It started out like any other day…
Ok maybe it didn’t. Days don’t usually begin with the intention of hiking 17 miles in the dark.
The clock had just struck midnight and my team and I were making our way through the streets, loaded down with our packs and guided by the limited light from our headlamps. We had spent the previous day walking over ten miles, resting in the grass and enjoying one last meal with our new friends. We were trying to get a head start to the municipal at our next destination. Refuges like this one are first come first serve with limited space. This one was offering a donation based room, shower, dinner and breakfast. Guys, this is a GOLDMINE on a budget like ours.
The moon was full and bright and our bluetooth speaker was fully charged. We killed it for the first four hours, despite already aggravated injuries and aching feet. The joy I get from my team and watching them rally around one another is hard to put into words. Sharing water and food, carrying bags, praying together…men and women picking each other up when they have fallen…literally (poor Meghan). The last four hours were rough, and by the end we were feeling as if we had just crawled out of the Jumanji game.
At about 7:30 a.m. we finally dragged ourselves to our destination, Iglesia De Santiago, five hours before it would open. We sit on the ground outside, feeling pretty triumphant in what we had just accomplished. We hadn’t slept in 24 hours and as we set our stuff down to rest it began to rain, runoff from the street soaking us. A few of us stay, shivering in the cold and watching our bags. The rest go to find coffee and breakfast. The door to our resting place suddenly opens and out comes a man, looking like a facilities person in his pants and plain white tee. He says he is opening up the church and tells us to come inside out of the rain.
Within an hour all five of us are in dark corners of the church, sitting on the floor and in pews trying to find rest on whatever was available; jackets, limbs, walls. People are coming in to enjoy the majesty of the cathedral, and instead find us clinging to one another for warmth on the floor. What a sight we must have been! And yet, what a beautiful picture of weary, beaten travelers finding refuge inside the church walls.
The facilities man (who turned out to be the priest!) took pity on us. Maryah receives a startling wake up tap on the butt by his foot, and he leads us into the municipal early. Once we get upstairs he says we can rest on the mats and there is coffee and tea available. We thank him over and over again.
He tells us he will be at church until one and will lock the doors behind him. We tell him we still have two friends getting coffee, isn’t there any way to get them and come back? “Absolutely not”, he explains in his limited English, they will need to wait until one like everyone else. He leaves us, mouths hanging open, trying to grasp what to do… shutting the large wooden door closed behind him.
Soooooo, we are now locked in. No way out. No way to message the rest of our team. No way to let them know why they are suddenly in an episode of Left Behind with their friends and all their bags M.I.A.
We can’t help but laugh at the situation we have found ourselves in. Since we are being held here for the next few hours, Hakeem treats himself to four glasses of hot chocolate, and we all take showers. As far as prisons go, this one was awesome!
Eventually they come back and ring the doorbell, we open the windows two floors up and see their confused faces, yelling down to them what has happened and why we are trapped inside with no way to let them in or get out. “Wait.” Nathan yells…”so we walked all night, sat outside in the rain and now you are being held hostage by a priest?”
Haha yes, yes we are.
The Camino is such a strange experience. It sits on the balance between reality and supernatural, traditional and modern, magic and science. You meet people of all walks and lifestyles, backgrounds and cultures, reasons for leaving everything behind and reasons for dying.
Dying to ones self.
The people who walk the Camino are all searching for something… whether it be true community, adventure, enlightenment, God. There is a mutual understanding that everyone on this trail is “wild”. Sheep without a shepherd, without someone who can direct their paths, give them a purpose.
We are part of that strange culture this month. Walking alongside people who have left their comforts and loved ones and are walking every day towards something. What!? They don’t know..only that there is an ache in their hearts, a feeling of emptiness, of lacking.
So they walk. Every day they reflect, pray, meet people, and discover more of who they are.
They ask themselves, what do I need to survive? What do I truly require to be happy? What do I want from this life? What do I want for myself?
I can’t answer these questions for them, however I have learned more about myself and just how little I need to not only survive, but to thrive.
I do know when I’m weary and needing rest, God provides. Whether through one of my teammates offering sausage or peanuts, a fellow traveler telling me where to get fresh water, or a sassy priest locking me in a room and forcing me to sleep.
God will provide for you too. It may not be what you imagine, or even what you wish…but I promise it will be what you need.
“Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matt 11:29-30).
