[Gocamino] planning foe June pilgimage

[Kevin Lynch]

Hola mis amigos del Camino

Let me offer a slightly different perspective on the question.

My wise fellow pilgrim from Britain was fond of saying "you are a pilgrim,
or you are a tourist, but never both."  Although he was not so unwaveringly
rigid as to define a specific starting point as the line of delineation
between pilgrim and tourist, he was indeed making a generalized distinction
between early and late stage walkers.  (I met him and his wife in
Roncesvalles and we walked into Santiago together 33 days later, after
having been separated for several periods along the way.).

Almost four years later, I have come to realize that the distinction between
tourist and pilgrim is still a valid one.  But, through the grace of the
Camino, it finally has become clear to me that the distinction has nothing
to do with where your Camino begins.

It's about where your Camino ends!

If it ends when you walk through the portal into the square in Santiago, or
debark an airplane in your homeland, then you were always just a tourist,
whether you started in Sarria or St. Jean.

For me, the gift of the Camino is the gift of STAYING in pilgrimage.  Which
means simply being a pilgrim in all that I do back in that "regular" world I
call my home and my life.....

... Getting up in the morning and saying that my journey is my work for the
day. Going as near or as far as that day's journey calls me to, and then
stopping.

... Traveling light; carrying as little as I need. Trusting that I'll be
provided whatever is needed whenever it is needed.  And most likely, not a
moment sooner.

... Carrying plenty of water and taking care of my feet.

... Being where I am, letting that be good enough, because let's face it,
I'm not somewhere else.

... Walking a meditation.

... Sharing my salad.

... Stinking pretty bad and delighting in the close-quarters stench of
others.

... And always, but always, following the arrows.

Back here in my regular world, I have my tourist days and my pilgrim days.
As you can probably imagine, my worst pilgrim days are better than my best
tourist days.

Keep walking, my friends,

kevin
summer 2001
roncesvalles a santiago de compostela


 


On 3/15/05 6:59 PM, "Donald Schell" <donaldschell at saintgregorys.org> wrote:

> dear Molliebird
> 
>> we only have one  week and
>> are planning to walk the last 100 km or so.  After reading a lot  of
>> materials, I get the feeling that those that do only the last phases
>> of the  camino are
>> looked down upon.  Any thoughts or suggestions on this?   thanks!
> 
> In 1998 after my daughter and I had walked at least 300 km. a bicycling
> pilgrim who had just begun his pilgrimage two days before asked where
> we had begun.  We told him St. Jean Pied de Port but quickly added that
> we had taken a bus from Logronyo to Leon.  "Oh," he said dismissively,
> "So, you're not real pilgrims."  He had decided that a 'real' walking
> pilgrim had to begin in SJPP, walk to Roncesvalles and then didn't take
> any wheeled transportation after that.  He explained that he would be
> bicycling longer than required for the Cathedral to recognize him as a
> pilgrim.  I often wondered as we walked whether a medieval pilgrim
> would turn down a ride on a haycart or wagon on its way to market.  My
> guess is not (unless perhaps one who had made a particular vow to
> walk).  My guess is that many pilgrims who had walked from far places
> in Europe gladly accepted bits of rest in a cart with a thank you to
> the driver and a prayer of thanks to God (and additional thanks to the
> Blessed Virgin and Santiago).  Medieval pilgrims walked everywhere.
> For them it was the everyman and everywoman version of travel.  For us
> it's something different - the counter-cultural choice to walk.  We're
> reinventing it, and some think that means we must be purists.
> 
> I liked Nancy Frey's observation of such conversations.  It was
> reassuring to know how common they are, but I also thought she was
> describing the exceptions, because most pilgrims accept one another at
> face value.  What I recall powerfully is the humility of remarkable
> people had who begun in places far back in Europe - Frankfort,
> Grenoble, Paris - and walked the whole distance.  They were the MOST
> accepting and reassuring of the many different ways we had become
> 'real' pilgrims.  The farther a fellow pilgrim had walked, the less
> likely they were to impose a mental check-list to determine who was a
> 'real' pilgrim and who not.
> 
> I also think sometimes about the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca.  The
> tradition there is that the pilgrimage begins whenever the pilgrim sets
> out.  It's an old tradition (probably matched with Medieval tradition
> about pilgrimage to Santiago).  What's interesting in Islam's
> continuous practice is that today a pilgrim boarding a charter plane to
> Mecca is already embarked on the pilgrimage.  There's truth to that
> too.  Spending a day walking through Paris in pilgrim attire with our
> packs, walking sticks and shells as my wife and I did before boarding a
> night train to the French-Spanish border to begin walking the Camino
> there, we got stares, a few odd comments, and the random whispered 'Bon
> Chemin' or 'Buen Camino.'   That experience was certainly part of our
> pilgrimage.
> 
> Don't worry too much about what other people imagine your walking ought
> to be.
> 
> love,
> donald 
>    
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