First day on Camino

This is a part of Spain that no one sees. Small towns, car dealerships, highways running along the Via de la Plata of the Camino de Santiago. Honestly, I don't know much about this road other than it is one of the five traditional pilgrim routes that the apostle James (a.k.a. "Santiago") took while bringing Christianity to Spain, yet I am not sure why there are five. Ours, the Via de la Plata, starts in Sevilla and directs us via yellow arrows through Andalucía, Extremadura, all the way up to Santiago. The yellow arrows are over everything, on street signs, on old rubble beside the rural roads, a simple yellow like three sloppy strokes of a paintbrush pointing us forward.

In a way this is much like the Pilgrimage for Peace with Rachel. By saying this I do not mean by any stretch that I am as hardcore as Rachel and those folks, mostly in middle age or later, who committed to the 50-day, 1000-mile walk, sharing the message of peace twice a day with community centers, schools, churches, and throughout the day with the common folk on the road. I'm not even as hardcore as the people who joined for one more day than I did, but I relate in that, as people see us walking, they cheer us on. It seems every few cars are proud of us, honking and waving, and that small towns know exactly what we are no matter from what culture. Merav is right, there's something about peregrinos, those pilgrims that the road draws, that local people strongly respect.

This rapport with the locals proves very advantageous to us in Santiponce, fourteen kilometers away from our destination. When the deluge comes, as it does for us in Spain, we realize how foreign this part of Spain is to such water from the heavens. Their architecture includes almost no overhangs, and we duck into a church, into restaurant door wells, and anything that will keep us dry. Even in the rain, though, people are friendly, one man shielding Ryan and me with his umbrella talking about this and that while our rucksacks and a distant Merav were continuing to get soaked. He told us about a woman in the middle of the town who lived alone and welcomes pilgrims, so, after some wandering and trying to find free bedding at an old monastery (which is closed), we get back to the center of town, where several women tell us to find this Carmen. We knock on her door and get no answer, so I ask the barkeep two doors down, and, instead of getting the phone number like I asked, he walks us to the house, and bangs loud enough to bring Carmen to the door. She is old and smiley and brings us in. We have to pay, and it's expensive for the Camino, but we were willing to pay much more to get dry on such a day. We watch Inglourious Basterds, stretch our sore limbs, and stretch our clothes out to dry after a very good day.

Read more about the Pilgrimage for Peace either here: http://walkaboutpilgrims.blogspot.com/2009/11/zigzag-back-through-these-states.html

or here: http://peacewalk-newengland.com/

Zigzag back through these states

I'm aboard the train and I choke the shaking of my hands with a solid four hours of "Rome". I'm on a fifteen-day rail pass to see Taylor and Phil's wedding in Jacksonville, visit Christina Schafer in Miami, see Duke Divinity School, Candler School of Theology, Boston University, and Emerson College before I join Rachel on the peace pilgrimage for a few days before hopping the train back to DC, working for a week before I move out during the weekend, live as a wanderer for a few days and then fly to Dublin. Yeah...

So while I hop public transit to Union Station in DC, I'm carting as many of my worldly possessions as I can fit into my big, blue duffel bag, and I'm a mix of afraid and sad. Afraid because I'm moving too fast, am starting so much over, don't have much money, sad because I'm leaving my church, my friends, and I've packed up so many of my favorite things to not see them for six months.

But Taylor is beautiful and she and Phil look iconic, the rower and frisbee player like the strong, smiling figures on top of the cake. Mr. Bayer plays a beautiful "Be Thou My Vision", his folksy voice sliding cordially over everything, and he backs me up on "Your Love is Extravagant," me on guitar, him on mandolin, my parents on BGVs. Later, Christina and I make Cuban Coladas by pouring a tiny bit of coffee into sugar, making a paste, then pouring the rest in. Jenny comes to visit, and songs are sung and adventures are had in Miami's 95˚ Autumn.

Blessings are felt at Duke, Emory, and BU, with Sarah, Keri, Brett Fox and the camp crew, Jon Gaylord & Clare, Aaron Garner, Billy Krolick, Kasey Cox, and some dear others. I like Duke better than Emory because of its field placements and support for the arts, though Boston has a dear place in my heart and cements the discerning characteristic of this year. Film school at Emerson is great, and when I get back to DC no questions are answered, but I feel more wise and encouraged. It is snowing in Boston when I arrive and I'm surprised at the length and breadth of the east coast.

I join Rachel and the peace walkers at the home of two former nuns who provide the best food of the whole trip. People ask, "What program is she doing it with?" in the same way that they ask me how Ryan and I plan to do our Europe trip, but the beauty of the Peace Pilgrimage is that there is no program, no hierarchy. Some walkers are around for the whole walk, others for only a few days, others for only a few miles. An old veteran who read about them in the paper found them and presented them with a giant peace flag, which they proudly carried with them the rest of the way. I am impressed with the people who honk in support, the housepainters who ask, "What are you walking for?" "For peace." "Right on!"

The deepest part of the walk for me is during a potluck at a United Methodist Church outside of Boston. I combine two thoughts: Adam, the brother of one of my youth, being killed in Iraq and the first time I thought of being anti-war; and Werner Herzog, director of "Rescue Dawn", having his actors wade through dangerous rivers and actually eat maggots because, in an age of digital effects, he "wanted audiences to be able to trust their eyes again." When I see bombs going off above Baghdad, it's so often just nightvision fireworks to me. People are being killed, families are huddled in their homes fearing a miss-strike, and it's entertainment to me. I want to be able to trust my eyes again. I want to be able to see war and let my heart go out in prayer for those on both sides. The man after me was shaken up and spoke of news as "info-tainment" and how so few of us feel the actual cost of war, little did I know it was his job to survey the battlefields of Desert Storm directly after a carpet bombing.

I'm not saying that war will stop now, but rather that it's by simply breaking bread with people and having dialogue that we not only understand our differences, but also have more fun. As Christians, I believe we are called to this, to stop the idea that people in the Middle East, or democrats and republicans, or ex-offenders, etc. are somehow not as human as we are. Back in DC, sitting across from an ex-offenders in Spiritual Support Group - sitting across from some of the most inspiring, spiritual (and changed) people that I know - I feel like I have learned yet another thin place where Holy Spirit moves in the world, between our differences and the learning of something new.

Rachel has finished her walk, taken some needed days resting in Connecticut, and arrives in DC. It's good to see her.

Rachel

An important part of my trip: Rachel smiles in that big, recognizable way in the 8th Day Faith Community of Church of the Saviour. I know her as this before she begins to come to Spiritual Support Group with Sarah and me. Rachel is headed for what she describes as her "Sabbath Year", which she'll start by stepping out into a Catholic Worker community in her home state of Connecticut, and she'll go from there.

I tell this story in this way: she is taking the time to dive into things, from faith to family, that all of us deal with but don't often take the time to deal with. It challenges me as I prepare for the trip in many ways: because I am a writer with no poems finished, a traveler who hasn't traveled to half the places I yearn to see, a lover of language who only speaks English.

Rachel encourages me a lot in this, and I get to encourage her a lot in her stepping out. Sarah gets busy for a few Thursdays nights in a row and Rachel and I wind up going to Julia's Empanadas after group by ourselves, instead of the three of us. One Sunday, after a Church of the Saviour picnic, my plans fall through, Rachel and I end up hanging out, and by the end of it - well, I'm not sure how it went down, but I tend to think we held hands, looked at each other, and thought: "Crap! We're dating, aren't we!"

Catholic Worker led to a silent retreat, and that to a friend in a monastery, and eventually to a 50-day, 1000-mile Pilgrimage for Peace all around New England, walking and inviting churches, schools, and passerby to join in the dialogue of how we can contribute to a more peaceful world, a world in which we act more like Jesus taught us to act toward one another. And after that, maybe take seminary classes in Nicaragua, and perhaps I'll be in Spain by then.