From the Camino: While I walked I don’t think there was ever any one moment where I had any blinding flash of illumination, no overwhelming conversion, no vision of saints, even. That’s not the way these things happen for me.
I can see that God has been working in my life, but mostly when I look back on it, when the thumbprint of God’s interventions become more focused for me. In the given moment, I most often fail to recognize what God is doing. The same was true for me on the Camino, especially when I revisited what I call the “sticking points” in my life, those places where my thoughts and emotions return, over and over, often with distress.
As I remembered, I held a lot of inner conversations with the people who populated my memories in hard, sad or angry ways. I would ponder the issues that lay between us, considering what I should have said, and perhaps what I was going to say when next I saw them. After a certain amount of inspection, I would put these thoughts away, but being truly sticky, I would pick them up again some days later. They were fired up by the presumption that I could change others if I only made my point my clearly, more succinctly, or perhaps, more earnestly.
I felt, at times, that my emotional responses were not coming from a good or Godly place. Eventually I sensed that these inner dialogues were misdirected, that they were emotional sinkholes from which there was no resolution or escape.
My only way forward, I concluded, was to let go of my imaginary conversations, but it wasn’t always easy. Progress was slow and erratic. The scripts that I was playing in my head had a lot of energy — stinking thinking. I really needed to let go of any expectations of others, and choose my own peace. In small ways, occasionally in big ones, I began to accomplish an inner ceasefire by setting my mind to changing me. I couldn’t change the irrevocable past, or other people, who had their own consciences with which they grappled.
But as I drew through the weeks of the Camino, and unchained one memory after another, each sticky conflict, one by one, and let go of my expectations of others, ever so slowly, a surprising peace kicked in.
Acts 9:1-9 – 1 Now Saul, still breathing murderous threats against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest 2 and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, that, if he should find any men or women who belonged to the Way, he might bring them back to Jerusalem in chains. 3 On his journey, as he was nearing Damascus, a light from the sky suddenly flashed around him. 4 He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” 5 He said, “Who are you, sir?” The reply came, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. 6 Now get up and go into the city and you will be told what you must do.” 7 The men who were traveling with him stood speechless, for they heard the voice but could see no one. 8 Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing; so they led him by the hand and brought him to Damascus. 9 For three days he was unable to see, and he neither ate nor drank.”
For reflection: If you, like St. Paul, were to meet Jesus on the road to Damascus, or perhaps on the Camino to Santiago, by all means, fall to the ground and cover your eyes. If Jesus commands you to go anywhere, set off immediately. If he has some mission for you, comply. And if he were to reveal to you your blindness, in all humility, beseech him for the grace to see. If anything like this happens, and it does to a few, open wide to it.
Just don’t expect it.
For most, the experience of conversion is a slower process, not an instant encounter. This being the case, don’t pass by the opportunity to transform the inner landscape of your soul, in smaller ways, one tiny spiritual plot at a time.
Conversion may mean turning one’s life completely around, but it can also mean addressing one’s small bad habits. It could involve rejecting one’s entire way of life on a grand scale, or it might more simply consist in confronting the pained memories from your past, and the difficult relationships that have left you bruised.
The transformation might lead to whole new careers of service to humanity, or more humbly confront the places where you have sabotaged your relationships, your own happiness or spiritual growth.
Whatever the source, whatever the issue, if you have a reasonable suspicion that there is a place for you to probe, consider, reconsider, surrender or struggle, consider if today is not the day to engage…even if it is only for a small time, with an extended Camino’s promise of time to spend in the future.
