[Gocamino] Fwd:? A Traveler's Highway to Heaven

[Ana Young]

Like Jim, I too have heard many times about the
ancient custom of finishing the Camino by being given
or awarded the shell, not as something done now.

I didn't fully understand the reason this custom was
reversed for modern pilgrims, but it most definitely
has been. Our rewards are internal (for a million
reasons) and external (the Compostela, the
Fisterrana).

So I decided, on my second sojourn, to do both: Before
setting off from Somport, I bought a "modern-day"
shell with the cross to put on my pack. A few stops
later I was given two handmade shells as a gift from a
lovely Swedish couple with whom I spent my birthday on
the feast of San Juan.

Sadly, I lost one of them but I still have the other,
which was around my neck from that time until I
arrived in Fisterra as hospitalera. Then, there on the
beach, I found what had to be the most
perfectly-shaped scallop shell to both finish off that
sojourn as both pilgrim and volunteer ... and to begin
the next one. That shell will be around my neck when I
walk again.

So I do three shell traditions: one from the ancient
past, one modern and one of my own. It's as profoundly
personal as Jim says, and it feels awesome.

Ana




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