhh discernment, yes, learning what God wants from me and for me... deep water indeed."
Oddly enough though discernment actually ends up being fairly mundane in most cases.  It is accomplished mostly by finding the place where you and your gifts fit into something.  This in itself can seem arcane when you're in seminary because you rarely have a very firm grasp on who you are and what your gifts (at least for ministry) may actually be.  For instance, for the first year of seminary the idea of preaching was terrifying.  So much so that I would often tell people I wasn't exactly sure I wanted to be a Pastor, but maybe some other form of service to the church (I have no idea what I even meant by that).  As it turns out, preaching is sort of my favorite thing to do, and has become the core of what I do in ministry.
But I never really got around this vague, mystical sort of idea about discernment, until last month.  The Camino taught me to follow my nose (and a guidebook when necessary), to just sort of take each day and each need one step at a time, and watch what God does for you.
I know what you're thinking: "But you can't do that with life, you would inevitably run into to trouble!"  And you may be right, I haven't and in fact I don't think I know anyone who has truly learned to completely let go of all their plans and schemes.  But I do know that the more I trusted God for the needs of the day, the more I found blessings, and I know that sounds sort of prosperity-gospel-ish, but really it simply amounted to a state of mind that was more open to seeing God working.  It wasn't that God was somehow more present, and more active, it was just that I was more aware of the presence and the acting.  It wasn't that I always got what I wanted, but as the Rolling Stones point out, I got what I needed.  Which consequently was not always what I wanted, but was often something I did not expect, but really needed more than I knew.
A couple places stand out: Carrion de los Condes, where we stayed in a parochial albergue run by Augustinian Nuns, the place was crowded, the showers ran out of hot water and we barely managed to find it in the first place, but the Nuns had an evening sing along before Vespers, they sang us folk songs and invited us to share songs of our own.  Being as there was a guitar involved, I sang Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah for the group, and the Nuns and other folk joined in the chorus that just rang out in the common area.  A few people were moved to tears, and I certainly felt a sense of the Spirit moving among us, and it opened doors to people we hadn't really been able to connect with because of language barriers.  I was a little hesitant about the song, I was a little hesitant about taking the stage, but there was an invitation, and it just seemed like the right thing, and it was.
Another: La Faba, half way up the climb to O Cebriero, it was a German run association albergue, in a little town that was so far from anywhere, the beds were like medieval torture devices and again it was crowded and had too few bathrooms, but the place was immensely restful and peaceful, and there was a guitar to play.  A man who spoke very little English was listening to Dad and I pass the guitar back and forth and obviously enjoying the music.  He came over and asked me if I could play the song that he had on a video on his phone, it was a video of a wedding, a video I had seen before, a video of a priest singing, you guessed it: Hallelujah.  I could and I did and for the second time someone was moved to tears, and not because of my singing voice.
I was just doing what I wanted, maybe even what I needed, and the Spirit moved.  I was just following my nose and finding those places where I was supposed to be.  It was discernment, but not vague or super spiritual, just letting God put you where you're supposed to be.  Know when to stop, know when to go, know when to sing.  Be who you are, give it over to God and watch what happens.

Embracing Otherness

It goes without saying that a couple of Presbyterians were sort of fish out of water on the Camino de Santiago.  We weren't the only Protestants (or even the only Presbyterian Teaching Elders), but we didn't even see a Protestant Church the whole time we were in Spain.  It was very Roman Catholic.
The feeling was cushioned a little bit by the fact that so many Pilgrims are not Catholic, and many are completely non-religious, so among the Pilgrims we felt more or less at home.
But still, there was all this stuff, the whole setting, the story and the history that surrounded us were just drenched in a sort of Christianity that is foreign to me, partially because of the Catholicism of it, but partly because it was not even modern Catholicism, it was medieval Catholicism, which is an entirely different beast.  And it has some distinctly beastly attributes, many of which I understand to be the heart of the disagreements that the reformers had with said church.
One of the reasons why Pilgrimage was pretty much a lost discipline for 500 years is the fact that the very purpose of Pilgrimage was to earn and indulgence, a physical act that begat forgiveness of sins, for yourself or for others.  People risked life and limb and spent considerable resources to "earn" themselves a better afterlife.  Theologically speaking, at least in Christian terms, this is utter nonsense and was anathematized in all its forms by reformed theology.
Yet when you anathematize (name abhorrent, condemn in the strongest possible terms) things, you often throw the baby out with the bathwater.  You become a reactionary and often cannot ask yourself searching questions or hear the convicting answers.  Case in point: Matamoros, the Moor Slayer, the medieval alter ego of Santiago.  The Apostle James, whose bones are believed to be in the crypt under the chancel in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, has two general manifestations: the Pilgrim, who you will see as a sort of kind, balding man in a long robe with a pilgrim staff and a gourd for water.  He is the evangelist, the one who wandered to the ends of the earth bringing the good news of Jesus to the world.  Then there is the Moor Slayer, mounted on a war horse, complete with medieval armor and weapons and often literally slicing through a horde of North African Muslims.
Matamoros made me a little queasy, first of all theologically, and second of all factually.  It is so obviously an anachronism, and it so obviously counter to the ethical imperative to love your neighbor and pray for your enemies, and turn the other cheek and all of that.  Matamoros is a superhero who bears the name of an Apostle, a fiction that people living in a world threatened by an unknown and terrifying other looked to for comfort.
I want my faith to be more about the Pilgrim than the Moor Slayer, but then one day I was standing on a wall that used to surround the town of Mansilla de las Mulas, there's still a lot of the wall left, including a couple thick stone gates.  I thought of what it must have been like for people who were just trying to live their lives in the face of marauders and wild animals and the threat of a foreign people sweeping down upon them to kill, rape, steal and enslave them.  I thought about the fact that the Moors were not nice people when they went slaughtering their way through Spain.  They were, quite frankly, a cold splash of reality.
I thought of the average peasant farmer outside of Leon, who would need to be able to flee to one of these walled cities for protection if the Moorish horde appeared on the horizon, and I thought about his wife and children being protected by the city and by Matamoros (even if he was just a legend), and it makes me at least understand why they carved his image on their churches.
I thought of all the violence that Christian people have supported and done over the centuries, and I understood, it no longer made me queasy, it just made me sad.  And a good part of the sadness was rooted in the fact that much of it was so very necessary.  Hitler needed to be stopped, Ghengis Khan was not a peaceful benevolent sort of fellow.  For all it's faults the Roman Catholic Empire and the legacy it left was responsible for creating a world where freedom and liberty could become important values, and where things like the Reformation and the Renaissance could happen.
Do I like Matamoros?  Not so much, but I came to understand why he exists.  Do I now subscribe to the veneration of Saints?  Do I think we ought to be more like the medieval church?  Ummm, nope, but I have a better understanding of many things, and understanding increases my capability to love.

All That You Can't Leave Behind (But Do Anyway)

Of the physical items that I brought on the Camino, there was one that almost got left at home, a red fleece sweatshirt.  I'm so rarely cold and it was spring after all, and I had a jacket and a rain coat and multiple layers available.  Then I sort of picked up the fleece thing, which I had bought because of its light weight, and I said to myself, "Gee, this weighs next to nothing, I'm gonna take it."  As it turns out, I wore the thing almost every day, not while walking, I rarely needed more warmth when I was walking, but in the evenings, when things got cool and my body was exhausted and I just wanted something warm and soft to wear.  Could I have left it and survived? Sure, but it made my existence so much more pleasant that it was worth bringing.
The hardest things to live without on the Camino, simply could not come with me.  Of all the little choices I made in gear and of all the necessary, unnecessary, and sort of nice to have things that I brought, the heaviest weight to carry was the absence from my family.  This being 2015, we pretty much got to "talk" to each other every day, through Facebook Messenger mostly because the internet in Spain is apparently a little thin on bandwidth, but occasionally we got a good enough connection to actually talk.  And the talking usually made me feel worse, it was like a little taste of something that you crave really badly, or being able to sort of scratch an itch, it made me more aware of how much I missed them, and forced me to think about how much they were missing me.  As the husband/Dad, I'm not sure which one of those is worse.
It's a peculiar thing about loving people very deeply, when you know they're suffering, you would rather take the pain yourself, so that they don't have to.  When Jack was four and he had a bad asthma attack, we took him to the ER and as I held his hand while they put an IV in, it was the only time in my entire life that I actually wished they were jabbing me with the needle.
Yesterday, I talked about the physical struggle of the Camino, but that was nothing compared to the feeling of knowing that you're not going to see the people you love the most for a very long time.  I have always had great respect for folks in the military who regularly spend even longer periods of time away from their loved ones, but now the idea of six months or a year away simply breaks my heart.
But you have to do what you have to do.  You stay in touch, you hear, you read, you try to ease the separation, and you know it's temporary.  That's the only thing that keeps it from being full fledged grief, you know you're going to be home eventually.
In the early part of the walk we stayed at an Albergue run by a Dutch Christian association.  The hospitalero at the Albergue was a volunteer, from a church in Holland, he had never walked the Camino himself and asked us why we were doing it.  At this point, about a week or so into the walk, some of us really didn't have good answers.  The Albergue was in a place called Villamayor, on top of a fairly good sized hill, and the Albergue itself was at the top of a steep slope.  He said he watched people climb that last bit of the hill every day and they often seemed like they were suffering.  I told him that suffering was definitely a part of it, but that you just had to get through it, physical, emotional, or spiritual.
He still wondered why we would do such a thing, and I couldn't really give him very much of an answer.  I told him it was hard, but that it was usually worth it, and the evenings where you could sit and talk to folks and have some beer, sort of made it all better.  He said that he used to work in television and whenever he and his crew would have a hard day trying to film something, they would tell each other, "Sooner or later, it will be evening."  That became sort of a touchstone for me, when things got physically difficult, however, whenever I started to miss my family, which happened fairly often, I just had to tell myself, "Sooner or later it will be May 20."
And now it is.

I'm Baaack

Lately it occurs to me,

What a long, strange trip it's been.

-The Grateful Dead, Truckin'

Where to start.

That's really a tough question.  The past forty days have been an odyssey indeed.  I have been sharing pretty much only a few pictures and whatever little comment I could feasibly type with my thumbs, but there was so much, so many people, places and things, not to mention the rather peculiar and oftentimes difficult journey of the heart and mind.

I'm going to start with the fact that my clothes fit me a little better right now than when I left.  I know, this is kind of a "well duh" sort of an observation, but it bears mentioning that this journey had a profoundly difficult physical component.  It started to sink in on the bus ride from Pamplona to Saint Jean Pied de Port.  We crossed the Pyrenees, and saw what we were going to be up against, and we knew we were not up for it.  We looked at the elevations, we looked at what our eyes told us, we felt our too heavy packs and our too soft bodies, we were jet-lagged and car sick and we wondered what we had gotten ourselves into.

That seems like a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.  It's difficult to sit here now and recognize the people that were convinced they needed a taxi, but that's after almost 500 miles, several mountain crossings, weeks of walking day in and day out and dropping about 20 pounds of softness.

Coming face to face with your physical limitations is actually a profoundly spiritual exercise, which I suppose is why there is at least a thread of ascetic practice in almost all religions.  Encountering the place where your body just says, "no, I don't think I can do this," and then having your will and your spirit (and undoubtedly the grace of God) go ahead and do it anyway, sort of sets a tone.

Even though we chickened out of the via Napolean and took the via Valcarlos, we didn't really take the easy way, we just took the way that was a little safer if our bodies over-ruled our mind and spirit and decided to be super stubborn by having a heart attack or bad cramps or heat stroke or dehydration or some other corporeal nonsense.  As it turns out we also took the way that didn't involve snow and 80 kph wind, so, you know, good stuff.  We still had to slog our way up some pretty nasty hills, and we still had to confront the daunting truth that this was what we were going to do, all day, every day for over a month.

The first couple of days were particularly troubling for me.  I was perhaps more out of shape than I expected, my pack was a bit heavier than was probably prudent, and most of all, since moving to Maryland, I have become rather less familiar with things called hills, let alone mountains.  The climbs of the early stages were a bit of a struggle.  I would walk about 15 meters or so and have to catch my breath.  People would come by and say, "you need to keep moving!"  in English, Spanish, German and French.  I would say, "my lungs beg to differ." I knew they were right, I knew that every time I stopped I was losing momentum and worse yet, making no forward progress.

I did hope and actually trust that the climbs were going to get easier, or at least less torturous, but I was wondering when, exactly, that was going to take place.  About half way up one of the mountains I stopped and thought to myself if was actually going to be able to do this.

And that's where the spiritual stuff started.  I realized that I have never really done much of anything physically impressive, not really.  Despite being 6' 4" and having a pretty good frame, I never played organized sports.  My "Al Bundy" moment was one time in Seminary I scored six touchdowns during a game of flag football, not exactly climbing K-2.  But here, on the Camino, I had a chance to really push myself, to do something that would sort of make people say, "Wow, 800 km?" that's a long way.  Right about then a little old woman with a small backpack chirped past me and said, "Buen Camino," and I realized that if I didn't carry this pack, if I didn't do the whole thing, there really wasn't much to it.  If I "bailed and mailed," which means shipping extra weight to Santiago via the mail, or if I simply threw stuff away, which a lot of people do, or if I just sort of tried to avoid the struggle of the climbs by taking a bus around the really difficult parts, I really wasn't going to make this the physical challenge I really needed it to be.

See, that's the thing, I think I was trying to impress someone, I don't know who.  The Camino is not an Everest situation, it's not a one of a kind physical accomplishment.  The Appalachian Trail or the Pacific Crest Trail will put you to more of a test, and you will probably not be routinely passed by tour buses full of tourists with little daypacks, but the Camino will test your body, it will test your resolve and it will force you to deal with your own soul.  The heaviness of my pack, and the nagging knowledge of those few things I probably could have done without became a metaphor for those things that you may not exactly need, but that you do need to carry.

So much of the "self-help" spirituality encourages you to try and free yourself of burdens and entanglements and strive for this sort of free and clear existence.  But that is a terrible and impossible idea.  Life is about weight, relationships are messy and tangled, but if you want to be a part of the good, you must sometimes carry the bad.

I am glad that I left some of my excess padding on those hills, but I am equally glad that I came home with all the things, necessary and otherwise, that I took with me.  Not because they were ultimately useful, but because I learned to carry them.

Leaving the Shire

This is the last post you're going to read from me for quite a while.  Tomorrow is the day of departure.  I'm going to see Michele off to work, put the kids on the bus and then I'm going to go out the door of my comfortable little house in the woods and spend over 40 days wandering.  Everything in the next 24 hours is going to be emotionally charged to say the least, because it's all about lasts, last meal together with the family, last night in my own bed, last time cajoling my grumpy children out of bed, last time goofing around with them as they wait for the bus.
Then the steps begin. Home to New Jersey, Parents house to Philadelphia International Airport, Philly to Barajas Airport in Madrid, the metro to Atocha station, Atocha to Pamplona, a bus from Pamplona to Saint Jean Pied a Port in France, then things slow down to walking pace.
It has occurred to me several times that one of the hardest things I'm going to have to do is to pull the front door of my house shut behind me, to leave all that is familiar and comfortable and just walk away.  Once I do that, the journey takes on a life of its own, once that step is taken all the other ones are necessary in order to complete the journey.
I have to admit that I have always been a bit of a homebody.  There were times, even when I was young, that I would not do things because I would just rather stay home.  Some of these things would have been fun or adventurous, but home was safe and comfortable.  That's why I think I enjoyed Tolkien's stories about Hobbits so very much, because I understood and valued the life they were trying to save.  To this day, the idea of a comfortable little home with a garden and pub down the way sounds much more attractive than any grand estate.  It's always been a sort of disappointment to me that the simple life of an agrarian village just isn't really feasible in the modern world, unless you're Amish.
Once you see and experience the world of iphones and automobiles it's hard to go back, in fact, going back seems like a hardship more than an adventure.  That's why I think pilgrimage is making a comeback in the 21st century, not because people are going seeking salvation, but because they need some sort of grand vision to pull them out of their comfortable little Hobbit holes.  I know I do.  I know I wouldn't feel at all the same if I suddenly had to walk 15 miles a day just to get to and from work, but because it's an official adventure, I'll do it.
So here I go, on a big adventure.  Away from home, away from safety and security, away from careful plans.
Just away.

Not Getting Over It

Michele reminds me every year that we shouldn't rush through today.  We always tend to push the fast-forward button on the darkness of the crucifixion in order to get to the light of resurrection.  Of course it's a bit of an exercise in trying to un-know something, but it is important in a lot of ways, especially to a culture that absolutely denies death and wants to avoid suffering at pretty much any cost.
Pretty much anyone who grieves is likely to hear someone, usually a well meaning someone, recommend that they, "just get on with life."  So much of our processing of death and dying now involves ideas of a "better" place and some sort of utopian vision of heaven that we are often inclined to just expect ourselves to get over the grieving process with a snap of some emotional fingers.  But it doesn't work that way.
I suspect that the lives of the Apostles were forever shaped by their grief over Jesus' death.  Yes, I know they experienced the resurrection, but they still talked an awful lot about the cross, I think that their experience of the darkness made their understanding of the light all that more profound.  And yet, in most churches Good Friday services are becoming anachronisms.  Part of it has to do with the fact that people don't get the day off any more, but I think something has to do with the fact that we would just prefer not to deal with the blood and guts of the crucifixion.  Let's get to the flowers and jelly beans already.
But this is wrong, we don't let ourselves grieve.  Did you ever consider that even though Jesus was resurrected, the disciples still had to say goodbye? He wasn't going to hang around for very long.  Can you imagine that?  Not only do you lose your teacher and your leader, you actually get proof that he's something beyond pretty much anything you could have imagined, and then he's still gone.
And you're on your own, to try to figure out what to do without him, which is where grieving really comes in.
It really sets in after the funeral is over and the friends and family have all gone home.  It sends a little spike though you on holidays and birthdays.  It forms a lump in your throat whenever you're having an otherwise pleasant moment and something reminds you of what you've lost, and what is absent.
Can you imagine what might have been going through Peter's mind on Pentecost as he tells everyone how wonderful Jesus was, and what this all means?  What if he was thinking about how much he wished Jesus could be there to hear him, and be with all of them as the Spirit started to burn among them?
I can only compare that to the thoughts that I have about my brother's absence from our family.  It's been nearly 10 years since he passed, and I still feel the absence, particularly when things are good.  There is a part missing that should have been.  By now there should be a wife and kids, by now we should be planning family vacations together, I see it in other families, and I feel that presence of an absence.  It hits at holidays and the beach, it can be rather unpleasant, or it can just be like an old acquaintance that stands silently by.  I think that Peter and the Apostles probably lived with Jesus like that.  There had to be regret about all the things they didn't get when he was there.  I think that when they did things like participate in the Lord's Supper or say the Lord's prayer, they had to feel a little sting.
This means that for the church to deny or minimize the grief, is to ignore a fact and a feeling that must have been central to the formation of the community. In John's account of the resurrection, you know the one with Jesus and Mary in the garden, you can feel this connection between the grief and the joy.  The resurrection doesn't negate the pain, it just makes it purposeful, it just means its not the last word.
The author Frederick Buechner crystallizes the nature of our existence and God's creation in the following: "Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen.  Don't be afraid."
"Good Friday," is a terrible thing, no two ways about it.  Easter is a beautiful thing, a hopeful thing, but it wouldn't be anything without the darkness.  They are both necessary, don't be afraid.