From the Camino: In Ribadesella, somewhere between 17,000 and 12,000 years ago, amazingly skilled artists painted the animals of their world on the deeply hidden walls of a large series of caverns. It’s fittingly a World Heritage Site and includes a truly well curated museum.
I couldn’t even consider passing this by without viewing their ancient and gifted artistry and pondering the difference between their lives and mine. So I took a day of rest and made a different sort of pilgrimage, visiting the Cueva, that is, “cave,” de Tito Bustillo.
It was drizzling, as so often happens on the coast of the Mar Cantábrica, the Bay of Biscay. Because I was not walking that day, nor making my typical early start, I had time for a leisurely and larger breakfast than usual at a restaurant.
While sitting there, enjoying my meal, I overheard the woman next to me, speaking in very broken Spanish, with what turned out to be a Canadian accent, conversing with the waiter. I hadn’t spoken to a native English speaker for some two weeks by this point and was, if anything, hungrier for easy conversation in English than I was for my atypically hearty breakfast. “Carolyn” felt the same, and perhaps even more so. I could, at least, carry on a simple conversation with my Spanish, but her school French hardly served her at all with the people of Northern Spain.
She was planning to walk that day, but had a shorter than usual walk that allowed her to postpone her start while waiting out the rain. We ended up making a lovely meal out of it, conversing happily in English.
We discovered that we were both journeying by ourselves. As a six foot, fairly brawny man, I knew that my own experience of confidently walking into unknown territory wasn’t always shared by the women I knew. I told her I admired her courage, something she made nothing of at all. Both of us had done a pilgrimage once before, her with her husband and I with my friend, Fr. Jim, so we dwelt for a time on the potential for loneliness in a solitary pilgrimage. She was finding the solitude hard, after the rich communal experience of her earlier Camino Frances. Our Camino del Norte was a much less travelled route, and by this time we were past the more fully travelled summer months.
The rain did clear up for her walk, for which I was glad. And then I didn’t meet her again until walking through the Praza do Obradoiro in Santiago, I heard her calling my name. She had made it safely all the way, which made me happy, and had become a Camino companion with another, younger, woman who joined her, walking with her for at least the last week or two. Seeing her there in the plaza was part of the joy of arrival for me.
Luke 8:1-3 – Afterward he journeyed from one town and village to another, preaching and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. Accompanying him were the Twelve 2 and some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, 3 Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, Susanna, and many others who provided for them out of their resources.
For reflection: We can only wonder what it was like for Mary Magdalene, apostle to the apostles, and the women who were her companions, to be key members of the wandering community of Jesus.
Mary’s seven demons do not suggest that she was a woman of ill repute – her precedence over Johanna rules that out. No prostitute came before the local ruler’s steward’s wife. Rather, Jesus’ triumphal exorcism indicates that she must have been extraordinarily beset with a number of illnesses and been cured by Jesus’ ministry.
Mary had sufficient stature to precede Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward, in this short list of names. They were all apparently women of substance, “providing for [Jesus’ small company] out of their resources.”
There are two other noteworthy aspects of her that don’t receive enough consideration. The first is that she was known simply as Mary of a place, Mary of Migdol, Mary of the “tower,” and not defined by her relationship as “wife of someone,” like “Joanna, the wife of Chuza,” or perhaps “daughter” or “mother of someone.” Instead, she was simply Mary of Magdala. The second aspect is what is she does. The text credits her with distributing her resources to support Jesus’ ministry.
This identification and behavior imply that all the men of her family must have died. If any father, brother, cousin, uncle or nephew lived, then she would have been identified by her relationship to them and they would have had legal control over the family possessions against any claims by Mary. But she was her own person, in a time when most women were relegated to being something close to chattel, easily divorced, and only protected when dowries were big and dowry agreements were carefully worded by protective fathers. Even in these cases, the dowry would return to the woman’s family, not to her own management.
In her independence, as a woman of greater freedom than many of her female contemporaries, as a woman free to make her own choices, and apparently as a woman of substance, Mary chose to journey with Jesus and support him.
In 2004, just over 41% of pilgrims were women. Just ten years later, in 2019, that number had increased to 51%. Women have made the Camino their own, making their pilgrimage with a spouse, a partner, friends and alone except for their companionship with the Lord. They have ventured from all over the world, speaking all the languages of Pentecost, to walk their own pilgrimages, seeking their own ends.
Throughout the history of Christianity, women have struggled, often hopelessly, to break through the fierce grip of men in the church, speaking to other men, about affairs that matter to men. Today, with equal competence, and certainly with superior knowledge and intuition of their own spiritual needs, women are managing their own spiritual lives.
It is so very important for women to feel empowered to set aside the male paradigm, the masculine attitudes, the absence of feminine art, the sad, resounding silence of the women who have preceded us, to place their fingers on their own pulses, all the while asking themselves, what do “I need from this experience of pilgrimage?” and “How do I accompany Jesus in His ministry?”
I presume that, as a man, I will occasionally miss what is key for women, or not consider important or not dwell enough on what will matter to women. Be quick, in those places, to set my suggestions aside and run with your own wisdom.
Ignore what does not fit, reshape it all to your own needs, trust your own judgment, and make your way to Santiago empowered to walk your own pilgrimage. Jesus will want you as his companion.