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<TITLE>Re: book re the spiritual aspect</TITLE>
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Delphia,<BR>
<BR>
> <TT>could someone(s) recommend a (preferably rather recent) book about the<BR>
> Camino that addresses principaly the spiritual aspect of walking this route?<BR>
> ...and hopefully including the writers personal spiritual experience....<BR>
> ...<BR>
</TT><BR>
Maria and I do recommend our book, <I>My Father, My Daughter, Pilgrims on the Road to Santiago</I>, 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. <BR>
<BR>
I've also been recommending <I>Traveling Souls, Contemporary Pilgrimage Stories</I> (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.<BR>
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I also recommend two studies (#8 and #9) in <I>The Modern Pilgrim, Multidisciplinary Explorations of Christian Pilgrimage</I>, 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):<BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE><B>Backpack-<BR>
</B>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.<BR>
Vezelay: still a heavy weight, I will have to leave even more behind<BR>
Roncesvalles: a burden one never gets used to, but it belongs to the journey<BR>
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<BR>
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.<BR>
Two years later: how wonderful it is being able to live with so few possessions. <BR>
<B>Staff-<BR>
</B>Before the journey: Maybe I will need it, but not from the start.<BR>
Vezelay: Symbol, still no useful instrument for me.<BR>
Roncesvalles: an Aid on small, rocky roads.<BR>
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<BR>
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.<BR>
Two years later: Symbol of holding on, going on. <BR>
(The Modern Pilgrim, p. 211)<BR>
<BR>
</BLOCKQUOTE>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.<BR>
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love,<BR>
donald <BR>
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