TO WALK…

Stage 64 / Monday 28 June / From Itero del Castillo to Población de Campos / 19 km

 

The powerful time I experienced Saturday night and Sunday almost made me hesitate to leave. I was so well-cared for in that hermitage, with Mamma Alba and my pilgrim companions. I felt I had reached a new summit in my pilgrimage. This must be how Peter, James and John felt on Mount Tabor after seeing their master Yeshua, the savior, in a state of glory with the key prophets in the holy history of the Jews: Moses and Elijah. The hardy fishermen were feeling so uplifted that Peter suggested putting up tents to shelter these illustrious figures. I think they wanted to bask in their presence as long as possible (Mt 17:1-13).

 

But my companions have already set out. Mamma Alba had gotten up even earlier, in order to say a prayer of blessing at their departure. And I too decide to leave this place where I have experienced such an unusual enchantment. It is necessary to cover as much of the path as possible before the sun is too strong above the golden waves of the wheat-covered Meseta that is without any shade.

 

But why did the “camino frances,” the ancestral path of pilgrims coming from France, have to take such a demanding itinerary? Why cross the Pyrenees rather than go around them to the west? In approaching the Atlantic, they would have avoided the mountains and the desert zones that I am now crossing. They could have gone more directly toward the goal, Santiago. Did they need to have the high or little-populated places to justify their religious approach? Was it necessary to invent the Tabor mounts and desert retreats to make the average hiker a true pilgrim?

 

And me, without the challenge of steep paths, without the contemplation made possible in staying away from populated areas, would I have felt these little miracles which came here and there to bless my journey? The fall made harmless before Rocamadour? The beginning of tendonitis evaporated after Roncevaux? The ethereal moment of communion at the San Nicolás hermitage? Did I adapt to this rude path, or is it the path that shaped me? The interior journey I’ve experienced up to now, would it have been possible in following a less constraining path?

 

In departing, I wanted to see more clearly between the accumulation of Christian education piled up in my childhood and the knowledge I have acquired since: some of this knowledge bears on other types of religion; others are linked to scientific progress. I could honestly re-question the anthropomorphism of certain faces of the God of which a certain out-of-date Church, in the service of temporal rulers, boasted: a God “person” imposing through fear, absolutism and the bias of a revelation with tautological and self-referential accents. But wanting to taste for a time the freedom of nihilism, I discovered fog, by trial and error: even science could not satisfy me in its cosmological description where space and time became elastic, and precise positioning uncertain.

 

My path led me to find more realistic the accompaniment of a breath, rather than a face with traits that had become undecidable. He was not obstinately absent, even though I was content to doubt Him, this God “spirit”! He even kindly took care to guide and safeguard me. This “safeguiding” and understanding God knew how to give me opportunity to rejoice by the gentleness of a welcome, unequaled until now, shared intensely and in good company.

 

Mother Nature herself, at certain moments by her rich diversity, at others by her monotonous regularity, was able to make swell in me inspirations so unexpected and original that I have suspected that there too was a breath of revelation coming from beyond. I even believed that the human, by the noosphere, could contribute to the emergence of a world where helping each other could counter-balance war and disasters.

 

And I perceive that Bible passages frequently come to mind which accord the images of the “revelation” with what I feel on my path. Enough to truly amaze me, and to continue with hope the adventure of this walking progress! It is long and more arduous from my head to my heart than from France to Galicia (the province of Compostela), but it doesn’t matter—it is more and more beautiful!