From just before the Camino: I woke up early on my last morning in Barcelona, where I had spent a month studying Spanish, too excited to sleep long. I had packed the night before, so I attended to my morning routine, packed the last few items, said my prayers and headed to the train station. Even in the early morning it was warm in Barcelona in mid-August. I had plenty of time, though, to obtain a bite to eat, make my way to the platform, and find my seat. I thought back on the last time I had traveled through Northern Spain, on a bus pilgrimage with priests from home to the holy sites stretching across the north. It was then I had seen the peregrinos with the backpacks and their scallop shells, and been infected with the desire to make this journey by foot. I had high expectations and hope, after having prepared for so long, that all would be well.
During the whole six weeks of my pilgrimage I only took three selfies – I’m just not all that interested in seeing pictures of myself. However, I did take one in my seat on the train. I look at it now and remember how excited I was! I couldn’t know at the time how rich the experience was going to be, or that, as high as my expectations were, that the experience was going to beat them.
It was divinely irrational to be heading to the northeastern corner of Spain with intent to walk to its northwest corner. Yet there had been a call from God to walk this path. I experienced it, at the time, as an irrational urge to head back to the Camino. I wouldn’t have had the courage, in the moment, to refer to it as a “call.” I am usually much more sensitive to what God has done in the past, rather than in the present moment, evaluating the fruits of things done, than in knowing what God is doing in the present moment. Perhaps you are that way, too, wondering what God is up to as things are still unfolding?
But how else would I explain to myself, the urge to leave a comfortable home, a happy role as pastor of a growing and prosperous parish, family and friends to walk? How did Abraham explain to Sarai or Lot why he was uprooting them? The Scriptures are silent on the matter. We sense a pull, a yearning, an impulse…and we leap, only to find out later that what we heard was from God, and the desire had roots extending outside of us, into some bigger plan
Gen 12:1-3 – 1 The Lord said to Abram: Go forth from your land, your relatives, and from your father’s house to a land that I will show you. 2 I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you. All the families of the earth will find blessing in you.
For reflection: Abram’s willingness to go forth from Ur of the Chaldees has had ramifications throughout the history of the ancient and modern worlds. For three thousand years, the earth has reverberated to the rhythm of those first steps of Abraham from Haran, leading to the establishment of a family, a house, a nation – a Jewish people that exists to this day, beloved of God.
Let your footsteps reverberate in your own consciousness, too, not with what you’re going to do, as extraordinary as it may be among your life’s accomplishments, but with whom you might become. Your purpose, like Abraham’s, has existed within the mind of God for all eternity. For your God has always had a picture of you becoming ever more truly yourself, aware of and using your gifts, conscious of your weaknesses and kindly adjusting around them, entering into loving relationships, reflecting His glory.
The journey begins with the first step out of your front door. The car, the train, the plane, the boat, however you come to the place you start walking are as much a part of the pilgrimage as the first steps you take following a yellow arrow.
Hear God say to you, “Go forth from your land, your relatives, and from you father’s house to a land that I will show you…I will call you to discipleship; I will make of you your truer self; I will reveal to you how dear you are to me.
