The Camino de Santiago

Pastor Paige walked  the Camino in May and returned reflective and renewed for ministry.  Here's a little more information about this ancient pilgrimage route and links to more information for the curious and the armchair peregrino. 

The Camino is often known in English as the Way of St. James. The walk can be 500 miles across Spain, often beginning in St. Jean de Pied-a-Port.  Pastor Paige started from Pamplona and walked 375 miles. 

There are longer and shorter options for the pilgrimage. You can start as far back as Paris (!)  or as close as 100km from Santiago de Compostela and still receive your Credential. You can walk along the northern coast of Spain, or you can start in Lisbon and complete the Portuguese Way. It is always important to remember that the Camino you are on is Your Camino and no one else's. You choose your route, pace, rest and -if you need them - bus rides. As the Spirit leads and your body requires. 

It is also important to remember that the Camino is for everyone at every stage of life and at every stage of faith.

The companions you meet along the way enrich the journey, so sometimes you are alone with the road and often you are in the good company of peregrinos. 

Always there is the walking. As Thich Nhat Hanh says in "How to Walk:"

"When we walk with others, the collective energy of mindfulness we generate is very powerful. It helps heal everyone. When we walk together, producing the energy of mindfulness, going home to the here and now, we can feel paradise right under our feet: you can see this paradise all around you."

You have choices of where to stay in the towns and villages along the route.  There is every level of accommodation, from inexpensive dorm beds in hostels, to the nicer albergues, and in the larger towns/cities, there are, of course, hotels. Pilgrims eat on a different schedule from the Spanish, since pilgrims are mostly crashed in their bunks by regular Spanish supper time!  So most places will offer standard peregrino meals to keep you nourished. You can also often cook your own in albergue kitchens - by yourself or with others. 

Pastor Paige was on the most popular route, the Camino Frances.  

Here is the traditional pilgrim blessing:

Lord Jesus, as you brought your servant Abraham from the city of Ur of the Chaldeans, guard these in all their pilgrimages, and as you guided the Hebrew people through the desert, we pray that it would please you to bless these, your children that love your name, on their pilgrimage to Compostela.

Be for them companion in the journey, guide at the crossroads, shelter on the way, shade in the heat, light in the darkness, comfort in their discouragement and firmness in their purpose, so that by your guidance they would arrive intact to the end of the path and, enriched by grace and virtue, return to their houses unharmed and full of healthy virtue.

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Whether your are walking your neighborhood, hiking the hills, meditatively pacing a labyrinth, or walking the road in your imagination. 

Buen Camino!