From the Camino: About a year before stating my first two week camino, from Porto, in Portugal, I developed high arch problems that followed me onto the Camino. My feet made me aware of every step with a lurch of pain as I stepped on the arch supports in my shoes. It never let up for both weeks. Our longest day, walking some 23 miles from Barcelos to Ponte de Lima, was particularly excruciating. I remember the pain. But that’s not all I recall. There is a memory of walking down a beautiful avenue of plane trees, shading us from the heat, running alongside the beautiful Lima river. My recollections include, just before entering town, climbing up stone steps to sit on a shaded terrace looking down on the river, and have the most refreshing beer of my life. I remember the pleasure of my companion, Jim’s camaraderie. When we crossed an ancient, many arched Medieval bridge into town, the water was so stunningly clear that we could see large fish swimming in the water. And then, finding our room, I recall how pleasant it was – a step above our normal habitation! Curiously, when I think back on that Camino, I never think about the foot pain. It’s an experience I’d return to in a heartbeat.
What I remember is the beautiful grace of life in slow motion. I remember the young man, working as a gardener, who tried so hard (in Portuguese) to get us back on the right road when we didn’t even know we were lost. I remember the one German woman who passed us each day – we couldn’t walk fast enough to get to know her. I remember the very sweet pleasure of a glass of Albariño wine in any number of plazas at the end of the day. I remember small towns and forests, fortified cathedrals and trails along streams. I recall the overwhelming sense that Fr. Jim and I were a threesome with the Lord Jesus.
As a rule, I don’t remember the foot pain. The pains, even the constant unavoidable ones, don’t overwhelm the experience at least in my memory. At the end of that day, the pain was real, but it didn’t win. The quiet graces will triumph, if we let them.
1 Kings 19:8b-13 – 8b [Elijah] walked forty days and forty nights to the mountain of God, Horeb. 9 There he came to a cave, where he took shelter. But the word of the Lord came to him: Why are you here, Elijah? 10 He answered: “I have been most zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts, but the Israelites have forsaken your covenant. They have destroyed your altars and murdered your prophets by the sword. I alone remain, and they seek to take my life.” 11 Then the Lord said: Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord; the Lord will pass by. There was a strong and violent wind rending the mountains and crushing rocks before the Lord—but the Lord was not in the wind; after the wind, an earthquake—but the Lord was not in the earthquake; 12 after the earthquake, fire—but the Lord was not in the fire; after the fire, a light silent sound. 13 When he heard this, Elijah hid his face in his cloak and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave.
For reflection: If you have blisters, for heaven’s sake, and your own, take care of them. But if it’s a matter of some aches and pains, we have some things to consider.
Elijah had just had an amazing victory over the priests of Baal. He had been brilliantly vindicated by the Lord, his God, but in the act of overthrowing those priests, he infuriated Queen, Jezebel, the pagan daughter of the King of Tyre, married to the wretched King Ahab. Jezebel said, “May the gods do thus to me and more, if by this time tomorrow I have not done with your life what was done to each of [the priests of Baal]” (1 Kgs 19:1-2). Elijah fled for his life.
So he goes on a journey, not a pilgrimage, so much, as a flight in terror. He was conflicted. He was both triumphant and terrified, fleeing to save his life, and yet praying for the Lord God to take it. We can find ourselves shifting back and forth quickly on the Camino from the good to the bad, from the joy of companionship to the aggravation of the albergue, from the beauty of the countryside, to the misery in our shoes. Where will we let our mind dwell? We get to choose where our focus will be.
Elijah was a true prophet, finely tuned to the holy presence of God. As he hid in his cave, he recognized that it wasn’t in the thundering wind, the earthquake or the fire, but in the soft sound. We, too, are asked to discern amidst the different experiences of our pilgrimage, where we will find beauty and refreshment, where we will be intrigued by the ancient, or uplifted by the taste of an unexpectedly delicious soup, where we will find the surprising manifestation of the Lord. Are we able to find the holy presence of God in the small things, in the quotidian, in the surprising places on our way? Will we let the aches in our feet get in the way of these? Where will we choose to focus?
