Travelers Cheques

[Michael Wyatt]

This is going back to faith and walking.

I found the full range from devout Roman Catholics who walked for all the
benefits of the pilgrimage (very few folks) to "tourists" (also very few).
The bulk of those I walked with intended a spiritual experience of some kind
while having an ambivalent stance towards the Church.
I relearned how religion functions in Spain.  I walked with some folks from
Madrid who never talking about "their faith" or God or any of that.  But one
day, in the course of all of our chatter about how the Camino had been so
far for all of us, one of them spoke about how much the blessing in
Roncesvalles meant to her.  That night they all went to Mass and encouraged
the rest of us to go with them (that sounds worse than the experience
actually was: they wanted all of us to be together for the evening outing,
rather than fretting about the state of our souls).  It was in Los Arcos,
where the priest also makes a point of blessing pilgrims, and they wanted
that again and were very moved by it (tears and all...).  IN Pamplona, in
San Saturnino, the priests also bless pilgrims, but forgot to do it the
night I was there.  I went up to the altar and asked if it were still being
done and would it be done that night; the priest gladly came out and blessed
us.  I found out later that one of the pilgrims present that night had been
rather upset by the priest's oversight--clearly the pilgrim expected and
wanted the overt religious supports.
I also recall several folks who wanted other pilgrims to join them in
devotional observances which were rather vaguely New Age, mostly because
they wanted some sense of spiritual intention for their walk.
I believe about half of us had some feeling of private spiritual orientation
and did our prayers and things on our own.  It was never unusual to go into
a Church and find a pilgrim kneeling there, though that person was not
overtly religious.
The point for me is this.  I sensed that for most of us, the Camino
heightened or intensified our spiritual orientation in subtle ways.  This
intensification is like developing a benign(!!!) allergic reaction to
something--I mean that whenever you are exposed to it in the future, you
know you are in the presence of it--or like a musical instrument being tuned
up or like a candle wick being prepared for lighting.  People seemed (I know
I was) more willing to practice their rituals openly and simply on their own
for their own reasons as the Camino wore on, less in need of getting
everything to "look" or "act" a certain way or getting others to join them.
After walking for five weeks, something gets reduced, boiled down,
rendered....

I wonder if all this veers towards an answer to your question?

Michael