¡Buen Camino!

Dear Friends,
It has taken three tries and nine years, but as of July 2012, I have finally walked the entire Way of Compostela from my former home in Leuven/Louvain, Belgium, to Santiago de Composela!
My first pilgrimage experience from the French frontier with Spain to Santiago itself took place in 2003. You can read the details of this first walk along the famous Camino across Spain in my book, To The Field of Stars: A Pilgrim's Journey to Santiago de Compostela, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. (2008). (You can order it from the publisher, from Amazon.com, or from your local bookseller).
In the summer and early fall of 2007, I walked from Belgium most of the way across France, with the hope of at least making it to Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port near the Spanish border, where I began the first pilgrimage. I didn't quite make it. A bad case of plantar fasciitis took me down in the Bordeaux village of Sainte-Ferme. I continued on to Santiago by train and bus, but the "defeat of my feet" and those last 175 miles or so that were left undone, gnawed at me over the ensuing five years. Happily, I was finally able to wrap up this grand pilgrimage with a third walk from Sainte-Ferme to Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port this past summer (2012). It was a joy to have completed all 2,370 kilometers between Leuven and Santiago.
My adventures and misadventures, my thoughts and prayers of both the 2007 and 2012 pilgrimages have been shared in this blog. I will leave the blog and its archives open for some time to come; if you want to read bits and pieces of it, feel free, but remember that the beginning is at the bottom and the end is at the top.
My contact e-mail remains the same: kacodd@gmail.com; I am always happy to receive mail!
As the pilgrims in Spain greet one another, so I greet you, my reader: "Buen Camino!"
And as the people of France greet their pilgrims along the "Chemin", I also wish to you: "Courage!"

Grace and peace to you all!
Kevin

Wednesday, September 5, 2007

A Kingdom-of-God Kind of Place


Vezelay. To understand the spiritual and even mystical significance of this town that I have today entered, you just need to see it from 5 kilometers out. Like the scriptural Jerusalem, this Holy City is set on a great hill, its basilica rising above its crown, drawing us poor small mortals forward and up, up, ever up! It is a Kingdom-of-God kind of place. Once here, the sense of peace and tranquillity that fills its streets and pervades its stones confirms that sense of the divine already here on this earth, at least partly. I suppose this is why pilgrims have for so long streamed here: they need to see, feel, and touch this holiness and have affirmed that this God and his promises are real. I’m so happy today to be here, to have walked here, to have spent the afternoon praying here. I will spend another day in Vezelay, then continue my pilgrim way south on Friday, God willing.

Posted by Kevin A. Codd at 10:53 PM