Christmas on the Camino

We wake up on the blue, sheetless mattresses of the albergue, which are surprisingly clean and comfortable. So far, Spain takes great care of its peregrinos, the five of us feeling quite charmed by the two police officers who let us in for free and checked up on us later. The police are in charge of the albergue; nothing sketchy.

Our German and Danish counterparts, who came later in the night, leave some time apart from one another, but they know they'll see each other at the next albergue tonight. We stay in bed.

It's not that we're lazy, but with 30+ pound rucksacks full of our cold gear, computers, and more, we are feeling quite weighted down. Moreover, with the way that the rain has been peppering the landscape, paths are muddy (and I'm in running shoes) and streams are swollen. One of the streams, with deeply muddy farmland on either side of us, we ford by taking our shoes off and walking slowly and painfully along the rocks. Another we avoid, hearing from a cyclist that the water is chest-deep (verified by the German pilgrim), and take a several-kilometer detour along the guardrail of a very fast-moving highway. Yet so many cars are honking, so many folks in the town are glad to meet us, and we can't help but feel exhausted and touched.

We've been talking about small miracles lately. A waiflike, exhausted Merav opens her sleeping bag, borrowed from a friend, for the first time in the albergue to find a bar of chocolate––delicious Swiss dark stuff with Hebrew lettering––with a funny sketch of Merav and a note wrapped around it. Chocolate that has been there all the time showing up at just the right time. Miracle. Sunset and how we're inspired by it. Miracle. We wonder how we need to believe in these things, how the correlation of simple wonderment is too much to pollute by saying it is mere chance, how a miracle can remind us that God is still God, and God is good despite the world.

So we are in an albergue for Christmas, away from the consumerism, away from the two-thousand years of add-ons like Santa and the Christmas tree, away from all of that and... and Merav looks at both of us and says, "Merry Christmas." I fear I have been viewing this as a normal day––and perhaps it is, my scholarly heart knows that Jesus was really probably born in Spring––but as Ryan reads Luke and Merav wishes us Christmas wellwishings and we play Christmas carols and they get stuck in our heads then I realize what is the true miracle of Christmas. The true miracle isn't whether or not December 25 is Jesus' actual birthday or not, whether the magi convened on exactly that day with the shepherds and all of that, but rather that we come together as family and friends in community during the bleak midwinter when everything is dead and wet and tired and cold and we celebrate rebirth. By myself, Christmas is just another day, but in the presence of my loved ones and other of God's children, I see new life breathed into old bones.

Ryan feels like we've given up on the Camino, though all of us feel we have acted wisely. We are cutting it short because our packs are brutal and because of the rain and the fact that, as our German pilgrim friend tells us, the Via de la Plata is the toughest one of the five. Whereas the Camino Français has albergues every fifteen or sixteen kilometers, the day after tomorrow we would be traveling twenty-nine clicks without a town in between. So, for now, goodbye tying food onto our bags and goodbye socks dangling wet and putrid from them to dry. Goodbye also the long stretches of Spain, the wonderful people, and the good food, not to mention the combination of the nice Spaniard who gave us "chocolate for the Camino" yesterday. Sevilla is a nice place.

I don't feel this is a defeat. For me, I plan to come back, packed differently, with my bike and with whomever of you want to come, to do a whole route or two. I want to see Santiago and know more about this pilgrimage which, says our German friend who has hiked all of them (and some multiple times), is like a drug. For now, though, I have applications to finish and, if I am lucky, my family and Rachel to call. I hope, if you are set apart from your loved ones, that you see what is lovely around you, the small miracles like distant gorillas in the mist.