book re the spiritual aspect

[Donald Schell]

Delphia,

> could someone(s) recommend a (preferably rather recent) book about the
> Camino that addresses principaly the spiritual aspect of walking this route?
> ...and hopefully including the writers personal spiritual experience....
> ...

Maria and I do recommend our book, My Father, My Daughter, Pilgrims on the
Road to Santiago, for people interested in the spiritual experience of the
camino.  Like Lee Hoinacki's book that Christopher Weimer recommended, ours
is focused on particular our experience of finding our actual pilgrimage
(moving beyond my anxious and over-developed imaginings of what it would be
and beyond Maria's thinking it would simply be a great way to be in Spain
again and an interesting thing to do with her dad).  It's not meditations,
nor is it an analysis of the spiritual experience, but an account of how our
walking kept stumbling into discovery of God, communion, and each other.
Because it is written in our two voices in interleaving chapters, the
discovery of love and grace in the relationship of a pilgrim traveling
companions (who become that by walking) unfolds from the two separate
perspectives at once.

I've also been recommending Traveling Souls, Contemporary Pilgrimage Stories
(edited by Brian Bouldrey).  The first of the book's fifteen personal
accounts of pilgrimages in many traditions and to many sites (each 10-15
pages long) is Abigail Seymour's, "Ultreya," a touching,
ordinary/extraordinary account of the Camino most of which seemed familiar
to me.  The rest of the stories in the book are of other pilgrimages, but
like echoes or prismatic mirrors, but for me at least, the other stories
helped a Santiago pilgrim recall and reflect on aspects of how and why the
pilgrimage resonated so deeply and continues to do so in my life in God.

I also recommend two studies (#8 and #9) in The Modern Pilgrim,
Multidisciplinary Explorations of Christian Pilgrimage, by Paul Post. Jos
Pieper, and Marinus Van Uden. (published in the Netherlands, by Peeters in
1998).  These are research essays, studying and analysing pilgrim journals
and accounts, interviewing pilgrims, and trying to make clear the sorts of
questions that get at the the kinds of spiritual transformation people
experience from making pilgrimage.  Number eight, "Pilgrims to Santiago: a
Case Study of their Spiritual Experiences" describes the transformations the
researchers observed in a very close read of one pilgrim journal as she made
her way to Santiago - the changing way the same writer talks about Encounter
and Prayer, the Back pack, sellos/stmps, staff, etc. at before the journey,
at Vezalay, at Roncesvalles, at Santiago, and back home, also her changing
responses to the words, "Road," "Walking," "Water," and "Earth," which have
become, by the end of the Camino, full of new spiritual meaning for her.  I
immediately recognized the transformations of these objects and images in
the pilgrim's experience.  The changes were subtle, but important, two
examples (and I'm quoting from the book here):
Backpack-
Before the journey: how to keep it as light as possible.  I always leave
things behind that cannot be carried.  Still this one is going to weigh
heavy.
Vezelay: still a heavy weight, I will have to leave even more behind
Roncesvalles: a burden one never gets used to, but it belongs to the journey
Santiago de Compostela: Started getting used to it on the camino.  With only
the backpack life was better ordered, than with all the superfluous luggage
we had earlier when the car drove along
back home: putting it on was quite a ritual, before leaving.  From a burden
it became a part of myself, sticking (literally and symbolically) to my
back.  How well-ordered life was,  walking with only my backpack.
Two  years later: how wonderful it is being able to live with so few
possessions.
Staff-
Before the journey: Maybe I will need it, but not from the start.
Vezelay: Symbol, still no useful instrument for me.
Roncesvalles: an Aid on small, rocky roads.
Santiago de Compostela: Indispensable for the sloops and descents.  When we
had to cross small rivers.  I found it difficult to accept that I had used
it as a clothes-line
Back Home: My support, my third leg, became part of me.  Why did I leave it
on the way home in the train.  A support, also emotionally.
Two years later: Symbol of holding on, going on.
(The Modern Pilgrim, p. 211)

I'm glad for the question and hope we can come up with more resources.  It's
the part of our sharing that important practical questions and swapping of
happy stories can crowd out.  I suspect it's also something most of us want
to find some way to talk about.

love,
donald


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