Last month, on January 27,I left for the
Camino de Santiago in Spain. It was my
third time going. I went in the summer
of 2003 as I discerned a call to the priesthood. I went again 9 years later in the spring of
2012 with several parishioners and friends.
This time I went in the winter, primarily because it was the only time I
could get away as a priest. In fact,
although I had taken days off during the week, I had not had a weekend off since
the last time I went to Spain in 2012. I desperately needed time off. I needed
to pull back and reflect. I felt the Camino calling me back.
This time, I approached the Camino as a
retreat, looking forward to the solitude and the time for prayer and
reflection. I made my reservations in
the late summer of 2014. I was so
excited about going. Yet, a couple of
months later, I had a conflict come up with the diocese. I had to cancel my
reservation. I had intended to go for 4
weeks, but I was able to make a change in dates and make a new reservation, but
could only go for 3 weeks since I had to be back for Ash Wednesday and the
beginning of Lent. Then, to top it off,
I had a reservation going through Philadelphia, and the East Coast was bracing
for a huge storm the day I was supposed to leave. I tried to call the airline reservation
number that Sunday night, but after being on hold for more than two hours, I gave
up. I left the US after being re-routed
through Dallas, and was on my way to Spain.
As
I left, I knew that I would not have time to walk the entire route, so I
started in Pamplona and would decide later if I wanted to eventually end up in
the city of Santiago. My goal was to
walk the Camino, to spend time with God, and to heal and pray. It did not
matter to me if I made it to the end point of the pilgrimage or not. I was open to whatever surprises the Camino
had in store for me. Someone later asked
me what I had learned on my previous Caminos.
The first thing I mentioned was this: If you have plan as to how the
Camino is going to turn out, know that those plans are definitely going to
change. Never start the Camino thinking
that you have all the answers, thinking that it is all going to go according to
plan. That is not the way the Camino
works. So I made my way to the Memphis
airport looking forward to landing in Madrid.
I will continue to post my entries on the
Camino as they occurred last month, recounting my journey day by day.
No comments:
Post a Comment