Not Quite Ready to Leave

It's almost time to leave Santiago and Spain. It was an amazing thing to run into people we had met on the trail here in Santiago. There is a certain fraternity that is formed by those who do this.

But we weren't quite ready to leave yet. After dinner we went back down into the Cathedral square to sing and dance with the others there and listen to the music. As you can see, our own Kathleen and Kayla were two of the stars of the evening!

See you all in a day or so!

The St. Mark Pilgrims

The Pilgrims Arrive!

We arrived at our destination! As with the millions before us, the St. Mark Pilgrims arrived at the shrine of St. James. Today's walk was 12 km, a virtual stroll by now. It rained on and off for most of the walk. We walked the first 7 km and gathered together at Monte Gozo, Mount Joy, for the last 5 km into Santiago. Over this last hour we got wet a lot, but as we got close to the end, the skies started to clear.

At 11:10 am, we arrived at the 0 km stone. It was almost hard to believe. We didn't spend much time looking around yet since we went to get seats for the pilgrim Mass at 12:00. The Cathedral was packed. Wall to wall, end to end, the place was filled with pilgrims who gathered, as they do each day, for this event. The two highlights were hearing the name of our group read out and the burning of the Botofumeria, the huge incense burner. This is truly an event unlike anything you have ever seen. You have to see the video we bring home. It looked like the thing was going to hit the ceiling (and it's a really high ceiling!). It takes six men to swing it. We all agree that we need one at St. Mark!!!

After Mass, it was off to the Pilgrim's office to show our pilgrim passport and collect our official pilgrim certificate. Everyone is entered and registered. We even got a certificate for the parish as the Pilgrims of St. Mark. Then it was off for a few picture moments (the skies had cleared for a beautiful day) and then lunch.

After lunch, it was back into the Cathedral first to embrace the statue of St. James over the altar and kiss his head, as millions before us have done, then it was down into the crypt below the altar to see the silver box with the bones of St. James. The stairs are worn down from the countless people who have trod them. One pilgrimage is now over, and the one that leads us back home is set to begin.

Peace to you all from the St. Mark Pilgrims

Getting Ready for the Last Push

As you can see, we´re almost ready for the next to last push. You can´t tell yet, but it will be raining in about 10 minutes. In spite of that, some of us are managing to make friends wherever we go (and wherever we can find them!).

The paper you see is a pilgrim´s passport. One has to collect at least two stamps every day at places along the trail to prove that you have walked the appropriate amount of mileage (kilometerage?).

There are only 12 km left to the shrine of St. James. Our guide keeps pushing me to bring another group next year - next year is a particularly holy year. I tell her we need to finish this trip first!

At this point, most of us think we´ll be doing laps on the plane on the way home - it will hurt too much to sit.

Peace from the almost finished Pilgrims!

We´re Almost There!

The Pilgrims have passed 100 km and have 12 more to go! Today began with rain that lasted about 20 minutes (in a 4+ hour walk, 20 minutes isn´t so bad) but then cleared and was a lovely day. The walk took us through a varriety of environments but what was most interesting is that we clearly saw more people on the road than any other single day.

There is a lot of excitement as we make our way down the road, but there is also a lot of desire to get it done, too. in all of this, it is hard to believe that we are nearly at the end of our journey out and that it will soon be time to begin the journey home. Knees and feet are feeling the effect of all the walking, but in some ways, it is easier to walk than it is to sit. There is also the whole aspect of group sharing in an experience that no one else we know has shared - it forms a certain esprit de corps.

This afternoon we took a trip to a 10th century monastary. The monks, being Cistercians, didn´t have much to say - we had to read our own guide.

Tonight´s dinner was a sharing of strange and unusual gifts. Adam has a most impressive range of unique gifts and talents to share at a dinner table. Kathleen cackles better than most.

We will be in Santiago before you get up in the morning. We´ll remember to say a prayer for you all.

Peace from the St. Mark Pilgrims

More Pictures from Wednesday

Some More Pictures from Wednesday

The Pilgrims Pass the Half-Way Point!

The Pilgrims have passed the half-way point! We completed 30 km today (well, most of us did - a few slackers bailed out on the last 5 optional km! but I was not one of those!) It is hard to believe that we are more than half way to our goal.

Everyone is feeling pretty good, or as good as you feel after covering 80 km on foot over three days. Muscles are a bit creaky and nearly everyone has a blister or two or three, but no one seems disabled.

The weather over the past two days has been blessedly overcast (good for walking, bad for pictures) and temperatures in the very low 80's, with none of the humidity we have back home. It has been nice not to have the sun beating down on us, particularly yesterday which included a fair amount of walking on and near asphalt. It is cool in the mornings (mid 50's) but everyone seems to appreciate it.

Interestingly, the scenery really hasn't changed much the past three days. It is generally rolling landscape segmented with stone walls. Some of the hills are pretty steep, and take a really vigorous climb and take a good amount of time to get to the top. That last 5 km today was some very steep hills and some very steep descents.
Lots and lots of cows! Lots and lots of dogs! (is a German Shepherd a Spanish Shepherd in Spain?). There is a funny story to the cows in the picture - a few moments after the picture, a lady came back around the corner chasing one that obviously wanted to go another way, yelling at it the whole way.

The red cross in one of the pictures is a large cross of St. James. In Spain, his cross is formed by a sword as the main beam - a reflection on James being the "Moor-slayer," or the one who helped the Spanish chase the Moors out of Spain.

I'm glad you all have enjoyed the pictures, and we like getting the notes from everyone. Some days have been a challenge getting stuff loaded (I had to use a Windows machine yesterday :-( that was a real joy) but today I had free wireless in our room. Everyone is having a good time and it seems that everyone is having a good time. Our accommodations have been really nice and we have eaten very well - breakfast does leave a bit to be desired, some of us are wishing for a little Cafe' St. Mark!

Two more days to the relics of St. James!
Peace,The St. Mark Pilgrims

Pointing the Way

The Pilgrim that follows these signs will arrive at the appropriate place.

It is very much a case of follow the yellow arrow!

Peace from the St. Mark Pilgrims

Pilgrims

Here are the images of a few pilgrims doing what they do...

Countryside

The countryside is essentally rolling mountains. If you had grown up in western Pennsylvania (or Ireland) it would look rather familiar.

The Second Day of Walking

This marked the second day of walking. We got started an hour earlier today (7:30 am). Breakfast felt a bit skimpier, but soon, we were down the road for our 25 km hike. The first 10 km (2+ hours, depending on the group you were walking with) were essentially uphill, where a 1 degree incline felt flat. The day has been hazy and overcast, a huge change from yesterday where the mist burned off by 9;30. This was a blessing, though, since much of the walk was out in the open and even on asphalt and very close to roads (yesterday had been in the woods much more).

The path is not necessarily smooth, with rocky road to walk over. The lead group (which includes Chris Sommer, Andrew Erdos, Adam and Erin Skipper and Pastor) were able to maintain a 5 km per hour pace, but it was a bit of a challenge today, even without the sun. The uphill was a bit of a challenge and our legs were feeling the nearly 30 miles by the end of the day. We got to the town about 40 minutes ahead of the next group and we REALLY liked our lunch!

We haven´t passed many Americans (or even English speakers) yet, but have seen a varriety of ages.

Peace,
The St. Mark Pilgrims

The First Day is Done!

Well, we completed the first day! Everyone completed the first 23 km and we aren't feeling too bad! Hardly a blister in the group (so far!). It was a beautiful day and everyone was thrilled to make it to the end. It's late here, so I'm not going to write much - we have an early start.

Thanks for everyone's notes. ATM cards are still a bit of a problem (mine too!) but we're working on it.

Attached are a few photos from the day. You can see the happy group at the beginning of the day, and in the reservoir.

Peace to all at home,

The St. Mark Pilgrims

We Made it to Spain!

Well, we made it to Spain! Our flights were uneventful and on time (well, a little late getting to Madrid, but nothing serious). Erin wandered out of the boarding gate area in Miami and was on her way to Miami University when we had to go fetch her (she now stays within a 3 foot radius of Pastor) and Mike snored on the plane. When we got to Madrid, we were pleased to find that all of our luggage arrived with us! But not all was well when some people found that their ATM cards weren´t working.

We met up with our guide and bus driver at the airport. Our guide has walked the trail we are going to walk around 22 times. But, she pointed out she still gets blisters. We got in our little bus and headed off for NorthWest Spain. Our drive (7+ hours) took us out of Madrid - mountainous and brown - through some flatlands and into Galicia - mountainous and green. Kathleen was sick on the way from the bendy road.

On the way we stopped in some no-name town and ate some of the most phenomenal ham and sausage you can imagine. We then continued on to Samos, to a monastary dating in its present form to the 12th century and an adjacent church dating to the 7th century with a 1,000 year old cypress outside of the church. Most importantly, we got the first 2 stamps in our pilgrim passport. We really are on the way now!

We then made it 10 minutes down the road to Sarria, our starting point. After checking into the hotel, we went for dinner (a 2 hour affair) in which we ate pasta, lamb, potatoes and cake. We´ve all been up forever and it is past 11:00 our time. We thought of you as liturgies were begining and hope all is well at home. I´m sorry there are no pictures, but the computer I´m using at the hotel doesn´t have a usb port to plug in and get them on for you - maybe the next town.

Tomorrow is when the real fun begins, we start to walk. We met some walkers today - an interesting lot all in all

Peace to all of you at home from the St. Mark Pilgrims!

Ready to Go!

Well, it's just about time to go! After about a year of planning, a year of work, the time has come to go. We leave tomorrow at 7:00 am and begin our 5,783 mile journey. We'll travel 5,711.5 miles to walk 71.5. It's a crazy world!

Walking

Recently I was reading about medieval people who made the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. The funny thing is, walking was not a big deal. People worried about being away from home, they worried about having the resources to both pay for their food and lodgings as well as support family back home without working while they traveled. But they didn't worry about walking. Martin Luther took a pilgrimage from central Germany to Rome. He would have walked nearly the whole way. It wasn't a big deal.

The thing everyone has told me to think about the most is our feet. Obviously, bad, blistered feet will make the pilgrimage a real challenge. All of the info, all of the books, all of the websites talk about the walking and about sore feet. We may all be fit, athletic even, but there is obviously something we've lost. We count steps with pedometers. Steps! But now, now we're going to walk miles.

It is 7 miles from my house to the Church. I would never think about walking, but I know that there was a time when that would probably be how I got there most of the time. Now, I sit in traffic.

Being a spiritual person has traditionally being connected not only to God, but also to the world around us. Obviously, the people in charge of the pilgrimage are aware of this. You can't just arrive in Santiago, you have to walk in. You have to get in touch with God, with the world around you, with yourself before you can be a pilgrim.

Sort of makes you wonder what you may have been missing while you sit in traffic.

More Preparations

Every day more than a handful of people ask if we are ready to go. Frankly, no, I'm not ready to go. I don't know who in our group is ready, but my guess is that they're lying! We are going to a place none of us have ever been before, for an experience none of us have every had, to travel around (by foot, don't even get me going about feet!) little towns in a place where at best our grasp of the native tongue is sketchy (yeah, yeah, yeah you learned Spanish in high school). How is one ever truly "ready" in this sort of circumstance? Was Marco Polo ready to go? I doubt it.

The other side of being ready is the spiritual side of the trip. Feet are one thing, our souls are another. Here, I can say with even more confidence that no, we are probably not ready and I'm not certain anyone could ever truly be ready for that aspect of a trip similar to the one we are about to make. Repeatedly through the Bible people who are called forward by God seem to be completely oblivious to what God is calling them toward: Abraham, Moses, the Israelites in the desert, the apostles, Paul, all of them are shocked - shocked! - by what the find out about God on their journeys. In a lot of ways, a journey like this is when we discover new things about God we never saw before. All of the above characters saw things about God they never saw before because they suddenly find themselves in new places. But maybe more than new things about God, we come to find new things about ourselves. You look at the world in new ways when you're in a strange country with sore feet. These are simply things you just can't prepare for. I'm certain Mary and Joseph were not truly prepared for what awaited them in Bethlehem. How could Paul know what awaited him on the Damascus Road?

No. I'm not ready. Don't ask again.

Pilgrimage, continued

If you think about it for a few moments, it's a funny thing we're about to do just a few days from now. we're going to travel 25% of the way around the world in order to walk for 5 days. We call this pilgrimage. But what really makes it a pilgrimage is the destination. We are walking to the cathedral church of Santiago - Saint James. And the reason we're going to this church is that the legends suppose that, somehow, the bones of the Apostle/Saint are in a box in this church. Nearly all Christian pilgrimage has something to do with the remains of some distant saint.

Martin Luther pooh-poohed this business quite vigorously. Strangely, soon after he died, people started traveling to where he was buried, where he preached, where he was baptized, where he translated the Bible. The same for the other Reformers. But we do the same in our secular lives, no? We travel to Mt. Vernon, we travel to Monticello, we go to Ford's Theater and the house where Abraham Lincoln died. We visit the graves of our loved ones who have died.

Part of the story of pilgrimage is remembering something from the past and trying to connect ourselves to that past in a tangible way. And we tell stories about our trip, stories about our connection to the one whose remains we are about to see, stories about why this is important to our lives. (If you want to read some real pilgrimage stories, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is the classic pilgrimage story!) But still, we are trying to connect to our past and to a past that is further back than where we directly come from. All of this is to remind ourselves that our story has a foundation, that we aren't just making all of this up as we go along.

For many, many pilgrims, part of this trip was to affirm to themselves that their faith isn't in vain. It is to form a connection, a bond - a real, physical bond - with the earliest Christians, with the Apostles and with Jesus himself. It is a connection that strengthens our lives and reminds us of how many people have come before us. And it reminds us how all of those people hoped we would keep the story going in our lives, so that others could come to the same faith with which we have been blessed.

Pilgrimage

Sometimes we throw the word "pilgrimage" around in connection to travel - "I'm going to make a pilgrimage back to my old high school," "I make a regular pilgrimage to my favorite restaurant." There is a sense that we understand that making a pilgrimage is not the same as travel for business or travel for vacation. It might be to a place we have anticipated going to for a long time, or it may be a place that has multiple layers of meaning to us, or it may be toward something our hearts desire more than simply going up the road to Busch Gardens. In any sense, it seems that we almost instinctively understand that pilgrimage is different from ordinary travel.

When we leave on Saturday morning, we are not headed out on a vacation with a religious-sounding name. We are headed to a place with deep and long-held meaning and we are going for as many reasons as there are pilgrims. In a pilgrimage, one is moving toward a goal that is bigger than they are, it is a journey toward something the pilgrim hopes transforms their lives in a powerful way. The pilgrim hopes that the trip significantly transforms their life for the rest of their life. That is the reason the pilgrim is willing to sacrifice to make the trip, why the pilgrim is willing to suffer for the sake of the journey. This is why we can't just fly into Santiago. The pilgrim has to walk, to work to get to the destination and in working for this, ask him or herself why they are doing this. Why are they traveling to this place? What is it worth to them? What does it mean that they are trying to get there? What do they hope to see when they arrive?

In our case, we have 71.5 miles to think about this. Walking at about 3 miles per hour, that's about 27 hours of thinking.

Preparations

Pack enough socks. Don't forget your battery chargers. Bring a camera and notebook. Don't forget rain gear (we walk, rain or shine). Don't forget your passport. Make copies of your passport. Got your ATM card? Got money in your account? Pack bandages for your blisters (you will get blisters!). Today, we meet together to begin the last preparations for our departure on Saturday.

For a trip like this, I think you begin to have some strange feelings about this time. You still have work and school for another week. You still have things to do and think about and take care of that relate to your ordinary, day-in and day-out life, but your mind begins to wander toward the trip. We leave in less than a week, but the trip is only a week, so you want to be prepared to suck in the whole experience, so your mind starts wandering toward your trip; will you remember everything? are you ready? what are you forgetting? are my feet ready for 15 miles a day? and a myriad of other things. Yet, you still have stuff to take care of here; your friends, your family, your school, your job. But I still have to make certain I pack enough socks!

We Depart on One Week

It is a little hard to believe that we leave in one week. Christine Roe pointed out to me last night that about a year ago, it didn't look like we'd really make it. The cost of the trip (approximately $3,000 per pilgrim) was going to simply be too much for most of our travelers. We did some things that helped get the fundraising ball rolling - doughnut sales and soda sales, but it was the very generous contribution of two families at St. Mark who do not even have pilgrims traveling with us that allowed us to know that we really could do this if we wanted to.

What really made a difference for making the pilgrimage possible was Christine Roe and her formation of Team WWG (Walk with God). Christine, along soon after with Steve Krist, organized scores of projects for our pilgrims to raise the money that made this trip possible. Nearly $40,000 was raised over the year, bringing the cost per pilgrim to below $900. Thanks to our generous benefactors, thanks to Christine Roe and Steve Krist, thanks to everyone who hired a Team WWG pilgrim to do a job, thanks to everyone who made a contribution and to everyone who believed that this trip was possible, we are headed to Spain!

In ancient times, many people who couldn't make a pilgrimage themselves dedicated themselves to aiding pilgrims on their way. All of you who, by your prayers and contributions, have helped make this pilgrimage possible now stand in the line of all of those people over all those ages have helped pilgrims make it down the road. The trip wouldn't be possible without you.

Preparing to visit the remains of St. James

One week from today, the pilgrims from St. Mark will be at the tomb of St. James in the cathedral in Compostela. We will have arrived, after 71.5 miles of walking, at our destination. It is a little strange for a group of Lutherans to be doing something like a pilgrimage to such a prominent medieval shrine. Luther pooh-poohed on such things and most of us were taught that as children that they didn't really matter much. My experience with such things suggests something different. Certainly, we are looking for something different than the pilgrims of Luther's time. Yet, I wonder if we aren't, in many ways, looking for the same thing, namely a deeper connection to God and the benefits that brings. Why else would we walk to this church? We could just fly in, visit, and fly out.

The walking builds relationships. In our walking we build relationships with those who travel with us, with those around us and even with those who have gone before us and, we would hope ultimately, with God. The walking gives us time and, as we know, relationships take time.

If my experience of these things in the past is an indicator for our experience now, I suspect that we will see something far greater than some bones in a very old box.