To the Field of Stars

Finisterre

2007-10-25T17:00:00.000+02:00

Fisterre, Finisterre, or “The End of the Earth”; it is here that I write today. I sit on a rocky outcropping next to a granite cross, at the very end of this Cabo de Finisterre, under the Faro or lighthouse that guides seamen around its rough sholes. I have jauntily walked the 2.5 kilometers from town to this end of the earth. The sun is shining brightly, the sky is blue above but increasingly white as it recedes to the misty horizon at the far end of the sea. The shine of the sun glistens silver off the surface of the sea, itself rippled and dippled by the lightest of breezes. It is just about perfect.

On the pillars of two steel towers all manner of pilgrim clothing have been strung and they flap dirtily in the breeze. On the arms and ledges of the granite cross small stones hold down folded pieces of paper with prayers and hopes and words of gratitude hastily scribbled on them. I have no pen with me but I must do something too, so I take my handkerchief, the one that has been in my back pocket for all these days on the road, the one embroidered with a fancy “R” for “Robert”, for this old rag once was my dad’s best handkerchief, which somehow I inherited, and I set it under a stone too, just above an almost hidden carving of Santiago in the base of the cross. There, I’ve done it. I’ve finished this pilgrimage. I’ve reached the geographical end of Europe, the end of the earth for previous generations who did not yet know of America.

I gaze out to the perfect line of the horizon- next stop: America. And I’ve reached the end of this particular pilgrimage of heart and spirit, too. Goodbye, dear road. Tot later, wonderful Weg. Au revoir, beautiful Chemin. Adios, gracious Camino. Thank you. Dank U, Merci, Gracias. My eyes well, I suppose for the last time out here. I hope I will be back someday not too far off. If not, I have already been plenty changed and much enriched, and so humbled and will always be more grateful than any words can express. I love this earth. I love its Creator. I love my brother and Lord Jesus, I love Big Jim. I love all those who have been so good to me and have accompanied me along the way on foot and in spirit.

I end the geographical part of this pilgrimage here at Fisterre and I now end this blog here, too. The greater pilgrimage of life continues, of course, and I am now ready for whatever is next. May we all be blessed on our way.

St. James, pray for us!

Santiago, Day 5

2007-10-23T19:21:00.000+02:00

Today was an "alone day" in Santiago: no friends, no guides, just me and the great company of saints who cheer us on from their side of the Kingdom of God. It has been most probably also my final full day in this city. I did my best to make the most of it in my own way and according to my own speed and tempo, just like the camino itself. I got business out of the way first by finding an orthopedic store and asking about a soft foot brace that is used during the night to stretch those aching foot tendons and thereby, hopefully, heal them. The man at the desk professionally dressed in a clean white smock had never heard of such a thing and offered me some silicon insoles instead. I didn´t buy them. I then walked across the street to a peluqueria and got my hair cut, a sort of contemporary living of the medieval custom of pilgrims burning their clothes as a sign of leaving behind their old lives and beginning a new one. The young lady behind the sheers took plenty off; my gray mop was everywhere when she was done. I felt rather like a shorn sheep; I don´t think my hair has been this short since I was a 11 year old on summer vacation. But the feeling of letting go of the old and looking forward with hope towards what is to come was real enough as I headed back up the hill towards the Cathedral of Santiago. I was there just in time for the noon pilgrim Mass, tucked into a pew and joined in the liturgy from the pilgrim side of the sanctuary. The aged priest who presided stepped forward after the Gospel reading and gave a stem-winder of a homily and it was good; who would have guessed he had so much passion in him! It lifted my spirits to watch him and listen to him preach the Good News with enthusiasm and fire. Afterwards, I stayed in the church for awhile, then after the crowds thinned, (to go to lunch, I suppose), I stepped back down into the crypt for a brief visit at Santiago´s relics. Then to lunch myself, a little rest in my room and back into town to visit a couple of museums before going back to the Cathedral for a more prolonged and serious visit. The crowds were pretty heavy since several tour groups had pulled in not long before I got there so I took my place in the area of the nave reserved for personal prayer (sort of) and just took a long time before the image of Santiago above the main altar, the one the pilgrims embrace from behind upon their arrival. Once again I thanked him for bringing me here and getting me as far as I got, for the blessings on the way, for keeping me from any real harm, and once again, I mentally read through my litany of intentions, all the people who have asked for prayers here. After a while, I decided it was time to fulfill one final pilgrim responsibility before leaving this special place. I pulled out of my synthetic wallet (what else but synthetic!) the cards and notes people back home had given me way back in the end of June just before I started walking, each with their own special intentions and prayers written on them. I had carried these little pieces of paper across more than a thousand two hundred kilometers on my back, then another thousand-five hundred by train and bus, and finally, again by foot, just a final kilometer or so from my hostel to the heart of this basilica. I read through each one of them again, kept them in my hand as I got up, walked over to the stairwell going up to the stature of Santiago, climbed the stairs, gave Santiago one more abrazo making sure the papers in my hand touched him, walked back down and down even further into the crypt, read them to him there again, then looked about for a discrete place to deposit them, as close to Santiago as I could get. I wandered around behind the altar keeping my eye open for some crack or chink or hidden little hole in the wall where I might set them, then directly behind the main altar and almost directly above the tomb, I noticed a large glass window separating the ambulatory of the apse from the back of the altar with a marble ledge beneath it on both sides of the glass. In the glass was cut a small opening just big enough for a hand to pass through, so with no one looking, I kissed them, slipped the cards and papers through that hole and tucked them into a corner where they would not be quite so easily seen. There, that job now done! I felt rather proud of myself for my cleverness and even more, I felt relieved at having delivered on the promise to bring those prayers to Santiago where he can attend to them from here on in.
So that´s been my day. I´m just about ready to move on from Santiago and the Field of Stars, but even as I do so I´m thinking about next spring when my feet and tendons will be all well again and before I have to be back home for good; hmmm... how about finishing this thing then, in the way I had intended, by walking from Sainte-Ferme to Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port in France, and then across Spain and back to Santiago. Anyone want to go along?

Santiago, Day 4

2007-10-22T19:24:00.000+02:00

"Day 4": already? Have I been here in Santiago that long? Long enough for this place that has captured my imagination for so very long begins to seem more ordinary and more like any other place even as the many more days trundling across Belgium and France take on a bit of a dreamlike status as well. I don´t really like the sense that Santiago de Compostela should begin to feel ordinary to me; I rather want it to remain a hope, a dream, a sacred place in my life. When that feeling gets too strong, I dip back into the Cathedral, wander about within its dark and cool interior, step down into the crypt where James´bones are kept in a silver reliquary, and there return to the base and reason for it all. Asking him to care for my family, my friends, our Louvain seminarians, those who have cared for me along the way, that brings me altogether back to the sense of being in a place out of time and beyond ordinary space, a holy site, a set of bones that draw us from such far away places to them mysteriously.
My appreciation for that crypt and the basilica built on top of it grew appreciably today during a personal tour of the Cathedral Museum given to me by Father Alejandro Barral, its founder and retired director. That crypt goes back to Roman times, the first century perhaps; on display where bits and pieces of pottery, glass, and even a stone button used to weave wool into thread, all testifying to its ancient past. If an apostle of Jesus were to be buried anywhere this would be it. The evidence that significant Christian cult on the site goes back into the very early centuries is also there. Those early Iberian Christians were paying attention to someone very special there from very early on. No one can prove it was the apostle James, but Christian writers were mentioning him and Spain together from way back as well.
The other thing that fascinated me was Don Alejandro´s description of the stone choir that originally stood within the nave of the basilica, it was a great work of art designed and executed by the third great architect of the basilica, Master Mateo. A segment of it has been re-erected in the Museum and it is spectacular, especially when its details and the spirituality behind them are described lovingly by someone who knows the place like his own child. That choir, an enclosed place within the church where the canons of the cathedral sang the daily office of psalms and readings, was designed to represent the New Jerusalem that is our Earth when it reaches its fullness in peace, justice and life under the loving hand of it Creator, the Father of All, through the saving grace of his Son and the refreshing breath of his Spirit. I love that image from Revelations/Apocalypse; "all will be well and all will be well" it reminds us (in the words of Julian of Norwich).
So it is that image along with that of Santiago´s crypt that I take to bed with me tonight. Sleep well for all will be well and all will be well...

Santiago, Day 3

2007-10-21T22:54:00.000+02:00

This Sunday in Santiago de Compostela held its fair share of little adventures, the most exciting of which was taking part in a tour of the rooftop of the Cathedral of Santiago. No slate or clay tiles up there, its all granite blocks set in place in gentle slopes that are walkable but gave me the heebie-jeepbies anyway. But what a view, not just of the city below, but of the towers and the bells and the famous statue of Santiago that looks out over the plaza in front of the Cathedral doors where the pilgrims arrive daily in their ones and twos and twenties. The view of this statue ensconced securely in his niche, from behind and almost from eye-level was a thrill for me. That statue has been a favorite of mine since four years ago when after completing my first pilgrimage to Compostela, I had a long talk with him, I down below on the plaza, he up high almost touching the sky (that conversation is included in my book on the pilgrimage which will be published by Wm. Eerdmans & Co. soon; look for it in your favorite bookstore after the new year! Sorry for the advertisement here!).
Less of a diversion and more important for me today was participating for the second time in the noon Mass for Pilgrims. Unlike yesterday, I was not distracted by the silliness of a unawarded certificate, but felt much more a part of the liturgical celebration even from before it began. While in the sacristy waiting to process in, I was invited to offer one of the General Intercessions in English during the coming liturgy. My impromptu prayer was simple: "For kings, prime ministers and presidents of powerful nations, that they might be wise in the exercise of their authority, forgoe the tools of war and oppression and follow the Way of justice and peace for all who live on this earth." Later, because I was one of the first concelebrating priests to receive communion, I was given a ciborium filled with the consecrated bread of holy communion to distribute to the congregation. I took up a position in the transept and began one by one, to share the Body of Christ with the Body of Christ: "Cuerpo de Cristo... Cuerpo de Cristo... Cuerpo de Cristo..." "Amen, amen, amen...," came back the responses from the people before me: "So be it... Yes... I believe..." For awhile I had shivers going up and down my spine with the sheer beauty and grace of this simple and true mystery that I cannot help but love.
Later, up on the Cathedral roof, a family from Grenoble recognized me and asked if I was the priest who gave them communion today. I said I must have been. We then visited and took pictures of one another up on those slanty stone heights, suddenly we were friends and fellow pilgrims bound together in communion with one another for having walked (mostly) to the same place from very different directions.
After the liturgy, I said goodbye to Edmon who was on his way to the bus station to get a ride out to Finisterre, the "End of the World" in medieval times since it is the furthest point west of the European continent (or so I am told). Tradition has it that pilgrims burned their pilgrim clothes there to mark the end of their pilgrimage and their old life and the beginning of a new life renewed and purified in faith and love by their months on the Way. I was told by our rooftop guide that many ( presumably those that didn´t go on to Finisterre) did the same thing on the Cathedral rooftop at the spot exactly above the main altar and the tomb of Santiago, a spot now marked by a green bronze cross set atop a stone image of the Agnus Dei, the Lamb of God.
After Edmon´s departure, Toni and I met again, he having driven back up from his home in Ourense, about an hour away. We had an important invitation to attend to. Father Alejandro Barral, the retired director of the Cathedral Museum and a relative of a friend by marriage, invited us to lunch and an entertaining and energetic afternoon of talk about the Cathedral, Santiago and the historicity of the tradition of his burial here. Most people disregard the tradition as clearly unfactual, but Don Alejandro held out the possibility that there might be some historical truth in the old story; the attestations from ancient sources go back way beyond the 9th century when the saint´s relics were "rediscovered" and the archeological evidence shows that the site under the Cathedral altar was an ancient Roman cemetary, and that there was a Christian cult there of significant importance from very early on. He made a pretty convincing case for at least holding out the possibility that Big Jim´s bones really might have found their way from 1st century Palestine to this remote corner of Galicia. Anyway, it was great fun sitting at the feet of one of Compostela´s most learned experts in the history of Santiago and his cult through the ages. He is the one who got us into the tour of the Cathedral rooftop, by the way!
Toni and I passed the rest of the evening talking church and religion over a couple of beers in a tapas bar. Then it was back "home" to my hostal and now its almost time for bed. I plan to stay here another day or two, then see a few things more, perhaps going on to Finisterre myself before the week is out. On Friday, I´ll head down to Ourense to spend the weekend with Toni and his family.

Santiago, Day 2

2007-10-21T09:22:00.000+02:00

This morning, Saturday, I began my first full pilgrim day in Santiago by heading down to the Cathedral office for pilgrims, the place where we pilgrims display proudly our "Credencial," or pilgrim passport with the seals in it of all the places we have passed through on our Way, and receive then an official certificate of completion called simply, the "Compostela." I walked through the great old doorway, headed up the old staircase and into the wide office with happy expectation of fulfilling this official act of recognition with a certain satisfaction and even joy. I announced myself, displayed proudly my Credencial, and handed it over to the nice lady behind the desk. She looked at it, noticed that the closest Spanish towns and villages were not on it, so I cheerily explained that I had begun my pilgrimage in Belgium and walked most of the way across France, just 200 kms shy of Saint Jean Pied de Port, when my foot gave out and I had to come the rest of the way by train and bus. She responded,¨"I´m sorry, Señor, I can´t give you the Compestela because you did not walk the FINAL 100 kilometers into Santiago." I was a bit stunned but surely she would relent and so protested, "But I WALKED more thatn 1,000 kilometers, there are the seals, surely THAT has to qualify me as a pilgrim!" She was unbending, "Lo siento, pero NO. The rules of the Cathedral are very strict." A weary pilgrim had come in after me. He interjected himself into the miserable situation by saying to me, "Don´t worry. You know what you did. You are a pilgrim in your heart and you don´t need a piece of paper to prove it." His words were a sort of "Go in peace!" to me, like at the end of the Eucharist. So out the door I went, remembering as best I could that pilgrims always are grateful, so I said "Gracias" as I left the office, headed down the old staircase and outside into the fresh air of this Saturday morning.
The disappointment of that event hung with me, even with the kind and true words of the other pilgrim also finding a resting place in my mind and heart. One bitter thought occurred to me, "Well, I guess I just won´t go to the noon Pilgrim Mass today if I am not a pilgrim for these people." I spit it out almost as quickly as I thought it and wandered about until 11:30 or so, then went into the Cathedral, which was already filling up with tourists and pilgrims and filling the Cathedral air with an excited buzz of whispered conversations and prayers. I made my way over to the sacristy on the other side of the nave and found a nun sitting at a desk. After my previous "rejection" I was prepared for this meeting, I had my official "priest papers" with me from my diocese documenting my status as a bona fide priest in good standing...that I CAN prove! When I asked to concelebrate the coming liturgy, she just said, "Be here at 11:45." "Do you need to see my documentation?" "Oh no; just be here." So I went back into the nave and took up a standing position near a vast stone column to take some quiet time before returning to the sacristy in a quarter hour.
So there I was, just leaning up against my pillar of stone, taking in the scene, talking to Santiago about everything, when who should walk in front of me, no more than two meters away, but our seminarian from the American College, Edmon, who began his own pilgrimage to Compostela the prevous month. At first, it seemed too good to be true so I took a second look, recognized the sky blue hiking shirt I had given him back in August, then saw him smile at someone he recognized and KNEW it was our Edmon! I called to him. He didn´t hear me above the din of the crowd. I called again louder, he turned towards me and spotted me and we both walked around to the more empty aisle to the right of the nave and there gave one another a hearty and heartfelt pilgrim abrazo. Gosh, he looked good: happy and tan and brimming with happiness. He, too, had done it: he had walked to Compostela! I told him I was very proud of him and asked about his plans. He had been intending to leave by bus after the Mass for Finisterre (the medieval "End of the World"), as many of the pilgrims do, but he changed his mind and decided then to spend the day with me and Toni. We agreed to meet after the Pilgrim Mass at the "0 kilometer" stone in the middle of the plaza in front of the Cathedral, and with that, I returned to the sacristy to vest for the liturgy.
The Pilgrim Mass was well done and the prayerfulness of the several thousand people within the Cathedral was impressive; what a collection of humanity: young, old, infirm, healthy, women, men, white, brown, dirty, scrubbed . . . here is the Body of Christ in all its splendor!
There was among the priest concelebrants one other English speaker, a priest named Robert from somewhere in England. After the liturgy (and the swinging of the great censor like a silver clad trapeze artist!), I introduced myself to him in the sacristy, then on an impulse, saw my opportunity to fulfill one further pilgrim obligation, go to Confession. So I asked him then if he´d take a moment from his own pilgrim group with whom he had been walking, to celebrate the sacrament with me. He agreed and so we found a quiet place in the courtyard just beyond the sacristy and so I began. I confessed my pride on the way, sometimes feeling better than other pilgrims who were having a harder time than I was, my bit of jealousy of those who were having an easier time than I was, and most of all, my failure to make the most of this opportunity to show forth the Way of Christ to those I met, to proclaim in some way or other the nearness of the Kingdom to us all. At about this point, something triggered in me the interior faucet that had already let go once, my eyes filled and my voice choked and I started crying again. How embarrassing! But what a relief! He put his hand on my shoulder and offered me his prayer of absolution, and then after I had gotten control of myself more or less back, we returned to the sacristy, chatted a bit more about our lives and work, then went our separate ways, me still wiping the damp from my eyes as I took one more moment in front of Santiago to kneel and thank him, then walked out the great doors to the sunny plaza outside to meet up with Edmon, and a bit later, Toni, again.
A while later, Edmon, Toni and I enjoyed a massive Spanish mid-day meal, then walked about the city and out through the great gardens beyond the old center of town, snapped a few photos, took a while to lay about on a grassy area next to a gurgling creek in the late afternoon sunshine, then had a beer and some "tapas" and the day was pretty much done. Toni returned by car to Orense, his home, and Edmon and I to our Hostel LaSalle for the night. Another pilgrim day, even without a certificate to prove it!

Santiago de Compostela

2007-10-19T22:18:00.000+02:00

Well, today, I reached the Field of Stars, not quite the way I expected, but good enough. My big day actually began last night. After crawling into bed in my Santander pension room, I put on my iPod earphones with the simple desire to listen one more time to one of my favorite hymns over these past months, Fernando Ortega's simple and moving "Grace and Peace", which meditatively sings the opening words to Saint Paul´s Letter to the Thessalonians. Even as the first chords of the guitar and his gentle voice began to sing the words, "Grace and peace to you, from God, our Father..." I found myself choking up, not just choking up, but weeping, and weeping uncontrolably. The walls of the pension were very thin and I was afraid people in the next room or down the hall would hear me so I wrapped my face inside my sheets and blankets to muffle the sound of my gasping and gulping of air. It wouldn´t stop. This is crazy, I said to myself, sort of out of myself. But out it all came: the mourning of an adventure ending too soon, the gratitude for all that has been, the joy, the beauty, the loss, the gain, the grace of it all, out it all came for perhaps ten minutes, and then, after a couple final sniffles, it was over, and to peaceful sleep I went.
I had to get up early this morning to catch the 7:15 bus to Santiago de Compostela, a ride that would take eight hours, with only stops in a few bigger cities to load and unload passengers. I had a small bottle of water and the bus provided a few snacks to nibble on as the hours passed. I watched the countryside go by, including some spectacular views of the seacoast, alternated bettween reading my "light" book, Bill Bryson's Thunderbolkt Kid and listening to my heavier book on the iPod, Paul Elie's The Life You Save May be Your Own. In the final hour, I just dozed and imagined Compostela and tried to prepare myself interiorly for the hours and days to come.
Even as I stepped off the bus in the Compostela station, my great friend, Toni, was there to meet me and give me a welcoming Galician abrazo, or embrace. I introduced Gregory the Great to Toni, then unceremoniosly threw him into the back end of Toni´s Peugeot. Toni drove me first up to the Monte de Gozo, the Mount of Joy, to see the city and the Cathedral in the distance, the Monte de Gozo is where pilgrims for centuries have caught their first glimpse of their long-awaited goal, their dream, and were filled with joy at the sight, hence the name. He and I and other friends had been there before, four years ago when I first walked the Camino across Spain and it felt good to be back. It was a clearer view today. We then drove a short ways, stopped for a hearty lunch (pork chops for me), then leaving the car, walked together the final two kilometers into the center of Santiago and the Cathedral. My bishop phoned from Rome just as I was arriving at the Cathedral to wish me well. Perfect timing, Bishop Skylstad! Thank you!
We then went inside the Cathedral, and there I climbed the stairs behind the main altar to give the great silver-clad bust of Santiago the traditional pilgrim abrazo, then went under the altar to the relics of Saint James and said my first prayers for all those I had promised to pray for over these many months. After dawdling in the Cathedral a while, Toni and I went to find lodging for myself, with the help of his Salesian friend, I got a room at the Hostal LaSalle, part of a Catholic school complex just a few blocks from the center of town.
One extra pilgrim event in the day: while on the Monte de Gozo, a newly arrived pilgrim asked Toni to take his picture standing in front of the great sculpture dedicated to Pope John Paul II that now dominates the Monte hilltop. As we walked together back down the hill, I asked him if in his travels he had come upon a Filipino pilgrim by the name of Edmon, (one of our American College seminarians who has been on the Spanish Camino since mid-September. He said, to my great surprise, that indeed he had spent several days walking with Edmon and that he should be in Santiago already. I was thrilled with the possible opportunity to share a bit of these days with one of our own sems and have tried to make contact with him, but as of this moment, we have yet to connect. Maybe tomorrow.
So now it is bedtime again. Tomorrow I will check in at the Pilgrim office and get my official certificate, the "Compostela", then go to the pilgrim Mass at noon in the Cathedral; hopefully, I still look enough like a priest that they will let me concelebrate. Toni will return for the afternoon and evening together and we'll just have to see what more happens in this beautiful, holy, long-dreamt-of city.

Santander, Day 2

2007-10-18T19:51:00.000+02:00

Today is the feast of Saint Luke, Evangelist and Apostle. I just returned from Mass at the Cathedral here in Santander (where I also got my passport stamped one last time!) and the Gospel reading was particularly poignant to me; Jesus sends the disciples out two by two ordering them, among other things, to bless each house that receives them with peace and to accept graciously whatever is set before them by those who welcome them in. Of course, they are also to proclaim the Good News that the Kingdom of God is near. I hope, I hope, I so deeply hope, that in some way I have followed those commands over the past months on the Way. I certainly haven´t lived as free of 'stuff' as the first apostles did, I carried more than 30 pounds/14 kilos of personal possessions on my back, but I have tried to be kind to all, greet peaceably those I have met, be grateful for every kindness extended to me, especially gestures of hospitality, and in some small way, preach and teach in word and deed that the Kingdom of God is not far from any of us. I certainly have felt the closeness of that Kingdom throughout these 70-plus days on the road, in the many people I have met and befriended, in the blessings of nature, in the solitude and prayer. I am and will always be profoundly grateful and humble as the Way continues in my life, wherever it leads.
Tomorrow, I catch an early bus out of Santander and seven hours later will roll into Santiago de Compostela. I will meet up with my great friend from my first pilgrimage four years ago, Toni, and we will eat, drink, tell a few stories, then, as pilgrims have been doing for 1000 years, I will ascend the great altar of the Basilica of Santiago and embrace his statue there, and more importantly, I will then descend below the main altar to his bones and say there my prayers for all who have accompanied me on my way, my family, friends, seminarians, brother priests, diocese, and all the good people who have taken me in and cared for me over these months or asked me to remember them when I finally got to Santiago. Most of all, I will thank James, Jacques, Santiago, Jacobus, for the privilege of being one of his pilgrims during this life.
Well, I'm finally getting to Santiago, not quite the way I had hoped, but good enough. I intend to hang around and help out in some way at least for a few days, so I expect pilgrim adventures will continue and I will continue to share them on this blog as they unfold. Pilgrim grace doesn´t stop rolling through our lives just because we stop walking, that´s a lesson I'm learning now.
So, on this feast of Saint Luke, I say to you all, Peace be on you and your house!

Santander

2007-10-17T21:02:00.001+02:00

I feel a bit more like a tourist today than a pilgrim. After a morning coffee in a small café in San Sebastian, I and ever-faithful Gregory the Great headed down the street to the local bus station. The plan: to head to Bilbao, about an hour away to see the Guggenheim Museum of Art, the first of architect Frank Gehry’s titanium buildings that have so captured the imagination of the world.
Upon seeing it with my own eyes and then listening to the audio description of it I was really quite impressed with the building, though not as surprised as I might have been if I had not already seen other Gehry buildings in the same style elsewhere. The building trumps the collection it holds; much of the contemporary art left me unmoved and uninspired, but a few pieces did intrigue and even delight me, like a series of rusty barrels I walked through, intricately designed like a series of strange mazes.
From Bilbao I caught another bus to Santander, still on the coast, where I am spending two nights so that I can take time tomorrow to try to visit some nearby caves with their wonderful paintings by primitive people who lived here many thousands of years ago. (It’s not clear which ones I might eventually get to see; the most famous caves, at Altamira, near Santillana del Mar, seem now to be closed to the public. The ones at Puente Viesgo apparently are open. Hopefully this will all become a bit clearer tomorrow!).
I arrived in Santander about 6:00 pm so I had some time to walk through the streets of the city before the rain began to fall; in the sidewalks were the Compostela shell and arrow indicating the direction of the northern route. I walked it for only a couple of blocks, but enough to feel like I had walked it – at least a little. Riding through the mountainous country between San Sebastian and Bilbao on the bus I was rather happy I wasn’t having to conquer those ups and downs; they were much tougher than those of France.
In spite of that hesitation and even if I am indulging in a bit of tourism I am trying to keep my pilgrim attitude and values in place as I roll along towards Compostela. That holy city is still my goal and I look forward to praying there with the multitude of pilgrims who have done so over the last 1000 years and continue to do so in their thousands.

San Sebastian, Spain

2007-10-16T20:08:00.000+02:00

As I write, I sit on the stone porch of the Cathedral of San Sebastian, a world that seems a million miles from the small towns and countryside of the French “Chemin”. This place is brimming with life, and I have not seen so many children at play in ages. Paloma, a little 5 year old, just made friends with me, asking me all kinds of important questions, like:”What are the names of your mama and papa?…Oh, Cecilia is just like my tia Cecilia!”.
It is a nice balance to a difficult morning. Once I got onto the train in Bordeaux, I entered into that strange anonymity and invincible strangerhood that so many of us westerners impose on ourselves when we travel: minimal eye contact, conversation, or engagement with the other, as if none of us exists to the others. It reinforced my sense of leaving not just France, but a whole world of pilgrims and hospitaliers and cheery “Bonjour, monsieur’s!” and “Bon courage’s”. I especially felt alienated from the non-alienation of the pilgrim life as my train slowly nudged its way across the Spanish frontier and into Irun. As I looked at the dismal train station I almost felt like asking the Lord to send one of his angels to grab me by the hair and drop me back into Saint-Ferme, so I could be again a pilgrim as before.
I caught the much smaller train into nearby San Sebastian, and found myself walking into a beautiful city, filled with life.
I was feeling hungry, so I stopped at a sidewalk café, but got restless about finding a place to stay for the night as I sat there waiting to be waited on for a half hour or so. Feeling still quite “culture shocked” inside, I got up, walked down a street, any street, saw a sign for a pension and headed for it. As I limped along the street, a girl on a bicycle overtook me, looked over, and with a big smile, called out to me:”Buen Camino”, the universal pilgrim greeting along the Spanish Camino to Compostela. It unfroze me, and I became a pilgrim again...and a human being again. It was a new day from then on.

The folks at the pension, just across the street from the Cathedral, were happy to take me in.
After a fine little “Menu del dia” in a café down the street, I walked, (still slowly) to the city beach, and decided to give my plantar fascitis a touch of surf and sand therapy.I don’t know if my walk on the beach helped or not, but it felt very good, and the sound of the waves breaking only a meter away (and sometimes right under me), was restorative, and healing of mind and heart, if not of foot.
So now I await evening Mass in the Cathedral, then I’ll have a bite to eat, then to bed.
I have no idea right now what I will do tomorrow, but feel fine about that now. We’ll just wait and see..

Bordeaux, Day 3

2007-10-15T17:28:00.000+02:00

Well, all in all, this has been a strange day. It is sort of like one of those "out of time" days after someone close to you has died and you are very busy about all the things that need to be taken care of, so busy that mourning itself is postponed. So it has been for me today. My efforts and those of my "guardian angels" back in Belgium to make contact with the local "Friends of Saint-Jacques" bore no great fruit: mostly out-of-date phone numbers; answering machines and unanswered messages. By 10:00 am I was on the street checking out bus and train schedules; bus schedules were bad, train was good, so by 11:00 I had bought a ticket to Irun, just across the French border in Spain for tomorrow morning (Tuesday), and then from Irun, I'll improvise my way towards Compostela by buses, taking several days to get there. My train ticket was returnable so if something new developed during the day, I would be free to change my mind and stay here longer or make other plans. Later in the day I went into the city center to wash all my clothes in a laundromat, and then in the afternoon, again, to buy a few items of clothing so I don't look quite so much like a wayward camper and can feel again against my skin something other than synthetic fibres, (real cotton underwear was high on my shopping list!). It has been a busy little day today; later, maybe tomorrow, I'll have to stop, take a deep breath, maybe have a little cry, and somehow say "au revoir" to the "chemin" which has been under my feet now for some 1300 kilometers.

The one thing that has come to seem obvious since arriving in Bordeaux is that continuing to walk as I had been walking just is not in the cards anymore. I spoke by phone to my brother, Bill, a physical therapist who has worked a lot with these kinds of injuries, and he was not particularly encouraging about the possibility of a quick fix; these plantar fascitis things are tough to heal in many cases. It's not likely to be good enough to do heavy hiking any time soon.
So the walking part of my pilgrimage is over for now; the pilgrimage itself continues as I now head to Compostela on wheels instead of feet. I will miss the walking, and miss it a lot, I suspect. I will miss the beautiful vistas of French countryside and its villages and the welcoming and extraordinarily kind people of France. I will miss talking to the mules and dogs and geese along the Way. I will miss the solitude. I'll miss the very special kind of prayer that is part and parcel of the pilgrim way, seldom pious, usually not so sweet, always from the heart, ("Okay, Jesus, help me out here, IF YOU DON'T MIND!!!).

In the days ahead, I'll continue to send reports to this blog as much as I am able, and when I get to Compostela on the weekend, I'll have a good talk with Santiago about this foot, and what he has been up to in getting me this far then allowing it to end so unexpectedly, and before I'm done with him I'll ask him to do good things for all who have been walking with me in prayer and through the web. I'll let you know how that goes.

Finally, I extend a special word of thanks to my Belgian "Guardian Angels," Gene and Caroline, for all they've done for me over these pilgrim months! This pilgrimage has been as much theirs as mine! And also a great "Gracias" in advance to my pilgrim pal in Galicia, Toni, who will meet me in Compostela and take me in for some days thereafter.

So, it's time to clean the mud off my boots, give Gregory the Great a bit of a clean-up, then repack him for his first train ride tomorrow; and before going to bed, say once more a not-so-pious and not-so-sweet word of gratitude to the Creator and Lord, who makes all things possible and blesses us with grace upon grace. It is an honor and a joy to be one of his pilgrims on the face of this beautiful earth...

Bordeaux, day 2

2007-10-14T22:39:00.001+02:00

What a fine sleep I had last night: 9 hours without a single awakening! I guess I was more tired from yesterday’s difficulties than I realized. It would be easy to say that THIS day was not a pilgrimage day, but that would be entirely untrue.This Sunday in Bordeaux was an altogether pilgrim day, even if I never put on my boots, jerked Gregory the Great up unto my back, nor took my trusty poles Click and Clack, for another trek across Frances’s grand countryside.

My pilgrim day began with a slow limp out of the hotel and down the street past the Gare St. Jean to the Eglise St. Croix for Sunday Mass. While sitting in a pew waiting for the 9:30 liturgy to begin, a priest in alb came out of the sacristy and began moving through the church nave, greeting one by one those gathered there. When he got to me, I told him I was a pilgrim and a priest myself, and he immediately welcomed me to join him and another priest in celebrating the Mass. I felt the warmth of his welcome as a breath of brotherhood that made me feel I was at home even here in the big city. Standing with them at the altar, especially at the moment before Communion, brought me back to my roots, to the ground under my feet, to the beginning and end of my pilgrim Way; this Jesus, he is that ground, he is the root, he is my beginning and end.

I was asked to distribute Communion to the folks present; in an odd linguistic confusion that I ordinarily would not have made, I found myself saying, as I offered the host to those before me: “le Coeur de Christ” instead of “le Corps de Christ”, (“the Heart of Christ” instead of “the Body of Christ”), an error that also had its own deep resonance of truth about it. Later I slowly walked up to the Cathedral in the city center. I spent a lot of time just sitting in the dark quiet of one of its small side chapels which had as its central image a very emotive crucified Christ, the upper body and hanging head expressive of an agony accepted and given. There was some kind of varnish on the corpus that glinted as if wet under the low light of the chapel; it looked like sweat, the sweat of legs that had walked and worked and endured plenty. In the stillness there I felt like his sweat gave meaning to my own sweat over these past months of walking, walking, walking…

Thereafter, I went to the sacristy, rang the bell and asked to have my pilgrim passport stamped; the sacristan cheerily agreed and when he unfolded the “creencial” and saw it almost full of stamps on both sides let out a typically French “Oh la la”. I felt a little proud just then. His hearty stamping of my “creencial”, with the seal of the Cathedral of Bordeaux confirmed this Sunday as a veritable pilgrim day for sure. Tomorrow I’ll see if I can get a bit of medical attention for this foot, then I’ll make decisions as to what comes next on this pilgrim adventure.

Bordeaux

2007-10-13T21:12:00.000+02:00

Bordeaux??? Aren’t I supposed to be in La Reole? Yes, that’s where I was headed when I cheerily left my refuge in Pellegrue this morning, a challenging 25 km hike.

It wasn’t long before I knew I was in some trouble. For three days or so my plantar fascia, a complex of tendons and their sheaths on the very bottom of the foot/heel has been irritated, but always before walkable. Today was different: it was like walking with a broomstick in my boot. Though not a knife-like pain, the dull ache and feeling of the whole thing being swollen made for very tough going. I covered only 5 km in two hours, and by the time I got to little Saint Ferme, I was very tired and limping badly. I knew I wasn’t going to make it another 20 km, so I asked for help in getting down the road. Saint Ferme has no bus or taxi service so I asked the local baker for help in getting a taxi from the next village to someplace where I might have some options, (walking on not being one of them!)

No taxi available, so the kind baker brought around his little delivery truck, threw my pack and poles in among the baguettes, and drove me the 20 km to La Reole, the same route I should have been walking. He took me to the train station, though I was still thinking of just spending the night in La Reole. The train to Bordeaux was approaching as I got there; so leaving La Reole behind, I hopped on and suddenly found myself in the big noisy hyper-busy world of the city, a long ways from the solitude and tranquility of the “chemin”.

As before, once again I’ve learned it doesn’t take much to crash as a pilgrim; the frailty of the human body is humbling, but humility is a prime pilgrim virtue so it’s part of the pilgrimage too. So tomorrow, Sunday, I’ll hobble off to Mass, lay low, keep off the stressed foot as much as I can, and put off making any decisions about what’s next in my pilgrimage until later. As my train hurtled its way toward Bordeaux, at one point I felt like crying a little, but no tears came; not yet anyway. Maybe they won’t be necessary and I’ll be back on my Way soon. May it be so. Saint-Jacques: Fix me!

Pellegrue

2007-10-12T10:55:00.001+02:00

As I write this, late in the afternoon, my walking work over for the day, the sky is as blue as blue can be, and the late afternoon sun softens the stone walls of this ancient town into a lovely gold hue. It was not ever so; in fact, this afternoon and this morning hardly seem to belong to the same day.
I left Saint-Foy in a thick fog, that only after several hours lifted high enough to then become a low overcast. Not a spot of sunshine brightened a fairly grim walk beside, around, and through the vineyards of this corner of Bordeaux country. Making matters worse, the tourism folks of the regional Gironde government don’t seem to have allowed the “Amis de Saint-Jacques” to put up their usual arrows to guide us on our way; they have put on their own “Compostelle” markers which follow our route, more or less, but not entirely. They disappeared entirely for several kms. Caution and an extra dose of alertness are called for, and it’s an irritation.
Making matters worse yet, my troublesome plantar fascitis decided to act up today, making walking slower and more achy throughout the morning.
Once safely arrived in Pellegrue, I retrieved the key to the municipal refuge from the local bar, then returned for a sandwich and beer. Along came another pilgrim, considerably older than myself. He too came into the bar, so I asked if he was looking for the refuge, since I had the key. He told me no, he intended to continue another 15 kms. (making a total of 34 for the day!), but he sat down with me for a sandwich and beer too. Peter began his pilgrimage in his hometown of Koblenz, Germany, and outside a bout with fleas, and another with tick, he’s been doing some great walking, getting stronger and going further each day. He didn’t look bushed at all after the same 20 km. I had just done (I always feel bushed after 20!).
I admire so much these older folks who are out here on the road, but they do make me feel a bit like a piker. We all have our ways, and not two are alike, and my more tortoisy pace has got me this far, so I don’t feel too bad.
I’m sitting in a bright little park just outside the village church; it’s a lovely old building of simple Romanesque design, except that about half of its façade is missing, and a 19th century addition of a bell tower that rather resembles a minaret. One set of windows inside has been recently filled with the faceted stain glass of Gabriel Loire from Chartres, who also did the windows for my home parish in Spokane, St. Charles. It made me feel a homey connection between this old world and that of my other life back in the States. Here and there, they are not so far apart, really. I have a spiritual foot in both, and it’s not too great a stretch…

La-Foy-La-Grand

2007-10-11T21:25:00.000+02:00

An October pilgrim couldn’t ask for a better day than the one the Creator of the universe granted me today. Even before the sun rose over the horizon on little La Cabane, it was evident we had ourselves a perfectly clear sky above our heads. After so many days of gloomy overcast, this was a treat indeed.

I enjoyed my petit dejeuner with Noëlle and her friends, dawdled over my coffee, not wanting to leave so soon such good folks, but finally hefted Gregory on my back and started down the road under the loveliest of sunshine and blue skies. Soon I passed my first vineyard in weeks; it was like seeing an old friend again, though at this time of year the vines are tinged with brown and many seem to have already had their fruit harvested. (When I passed through Champagne the grapes were still so immature, hardly grapes at all; how far I’ve come in time and geography!)
After about 2 1/2 hours on the road I stopped on the grassy verge of one of these vineyards, sat down in the grass, soaked up the autumn sunshine, listened to the back and forth songs of the birds, and snacked on granola bars. As I said, just about perfect!

Along the way I met up with a farmer herding his cattle from one field to another. He came up to me and asked: “A Compostelle?” "Yes", I said, and answered his other questions about where I have come from and what kind of work I do. When I told him that I am a priest, he went sad and said: “There are no more priests here; almost all gone, no Masses in our churches; everything is changing. Our villages are dying, the young don’t want to live here anymore. Our farms are dying too. My own children have gone to the cities and don’t want to farm. Who will feed the world when we are gone? Milk will be like petrol, always the price going up, up, up….”. He shook his head in resigned disgust, then smiled at me and shook my head again: “Courage, M’sieur.” And “Courage” to you as well, M'sieur.

The last kilometer into La Foy was a steep downhill goat trail that was a real challenge to end the day with; my guide book called it a “plonge”. And I can only presume that’s Francais for “plunge”, a singularly appropriate description of this trail down to the Dordogne river valley.
The town is a thriving place with lots of “old world character”. I’m staying the night in the local parish house, which now serves as a pilgrim refuge as well as parish catechism center and other uses. I’m alone in the big old place so rattle about a bit – all the more reason to get into town for a 5 pm beer and later a pizza. The almost perfect end to an almost perfect day!

La Cabane

2007-10-10T22:57:00.000+02:00

You probably will never find this place on your grand maps of France; it is no more than a few farm houses around a bend in the road, though a fairly big road, the D40. But I’m here, in the home of a fine lady, Noëlle, who welcomes pilgrims in with warmth and generosity, even now, when her husband, Didier, is in the hospital. Her place is at about the mid-point in a 34 km stretch of the pilgrim way that someone decided should be done in one day. Not me. I’m staying right here for the night and will finish the “etappe” in Saint- Foy tomorrow, an easy 14 km walk.

As predicted, plenty of rain greeted this weary pilgrim upon awakening, but having learned something from Patricia in St. Astier, I dawdled through my morning preparations and lingered over my warm coffee and “pain au raisin” before finally heading out the door at 9:30. The strategy worked; by then the rain was easing up considerably and though I was getting wet, my boots and jacket stood up to it.
As the morning passed so too did the rain and it wasn’t too long before the clouds had exhausted the last of the day’s load. And it was dry sailing from then on. No lightning. No thunder. And my achy plantar fascitis was manageable through the day. Saint Jacques heard my prayers!

Along the way, about three hours into the walk, I was overtaken by a bicycling lady pilgrim who called to me “Are you Kevin from Spokane?” I responded with considerable surprise that indeed I was but how did she know? It turns out she had read my inscription in the guest book back in Sorges and asked the hospitalière, Micheline, about me. Her interest was piqued because her son had been an exchange student in Spokane! We stood in the road, she astride her bike, me with Gregory the Great on my back, chatting happily for 15 minutes or so, then Hildegard from Frankfurt said: “Well, gotta go….” And off she rode, out of my life as quickly as she had entered it. But what a good time we had while it lasted; it was like we had known each other forever. That’s the way it seems to be out here in this land where pilgrims are presently quite far and few between: it’s as if because of our common life as pilgrims, experiencing and enduring much the same thing, that we know each other as friends even before we know each other. Anyway, “bon chemin, Hildegard!”

So Madame Noëlle is just about ready to serve up some home cooking (smells great, but don’t know what it is yet). The skies have mostly cleared and tomorrow will be a new day.

Mussidan

2007-10-09T19:36:00.000+02:00

The first part of today’s walk was surprisingly level, the path staying generally close to the l’Isle river as it meanders southward, (the same river that rocked me to sleep the last two nights in St. Astiers). I crossed it at least three times through the morning. The terrain is clearly leveling out as I get closer to the wine country of nearby Bordeaux.
I had one quite steep hill just after the village of Douzillac, and that is where my optimism about my successful treatment of my troublesome plantar fascitis gave way to renewed concern as the thing flared up again when I climbed upward. It remained sore the rest of the day but was not so bad as to seriously impede my walking. So I’ll have to have a serious talk with Big Jim about this; I don’t want to have to deal with this for the next 1500 kilometer!

I’m staying tonight in Mussidan’s municipal refuge, a humble place but with all the necessities a pilgrim could want. The local “Amis de St. Jacques” really go out of their way to make these refuges comfortable and homey for us. My host for tonight is Joel, who stopped by a while ago to stamp my pilgrim pass, collect a few euros from me, and give me lots of good advice about the upcoming road and towns. The last thing he told me was that tomorrow, the weatherman is predicting not only rain but also lightning and thunder. I’m praying he’s wrong (Son of Thunder, are you listening?!)

So now it’s time to collect my damp laundry from outside as the sun goes down and hang it inside the refuge with the hope that it will be mostly dry by the morning (a vain hope in regard to my wool socks). Then off into town to rustle up some dinner.

Saint-Asnier, day 2

2007-10-08T19:44:00.000+02:00

So my new pilgrim friend, Patricia, left this morning after a late rising and leisurely breakfast. I stayed put.
Last night, over our birthday pizza and pretty darn good house wine, she asked me if I was happy being a pilgrim. I hesitated in my answer. “Yes and no …I find some of it wearying: the rain, a different bed every night, the weight of the pack on my back some days, the same clothes day after day. But there are also moments of grace, inspiration, solitude filled with calm…I am happy to be here, though it’s not always fun.” Her answer to the same question was much simpler: she loves it all.
As she left this morning, almost gliding down the street, I thought that she is a natural pilgrim, while I’ve dropped into this world from another place and am just doing my best to get down the road day after day, trudging along with Gregory the Great weighing me down and my body always on the edge of another breakdown. But on I go, though not a natural born pilgrim, one by adoption - and that’s got to be good enough.

So today for me was a quiet day, mostly in my little room with the river flowing just beyond, listening to my book on the iPod, (Paul Elie’s intertwining of the lives of Dorothy Day, Walker Percy, Thomas Merton, and Flannery O’Connor), and writing in my journal, all the while tending my sore foot, (which is doing much better after its day off too). It rained a fair amount today so I was just as happy to be holed-up here as out on the road, (see, I’m NOT a natural pilgrim).

Tomorrow will hold new things to see, new thoughts to ponder, new inspirations, and, maybe, another pilgrim to befriend, then let go of….

Saint-Astier

2007-10-07T22:03:00.000+02:00

Another day, another hazy mist hanging over the Dordogne. This morning’s edition was not nearly as thick and low as that of yesterday, but not exactly cheering in advance of a 26 km. day either. Once I had walked beyond the limits of Perigueux, I was feeling better about this Sunday morning; at least it wasn’t raining, my feet and legs were working fine, and the country side I was passing through was beautiful even in the mists.
The route today had a few roller coaster ups and downs in it that were quite challenging, but later in the day the terrain leveled out considerably.
While taking a breather at an old Augustinian monastery, in a little place called Chancellade, I met up with a young Dutch girl, Patricia, who has been on the road for 17 days, and plans to go as far as St. Jean-Pied-de-Port. She is staying in the same B+B as I here in St. Astier, and today is her 30th birthday, so maybe we’ll celebrate over pizza and a glass of Bordeaux.
One new problem for me: I’ve been bothered by a small tendon in the foot for several years now, “plantar fascitis”, I think is what it is called, nothing ever too serious. But by the last few hours of today’s hike it was bothering me quite a bit; not terribly painful, but troublesome. I’ll give it a good dose of ibuprofen tonight, stretch it a bit, and hope it is feeling better tomorrow. If not, I may take the day off and give the foot some rest.
My bedroom window opens out to a great river flowing by; the sound of it as I rest and write is a grace.

Perigueux

2007-10-06T21:33:00.001+02:00

The optimistic reports about the weather passed on to me mid-week have been right only about one thing: it IS warm for October in France; the temperatures in the afternoons are getting into the mid-20s C. (upper 60s low 70s). The sunny skies just are not showing up, though. The village of Sorges at 8.00 this morning was enveloped in a dense cloud of drippy mists through which I then walked for the next 3 hours; it was so damp that water droplets were drizzling down the front of my glasses.
I walked for most of those early hours along a small highway, so for extra safety in the pea soup I put on my headlamp, a small, bright LED flashlight that straps to my forehead; no use getting whacked by a Renault.
The fog eventually lifted, though the skies remained low and grey. As I walked I passed a large goose ranch, hundreds of the birds out in a field, as a moving, cackling carpet of grey. I called out to them that they should try to break out, or they’d be seeing their livers being served up in little pieces of toast on Christmas tables all over France. They didn’t take my warning seriously, so I see nothing but foie gras in their future. Thiviers, by the way, is home to the Foie Gras Museum, and Sorges claims for itself the Truffle Museum, but can they compete with Leuven’s Museum of Witloof?
I would like to come back to this area of France, for this is Cro-magnon country, and nearby caves have ancient paintings deep within: running horses and handprints, much more interesting than truffles and foie gras.
Perigueux, where I ended today’s walk, is a fairly big city, and one of the more famous pilgrim stops from the Middle Ages. At the center of town is a massive Byzantine cathedral with a multiplicity of domes and great sweeping arches in all four directions. It is a magnificent thing, and the recent renovations to the sanctuary are beautifully done. I felt at home there, and enjoyed just sitting in its dark coolness for awhile, taking a deep breath or two after a long day on the Way.
These churches in these pilgrim towns are the real links in the pilgrim chain; the walking takes us from one to the next, with the expectation that in these great places of prayer, one after another after another, we seek and find the true Way. It’s a cumulative effect; they slowly open up more and more of the mysteries of life and God to us, the more that we walk into them and breathe in their strange air. The walking too, with all that it holds, day in and day out, does plenty of revealing and unfolding, but it’s in the churches that the truths are made explicit for the pilgrim, at least for pilgrims who are looking for truth and what is real in themselves and the universe. So I think, anyway.

Sorges

2007-10-05T17:35:00.001+02:00

Today’s 17,5 km. walk was an easy one, few hills and no mud or rain to contend with. It also was one with few encounters along the way, except for a couple of yapping dogs, and a mule that ambled across its pasture to greet me. “My, what big ears you have!” I told her. She flopped them about for a second, then wandered off as I headed up the road.
Last evening’s dinner at the table of Jos and Jeanine, along with their other guests, two women from their hometown of Tilburg, was lively and great fun. In visiting a bit more this morning with Jeanine, I was further impressed with her and Jos’ dedication to caring for us pilgrims; it is really a vocation for them, and I believe our pilgrimages belong as much to them and the other pilgrim “hôtes” along the way, as they do to us who walk.
I arrived here in Sorges at about 12.30, only to find that the refuge doesn’t open until 4 pm., so I find myself and Gregory the Great sprawled out on a small lawn, leaning up against the 12th century stone walls of the parish church, killing time until opening hour. The clouds are growing heavier so I may have to take refuge IN the church if rain begins to fall. I already spent some time there. There is a wonderful holy water font from, I suppose, the 12th century or so, carved on four sides with the cockleshell of the Compostela pilgrimage. It attests to the importance of the pilgrims to this village, who passed through here in their medieval droves. I wonder if the tradition of opening the village refuge at 4 pm. goes back to the 12th century as well?

Sorges, evening.
My host for the night arrived to open the refuge at 3.30, and as soon as we met I felt sorry for my earlier impatience. Madame Micheline is a fine host, who is spending two weeks in this little refuge 20 kms. from home to take care of the few of us who are still wandering down the “chemin”. This week she has only had two of us: my Canadian companion from a few days ago, and now me, yet she keeps the place clean and ready for whomever may yet show up.
Tonight, she had a meeting here with the newly elected president of the Association des Amis de Saint Jacques for Limousin/Perigord, whose hard work makes all of this possible for us; they prepare the maps and guides, set up the refuges, maintain the trail signs, and a lot more. He himself stamped and signed my pilgrim passport; I thanked him and all the “Amis” for all they do for us otherwise pretty helpless pilgrims.
Micheline and I shared a simple dinner together, and now it is almost time for bed; another day closer to Compostela

Thiviers

2007-10-04T17:33:00.000+02:00

"So what do you think about all these hours that you are on the road?" I've been asked that question several times over the past weeks; almost as often as "Why are you doing this?" I must admit that very often I don't think about a lot; my body and mind go into a sort of "overdrive" and I just walk, walk, walk. But even that "overdrive" experience can lead to extraordinary pilgrim moments. I had one today. I had gotten out of La Coquille at 8:00 am and though under heavy skies, didn't have to contend with rain, or even worse, the lightning that was again predicted for today. After about an hour or so, I was passing through the midst of one of the chestnut and oak forest that are abundant here in the Dordogne. I was in "overdrive", walking, walking, walking... Then in the midst of this rather dark and low woods, the road before me, my feet and legs working in tandem like a finely oiled machine (for the moment), life on the road feeling very good, and there it was: a feeling more than a thought: "I'm walking into God... God before me, around me, God enveloping me, God in the trees, God in the light, God in the road under my feet, God above, God below, God around, God about, God within, God alive, God laughing, God beholding, God caring, God crying... God in us... God in my family, God in my friends, God in our saints, God in our poor... I am walking into communion... I am walking into God..."
Well, those are a lot of words to describe a feeling, a sense, an awareness that lasted just a few moments; but its the best I can do right now. These things are so fleeting, as is most everything associated with the pilgrimage; you can't hold on to these things or the people you meet, but you can remember them and be grateful long after they are "over." Later, I will search out better words for that moment this morning; for the time being, I just am grateful and feel privileged to be here: alive, walking, experiencing so much more than just "thoughts."
Tonight, I am staying in the B&B of a Dutch couple here in Thiviers, Jeanine and Jos; though they also welcome tourists, they "specialize" in hosting pilgrims like myself. Jeanine is preparing a "healthy pilgrim dinner" for us right now. It is always a wonder that such people commit themselves to ministering to us pilgrims; how great is the great gift of hospitality. They make the pilgrim's world a lovely world to be a part of.

La Coquille

2007-10-03T16:51:00.000+02:00

Despite forecasts of thunderstorms, today has been a perfect, even glorious day for walking. The October sun is warming, yet the pilgrim never gets hot. The fields and pastures remain splendidly green, while the woods and forests are clearly changing their wardrobe to the autumn collection.
Today’s route took me mostly along dirt and grass paths, still very wet from recent rains and morning dew. I took my first fall of the journey this morning while crossing a small wooden plank placed over a creek as a sort of bridge; as I stepped of the slippery board, one foot went out from me and down I went;
but it was a soft landing and I managed to keep my fanny out of creek, mud and nettles.
Shortly thereafter I crossed into a new region of France, Aquitaine, formerly ruled over by the extraordinary Elinore, whose son, by the way, Richard the Lionhearted, took the arrow in Chalus (where I stayed yesterday), that took his life.
I only met one other person on the road today; just before arriving in La Coquille I was passed by a cyclist, who then pulled off the road at an intersection and seemed lost. I arrived and greeted him; he was a New Zealander on a week bicycle holiday from his sabbatical studies in Oxford. We had a great visit on the roadside. Since I was the only pilgrim he had seen in his travels thus far, he asked to take a picture of me to send to a friend back home who hopes to do a pilgrimage some day, “Just to show her that people really do do this!”.
La Coquille, despite its historical pedigree as a medieval pilgrim stop, seems to be a very modern village: no tipsy open-frame houses, dank and damp churches, or ruined castles about, but cheery.

Chalus

2007-10-02T14:42:00.001+02:00

Once again, it rained through a fair part of the night, but by “stepping out” time at 8.00, the rain had passed and the sky was clearing; this seems to be becoming a pattern!
Monique, my pilgrim companion from yesterday, and I, recontinued our own pattern, and though we walked together and occasionally chatted, most of the time we ambled down the road in quiet. I planned a short day today, less than 15 kms., but she intended to go on for another 15, so after tangling with a very muddy path for a couple kms., and getting lost (not too disastrously!), we arrived in Chalus, and here said our “au revoirs”, she heading down the road, and I off to look for a room for the night. I’ll miss her companionship.
I’m established in a little hotel/restaurant facing on the national highway…lots of semi-trucks roaring by my window. Oh well: such is the life of the lowly pilgrim!
I can’t help but notice as I walk on that the forests of chestnut and oak are quickly taking on a decidedly more brown cast; it is now looking like October here. Yet for the time being, the temperature remains mild; I walked today without even a T-shirt under my high-tech hiker’s shirt.
We met an 86 year old man on the road today, just completing his daily 5 km. walk to keep fit. Even from a distance he had a great smile for us as we approached, and his old eyes twinkled as we told him a bit of our pilgrim stories. He shook our hands and wished us well, a wish that was clearly from the heart. He seemed to love us for being fellow walkers. I felt as if I had just met God the Father.
I received a phone message today from Michael, one of our Louvain seminarians; he just wanted to say hello and see how I am doing. Thanks, Michael. I’m doing better for having heard your laugh again! Grace and peace to you and your AC brothers!

Flavigny

2007-10-01T19:21:00.000+02:00

As I went t bed last night I took one look out of the window to make sure the sky was still clear, promising a rain –free walk today; clear as could be! Great!
Shortly after getting up, the now familiar sound of rain running off roofs and down gutters told a new story: I was in for a very wet 27 km. day. Rats! But by the time I walked out the door of the Grand Seminaire, the rain had mostly stopped, and the skies were clearing again. Double great!
Walking out of a city is no fun; busy streets, traffic lights, confusing directions, all make it slow going. After about 45 minutes of that, my path out of Limoges intersected with that of another pilgrim. We greeted one another from across a thick intersection; she crossed over to my side, and suddenly I had a walking partner for the day. Monique is a French Canadian who speaks about as much English as I speak French, so mostly we spent the next 6 hours on the road walking in quiet, but enjoying each other’s company anyway; and thus the kms. clicked by, making the day’s walk seem much less burdensome than otherwise.
We got lightly rained on in Aix-sur-Vienne, but other than that we remained dry today. Triple great!
Flavignac is a village with a history going back 2000 years, or so the town brochure says. Certainly, it has long been a stop on the way to Compostela for multitudes of pilgrims over the centuries, and still is.
The next “official” stage in my guide is over 30 kms., but I intend to split it in two, giving me two easy days of less than 20 kms. each.
Guess what? As I write, the sweet sound of rain on rooftops and running through gutters sings softly to me:”Be ready for anything, brother” And so I shall try to be.

Limoges, day 2

2007-09-30T18:49:00.001+02:00

I enjoyed a long and deep sleep last night; it’s a wonder what sleeping between clean sheets can do after night after night sleeping in a bag!
I headed into a very quiet Limoges this morning in search of Mass at one or other of the three major churches in the old city. The Cathedral was locked, the Eglise St-Pierre was also locked. “What’s up with this town; don’t they know it’s Sunday?”, I whined to myself.
So I walked up to the third church, Eglise de Saint-Michel-de-Lion, and found the doors open and the sound of a full congregation singing pouring out into the street! I went in, the liturgy just having begun, to find the church very full, and not just with old people; there were plenty of young people and children too.
The liturgy featured the baptism of a little girl, Naomi, which was finely integrated into the wider celebration and accomplished with a beautiful mix of solemnity and the personal touch of the pastor. I was likewise touched by how well the French sing in church; unlike so many of our American Catholics, they are not afraid to join in and make together a joyful sound to the Lord that fills their great gothic church, and, as I said, even pours out into the street.
I introduced myself to the pastor at the back of the church after Mass, during the French version of “coffee and donuts”, bite-size quiches, juice and champagne (I presume it was an extra today because of the baptism, but who knows, maybe they do this every Sunday!).
The pastor welcomed me warmly, and encouraged me on my way to Compostelle; I, for my part, thanked him for the beautiful Mass he had blessed me with on the way.
Tomorrow will be a long day, 27 kms., but I’ll follow that with two short ones. These long hikes of 27 or 30 kms. take too much out of me over the long haul.
For today, my mission is to rest up!

Limoges

2007-09-29T21:22:00.000+02:00

After an extraordinary day there must come an ordinary one: a lesson for the pilgrim!
Though today’s weather was near-perfect for a 20 km. walk through the French countryside, a steep rise that lasted for 4 kms. at the beginning of the day seemed to sap me of any “overdrive” power the rest of the day. On the “pay-off” side of those early kms. was the view once I got to the top of the hill: from my sun-drenched height I was looking down on Saint-Leonard in the middle distance, still nestled in its white valleyfog, just the steeple of its church piercing through. Lovely!
The last 5 kms. of the day were of the urban kind. Limoges is a big city and it took more than an hour to negotiate its suburbs and light industrial areas before I found my way to the front door of the formerly grand Grande Seminaire of Limoges, my home for the night. It’s no longer a real seminary, but diocesan offices and rooms for retired priests, visitors, and pilgrims like me.
While I waited for he receptionist to return from her lunch break, one of those retired priests sat down next to me on a bench in the front court, and we had a fine chat in a mix of French, Spanish, and English. I can only hope I’m as bright at 86!
This afternoon I did a quick tour of Limoges’great churches and also went about some necessary shopping since this will be my last big city for most of the rest of the pilgrimage, I suspect. Super light long-johns, gloves and cap for the cooler days of October, wax and waterproofer for my boots, a new phone card to pay for these text messages, and a few groceries for tomorrow.
The next two stages in the guide are both very long ones, and I had hoped to divide them over 3 days, but by late afternoon it was clear my plan wasn’t working out; I was having no luck arranging lodging for tomorrow along the route. So I’m going to stay in Limoges one more day and then do a long walk on Monday. A day of rest on a Sunday seems to have some biblical backing, I think!

Saint-Leonard-de Noblat

2007-09-28T19:11:00.000+02:00

Well, today was quite a day.
Though it began with gray skies above, and damp cold once again marking the morning, from my very first steps out the pilgrim refuge in Chatelus, my legs felt strong and my energy unflagging. In the first couple of hours I was clocking almost 6 kms./hour going both up and down plenty of Limousin’s hills and dales. Later, the pace dropped back to about 5 kms./hour, but still great for me; I was flying today, and even Gregory the Great on my back couldn’t slow me down. With only a couple brief rest stops and a 45 minute lunch break in a small bar in Le Chatenet, I covered the 30 kms. to Saint-Leonard in a little less than 6 hours. So as not to crow too much, Jacqueline, my 65+ roommate last night and tonight, did the same.
I was quite fatigued when I reached the great church at the heart of this town, but joyful too, at having had a great walk (the sun even came out in the afternoon as in celebration!).
With Gregory still riding my back I dipped into the church, a strange melange of styles and medieval rebuilds, but beautiful nevertheless. Almost immediately, my eye caught a wood crucifix in the early medieval style, next to the altar. I went over to it, and was deeply taken by the unpainted image of Christ in his moment of transition: life, death and new life all captured in his serene face. His extended arms seemed to embrace me and bless me, as if he were herein answering my oft-repeated question on the road (expressed none too piously):”Are you still walking with me, Jesus?” Then unexpectedly my eyes welled and I had my first pilgrim cry in a thousand kilometers. I kissed his feet in gratitude for everything.
In just a little while I’m going out for a “last supper” with Jacqueline; this perky little pilgrim heads home to Paris tomorrow morning.

P.S.We ended up having pizza and cheap Italian champagne in the refuge...not bad, and fun! I'm tired, so soon to bed!

Chatelet-le-Marcheix

2007-09-27T20:55:00.000+02:00

After a full night of rain, this morning broke like an opening scene from a Dickens novel: bleak. Cold winds chased the thick mists through the soaked streets of Bénévent as I departed my cozy B+B after breakfast. The damp cold was bracing, and seemed to cut through my clothes and chill my bones right from the start. This was the kind of morning designed to test the mettle of even the strongest of pilgrims. Fortunately, I had had my day off, and felt strong before the inclemencies. I took off at a brisk pace, and maintained it for much of the day, working up quickly a warm sweat to fight the cold.
The first several kms. were easy, either level, or running slightly downhill, but after that it was mostly a long, often steep climb, up to the highest point of the whole pilgrimage, the village of Saint-Goussaud at 668m. (about 2000 feet) above sea level. There the mists had turned into certifiable clouds, the white fog wrapping itself around and about everything, making the whole world seem moody and mysterious. The fir and cedar trees that grow up there were only dark silhouettes in the midst off this stuff. After checking to see if the XIIth century church was open (nope), I stopped for lunch at a bar/restaurant and ordered the plat du jour, a really nice bit of beef in a light sauce – not bad for a mountaintop village with almost no visible inhabitants.
Sitting in the restaurant in wet clothes for almost an hour gave me the chills, and so as I left I headed down the goat track of a path with as much speed as I could safely muster; get that furnace fired again, Kev!
I dropped out of the clouds as I descended towards Chatelus, and even had about 30 seconds of dim sunshine on the way to warm my spirits if not my body. THANK YOU, GOD!
Upon arriving in Chatelus I found the village pilgrim refuge with the kind help of a lone lady in the street. Already settling in was Jacqueline, a French lady who had walked the same route as I today though we never met. An experienced pilgrim, she started this pilgrimage in Vezelay, is going on tomorrow to Saint-Leonard, and there calling it quits. The cold and rain have her ready for the return home. She tells me I am the first other pilgrim she has met since Vezelay. I think she is also tired of being alone.
After our showers and laundry were done, we walked together up to the village church, but found it locked up, as are so many of these treasures.
A little bit of sunshine is breaking through at this late afternoon, but great black clouds still dominate the sky, and it is hardly warm. The forecast sees lightning coming our way, according to this morning’s local newspaper.
Tomorrow’s walk is a very long one, almost 30 kms., but there are places to stop along the way if it gets too rough. We’ll just have to wait to see what comes our way.

A Day Off

2007-09-26T10:42:00.000+02:00

Bénévent-l'Abbaye, (Day Two):
Sometimes, a pilgrim just has to stop and take a breath. That is true while he is walking: a five minute pause (or maybe a half hour!) is wonderfully restorative and new energy is found for getting down a day's long road. The same is true on the bigger scale of the overall pilgrimage: every once in a while, the pilgrim just has to take a day off from walking and give his body and mind a bit of a rest.
I had been feeling increasingly weary over the last few days. Yesterday was my tenth day in a row to walk and I've covered over 200 kilometers in those days, most of it generally uphill, some of it steep. Not only are my legs feeling tired, but my mind, too, feels really too full of maps and directions and little yellow arrows pointing me this way or that. Last night, I asked my hosts here in the B&B, Clare and Chris, if it would be possible to stay an extra day with them; they said it wouldn't be a problem at all so I told them I'd make up my mind by morning. I awoke at about 4:30 am and my legs and feet felt so tired, even after so many hours of good sleep, that I decided then that this would be my well-deserved day of rest and recuperation. I'll need it since the upcoming days onto the big city of Limoges will require plenty of effort; a lot of it involves serious climbing uphill and one of the three days is a big 29 kilometer day.
So today, I catch up on my e-mail, read, visit this village and spend some time in its wonderful 11th century church (formerly part of an abbey, which is all gone now), and just let my muscles and mind be happily lazy for a while. I always feel a bit guilty taking these days, but never so afterwards when their benefit is so obvious. I will be more energetic and cheerier tomorrow, a better pilgrim all around.

I want to send greetings to Edmon Benzon, one of our Louvain seminarians from Sorsogon, the Philippines, who is presently walking the Spanish Camino, having finished his degree in theology in early September. Before returning to the Philippines, he decided to take a month to walk from the French border to Compostela. May his own pilgrimage be a time of growth, renewal and preparation for the next stage of his life! Keep Edmon in your prayers, too, dear readers. So to Edmon wherever you find yourself on the road: a hearty "Buen Camino!"

Benevent-l'Abbaye, Creuse, Limousin

2007-09-25T18:07:00.001+02:00

It was a very late start on my pilgrim way this morning; before heading out on the road I had to wait for the local sport shop to open at 9:30 so I could buy a new set of walking poles, one of my old faithfuls having lost its head some days back. With my new poles (not as nice as the old ones) in hand, off I went at 10:00 am. I didn’t like the feeling of being such a late starter but it did remind me that perhaps I should be a little more relaxed about my self-imposed “program” and go more with the flow. It also got me moving AFTER the morning downpour an hour earlier!

Heavy, dark clouds hung around all morning, ever threatening another deluge, but I actually got through the day quite dry, save for a few drops just as I arrived here in Bénévent. The earlier rain made all of creation simply brilliant in clarity and color: the various greens and browns of the fields, the blue of the sky (when visible between the clouds) and even the dark gray and brilliant white (“whiter than any fuller could make them”) of those same grand clouds were rich and gave me reason to be grateful I was walking this day, late start and all.

My fellow pilgrims from last night, Pierre and Thibault got almost just as late a start as I had; we kept meeting along the way through the morning and shared our humble lunches together on a stone bench in the churchyard of the Chamborand (my lunch consisted of a tin of tuna and some almonds; theirs was day-old bread sausage…all delicious!) I didn’t see them after that; I supposed they dawdled their way to Bénévent a bit more than I and are probably staying in the town refuge. I’m enjoying another B&B that also takes in pilgrims run by an English couple; though I’m paying pilgrim rates they are treating me to full B&B attention, even doing my laundry for just a couple more euros!

The weather is decidedly more cool; though it didn’t rain on me today the gray clouds brought with them the winds with a cold edge to them, harbinger of a deeper autumn on the way. I’ve noticed in recent days that the color of the cattle has changed; through Bourgogne they were all white, while down her they are all brown. It is a small sign that I am moving along: regions, geography, even stock is changing as I head south across France. I got my first blister today; it’s a small one on my second toe. I sewed it up with need and thread so hope it will be fine on the morrow.

La Souterraine

2007-09-24T21:58:00.001+02:00

Once again, morning broke as a misty and damp one, though the dawn sky showed through with a hint of blue, promising a fair day for walking. Young Evert awoke with a very upset stomach, so the decision was made over breakfast for him and Sietse to take a taxi to La Souterraine, and then from there Evert would return home. So for a second time we made our farewells, and thereafter, down the path I went, alone again.
The route took me first into a deep river valley, all green and lush and dark. There the two French young men I met yesterday, Pierre and Thibault, caught up to me, and we walked and talked together for a while, until my legs just couldn’t keep up with their much younger models; we met again several times over the day, and they are staying in the same refuge as I tonight. It is a B+B/ pilgrim refuge, that I found quite by accident. I was looking for the Tourist Information Office, after arriving in town, but was going completely the wrong direction. I sensed something was not right; then I noticed an elderly woman in her living room with the window to the street wide open, so I called in and asked her directions. She fairly laughed at how lost I was, but told me that if I needed a room for the night, the big house just down the street surely would take me in. I found the house, and indeed was taken in by Duncan and Lisa, an English couple starting up a B+B here. In their spare rooms they also take in us pilgrims. They made us a lovely dinner tonight, and are treating us like family.
As over the past days, the way has been generally climbing, as it moves up and on top of France’s Massif Central. At day’s end now I can really feel the cumulative effects of that rise in altitude; my legs are quite fatigued. A good night’s sleep usually takes care of that; it’s quite restorative!
Duncan says tomorrow should be nice weather, but more rain is expected Wednesday and Thursday, just when I should be crossing the highest point on the French Chemin, Mont Ambazac. Limoges is only a few days away, so that gives me renewed courage, even with more rain imminent..

Crozant

2007-09-23T20:26:00.001+02:00

Our first look out the window this morning revealed a heavy and damp mist covering the hills and dales of Gargilesse and environs, but no rain was falling. Praise God! A second piece of good news came thereafter: my boots were still damp after their night in the warmth of the furnace room, but good enough to walk in. Sietse, Evert and I headed down the road wrapped in mist. It was not long before we were generally climbing upward as we tackled the “skirts” of the Massif Central and entered the region of Limousin. The route was mostly dirt roads and grassy paths, except when they led us deep into creek gorges and out again, then they were more like slippery goat trails. The sun finally began to break through the morning fog about noon; how lovely its warmth as it dissipated the damp!
We finally pulled into Crozant about 4 pm. and found special pilgrim lodging at the local hotel/restaurant, the three of us sharing a room together. A beautiful river winds around the hilltop where the village is located, with the ruins of a once grand castle just across the way. The late afternoon sun illuminating the ruins made a stunning vista. I never suspected France was so completely beautiful, and now understand the exclamation:”La belle France!”.
We are meeting a few more pilgrims now that both the Northern (Bourges) and the Southern (Nevers) branches from Vezelay have come together. Yesterday a young Frenchman with his dog visited with us a while in Gargilesse, before continuing on his way. Today here in Crozant two other French young men met us as we climbed up the steep hill into the town center. I’ve noticed we pilgrims generally are becoming less exceptional and a more common part of the local social landscape.
So a new week has begun, my 8th on the road, I think. May it be a graced one!

Gargilesse

2007-09-22T09:09:00.001+02:00

What a spoiled pilgrim I must seem to Saint Jacques: I love the bright and sunny days, but feel most put upon when a day is marked by buckets of rain! Today was such a day.
I didn’t expect anything but yet another day of sunshine as I stepped out the door this morning. What met me was at first sprinkles, then, soon, a full downpour, which did not let up even once during the day’s walk. My spirits were lifted when, quite providentially, (I don’t use the word lightly), in the town of Cluis I stopped for a warming coffee and found Siedse and Evert just walking out of their refuge and across the church square. They joined me for the coffee, and together we continued our journey onto Gargilesse.
They had received word that they should not proceed by the regular route in this rain, since it would be almost impossible to pass, and that they should take the highway instead. Without meeting them I might still be mired in the muck of that path.
At about 17 kms. my boots could not keep up with the rain, and the insides of my fine boots became a mush of wool, coolmax, and rainwater: slish-slosh the rest of the way; ugh!
Gargilesse is a very quaint village of artists, which draws plenty of tourists (though not on rainy September days); it was made famous by a certain George Sand, a woman author and artiste, who seems to have made love to just about everyone of renown of her times, including Franz List and Frédéric Chopin. Aside from that, the church has beautiful frescoes from the XIIth century, worth a side trip from almost anywhere in France you might find yourself.
Now it’s time for bed; the three of us are sharing a room for the night, and tomorrow we cross into the Limousin, and up towards the Massif Central. I have finished the “South Branch” of the chemin de Vezelay. Wow!

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2007

Neuvy- St- Sepulchre.
After walking with companions for the last two days, going at it by myself alone today made this day’s solitude on the road all the more deeply felt. As I walked out of La Chatre, a gaggle of schoolgirls stopped me on the sidewalk just to ask who I was, and what I was doing, and where I was from. They giggled and tittered as 11 year olds do worldwide, and seemed delighted to have begun their schoolday having met an old duffer on his way to Spain from Belgium by foot. I was all smiles too as I left them heading down the street waving back at me with great pleasure.
Today’s route had a lot of climbing in it, which made it a bit tougher day than I had expected. Just before entering this town I lost the all important titanium tip off one of my hiking poles, which makes it fairly useless; this is my first major technical malfunction of the pilgrimage so far; not a catastrophe, but an annoyance. I’ll have to wait until I get to Limoges about a week from now to look for a new set.
Neuvy’s center is dominated by an 11th C. round Romanesque basilica, the only such church in France. It was built to hold two relics brought back to the town from the Holy Land: a chip of stone of Jesus’ tomb, and a vial of Jesus’ blood, collected (somehow) from his crucifixion. They are both still on display in a side chapel.
I’m staying in a lovely refuge right in town but next to a lake and grassy park.
Tonight, back in Louvain, a new rector is being installed in the American college, as a new academic year begins. To Bishop David Ricken, Msgr. Ross Shecterle, and all the AC staff and students, who are even now in the midst of a great celebration, I send my pilgrim prayers and I offer this day’s pilgrim walk to you all! God bless you all and make fruitful the work of your hands!

La Chatre

2007-09-20T22:11:00.000+02:00

My two Dutch companions and I got the new day off to a less than speedy start, not getting on our way until nearly 9.30 am. That is their usual pattern, not mine, but in truth I didn’t mind very much for I was very happy to have their company for another day. We had quickly grown used to one another and made a good little pilgrim team together.
So off we went to walk another day, me just 18 kms, they almost 36 kms.
It was a bright and fresh morning, cool and sunny as we passed through fields of cut hay, black sunflowers ready for harvest, and occasionally a bit of oak forest. After about 2 hours we took a break in some tall grass shaded by leafy poplars. Sietse found some ripe grapes on a stray vine which he shared out to Evert and me. I said aloud, “I can’t think of a single reason to complain just now; the sun is shining, the sky is blue, my legs are strong, I’m eating ripe grapes from the wild and I’m with two fine pilgrim companions. What more in life could a man ever want?”
After a final meal together in a little restaurant in Lacs we walked the last 2 or 3 kms. into La Chatre and made our way up to the church in the town center. We took some time inside, then returned outdoors to make our goodbyes, for they were committed to going on. Evert asked (again) if I wouldn’t walk further with them but I declined; I’d had enough for one day, especially after 2 very long days before. So we dropped our packs, gave one another a fraternal embrace, then went off in opposite directions, they to continue walking and I back to the Youth Hostel where I planned to spend the night.
I found the hostel but was disappointed to discover that it would not open for two more hours; so I found a little park near a stream and sprawled out in the grass to make my traveling plans and reserve accommodations for the next two nights. I also wrote of the day in my journal, then at 5:00 pm walked back to the hostel and got my room. As it turns out, I’m the only one in the place tonight so I have it all to myself.
I wonder if Sietse and Evert made their additional 18 kms and if they found a decent place to spend the night wherever they finally landed? Santiago will take care of them, I’m sure…

Chateaumeillant

2007-09-19T18:40:00.000+02:00

Though it was completely unplanned, my two fellow pilgrims, with who I spent the night, and I ended walking together throughout the day. Sietse and Evert are father and (teenage)son, Dutch, from the island of Texel.
As we finished our breakfast with our hosts, Paul and Anne, we were all ready to go at the same time, so off we went down the gravel path together. Since beginning this pilgrimage, this is the first time I have walked with anyone else (except the first day out of Leuven). It was enjoyable to have their company and to witness the care and good humor they share with one another as they wander down the road, sometimes ahead of me, sometimes with me. I think they enjoyed having me along with them as well. When we finally arrived here in Chateaumeillant, we passed by the parish church, a XIIth C. Romanesque mountain of a church, and I had the pleasure of explaining a bit about the church’s architecture and its meaning, and they were very attentive to the little I was able to offer them.
We finally got to the municipal refuge, located in the basement of some sort of center next to a lake and campground. It is very simple but adequate, but we all mentioned that it lacks the personal touch of hosts like Paul and Anne.
Another Dutch pilgrim, Thomas, arrived on bicycle, at the same time we did, so there are four of us here tonight.
It was another long day on the "chemin", 25 kms. but the weather was great for ambling down the road all day.
Next issue for the day: ”What about dinner?”. Rumor has it that all the restaurants in town are closed. This seems hard to believe, but who knows, maybe tonight we starve…

P.S.
We found a boucherie just as it was closing and bought some leftover pizza, a small saucisse, and from a bar a bottle of local wine (quite good), so we had a good if inelegant dinner after all!
Demain we’ll walk together to Chatre; then they will go on after I stop for the day (17 km.)

Loye-sur-Arnon

2007-09-18T19:15:00.000+02:00

Loye-sur-Arnon.
I’m actually at a pilgrim hostal about 2 kms. beyond Loye, a farm called Foret-Vieille. Our hosts are a retired couple who made a bit of their place into this refuge. Accomodations are spartan but clean and most welcome after a very long day on the road. I’m here with 2 Dutchmen, a father and teen son team who started in Vezelay and have 3 weeks available to see how far they get. I’m the first other pilgrim they’ve met; there aren’t many of us out here, I guess.
I left Charenton at 7.30 under very heavy clouds, but no rain. The early morning breeze was cold. Almost the whole 10 kms. to Saint-Amand was along a grassy path next to a canal; my boots and eventually my socks got quite wet again, but not sloshy. I got lost enough in St. Amand to add another km. to my day’s walk, but eventually got to the church, (always the end-point and point of departure in my guide). I spent some quiet time within its dark and warm Romanesque interior (not much Gothic in these parts), said my prayers, then stopped in a bar across the street for a coffee (as ever, all the “regulars” stared at me like I was really strange). Then I headed out of town for another 18 kms.
Blessedly, the heavy clouds broke up into bundles of cumulousities (I think I just made up a word), letting the sun shine intermittently enough to warm me up after a cold and damp morning; the last hour of walking was actually quite warm. There are still lots of dark clouds about, so I don’t know what tomorrow will bring.
I really pushed my limits today, walking just shy of 30 kms., too far really, but in the end I made it, and though tired, seem no worse for the wear. Tomorrow will be less: about 24 km.

Charenton-du-Cher

2007-09-17T18:05:00.000+02:00

My sojourn in the Auvergne was a brief one; today I passed into another region, “Centre”, and the department of “Cher”, landing in this little village after about 18 kms. of walking. Ordinarily, that would be a fairly easy walk, but not so today: just as I left the little hotel of Valigny at 8.00 am., rain began to fall and remained persistent most of the morning. Even with my gore-tex jacket I still got plenty wet, soaked, actually. I was happy to be welcomed into the private home of a kindly older couple, Mme et Mr. Mativon, who happily offer pilgrims a room and feed them for the night. The house has been in their family for 6 generations, and must once have been a great beauty though now its glory is somewhat faded. Not faded is the hospitality and generosity of my hosts, who are wonderful.
The weather will, I hope, be better tomorrow, at least not so wet; I’m planning a long walk for tomorrow, about 28 kms., so could use “cool” and “dry” from the weatherman. If it is too wet, I’ll stop earlier; damp socks inside damp boots are no fun after a certain point…and lead to blisters. Places to spend the night are more limited than I thought they would be this side of Vezelay, and their placement determines the length of a day’s journey as much as physical well-being. It is not at all like the Spanish “Camino” where every village has its cheap or free refuge. It’s a little frustrating in the afternoon to plan the next day or two, but once I start walking the next morning I don’t care so much and feel more trusting that things will work out.
So am I up for 28 kms. tomorrow? It will be my first walk that long since returning to the pilgrimage after my month of tendonitis recovery. We’ll see!
“Rain, rain, go away; come back some other day!” as we used to sing as kids!

Valigny

2007-09-17T10:21:00.000+02:00

Morning dawned with a great fog spread over the countryside. The damp coolness felt like a mid-September morning should with fall coming on. As I walked through the morning the fog burned off, and once again the feel of summer returned as the sun rose ever higher in the sky.
By 10.45 I had arrived in the village of Lurcy-Levis just as the church bells were announcing the 11.00 Mass. The priest was a very old fellow who had troubles moving about, but he moved about anyway; it was a simple but lovely liturgy, made especially so by the man who confidently led us in the hymns and acclamations. I am always surprised how well the French sing in church; the people in France’s pews really do their part. After Mass the pastor and congregation were very attentive to me, wishing me well and asking all the usual questions: Where are you from? How many kms. a day? Where will you end today? Where did you begin? Etc. I felt rather adopted by them all and felt a little sad to move on down the road, though I now know all relationships and encounters on the Way are necessarily fleeting. I also know that that doesn’t mean they are superficial; on the contrary, today’s promises to pray for me and requests that I pray in Compostelle for them when I get there were accompanied by smiles and handshakes that bespoke plenty of sincerity and even fondness among us. I felt like they were my people, and I think they felt like I was their pilgrim.
I didn’t get out of Lurcy till 12.30, so the remaining 12 kms to Valigny were very warm, even hot, and seemed very long. I’m back in a small hotel/restaurant for the night, the only lodging available within 10 kms.

Le Veurdre, day 2, morning

2007-09-15T21:36:00.000+02:00

After a simple dinner last night with my hosts, Monseur & Madame Foucaud, I returned to my own little pilgrim house and after doing some writing in my journal, I stepped out into the back garden to take a look at the night sky. At first I could see almost nothing above me; my eyes were still tuned to the bright lights of the indoors. Then, after a moment, it all became wonderfully clear: Oh my! The stars! They filled the dark sky in sweeps of luminescence! Above me almost directly was the Milky Way; Via Lactea, the outer edge of our galaxy; or best, as the French themselves sometimes call it, Le Chemin de Saint Jacques. It wraps itself around our little earth, girding it with light for the night. What a joy to behold it, or rather, feel it so near! I feel it is somehow mine out here...my via, my chemin, my Way of Stars. Not mine in a selfish way, as if I could possess such a thing, but mine in the sense of it dedicating itself to me and the other pilgrims walking to Compostela or Rome or Jerusalm. This Via, this Way is at our service; it is taking us along as much as we are walking along its path. Though it belongs to all, it is ours.

Le Veurdre

2007-09-14T22:14:00.000+02:00

Just before entering this village I left behind Bourgogne, and entered the Auvergne, a small sign I’m making progress out here. From St. Parize I found a direct route to the next village on the way, St-Pierre-le-Moutier, which saved me at least 4 kms of backtracking. I was able to plan on getting further down the road than I thought yesterday, so called a B+B
10 kms beyond St-Pierre, in Le Veurdre.
On the way I stopped to see the church in St-Pierre, another XIIth C. beauty. I especially was happy to find a very old statue of St Jacques looking down on me from a niche on the outside corner of the church. What a lovable old fellow! His hat with shell, his staff topped with a gourd, but most of all, his kindly old eyes sizing up this latest of pilgrims to wander past his feet. How many centuries has he been doing this and how many of us, over these centuries, have whispered the same little prayer I did (or the medieval equivalent): “Big Jim, walk with me. Get me there. Thanks”.
I was just delighted to be welcomed warmly to this B+B, like an honoured guest, not another customer. The little house I’m in is like my own little home. This is not just a B+B, this is a place my hosts have prepared, at some expense, just to receive pilgrims! The Foucauds have walked part of the Chemin themselves, and are enthousiasts of St. Jacques; this is their expression of that enthusiasm. After settling in this afternoon I called the only lodging in the next destination village, Valigny. No room available tomorrow (Saturday), and nothing else nearby. Sunday is fine, so I’ll take tomorrow off and enjoy this place for another day before continuing. I’ve walked about 120 kms. with Gregory the Great on my back in the last week; I guess my legs deserve a “repose”.
Sunday will see me back on the road, a happy pilgrim again…

Saint-Parize-le-Chatel

2007-09-13T20:28:00.000+02:00

This village is not where I expected to end my day, but here I am, in yet another low-grade “Hotel-Restaurant”. It’s better than sleeping outdoors, but not as good as most of the B+B’s I’ve stayed at and more expensive.Today’s minor problem is that I ended up about 5 kms off the prescribed Way. I thought this hotel was just a km and a half off the route, so made the reservation this am. I was not amused after 21 km on a warm afternoon to arrive in Moiry and learn my hotel was in Parize, 4 km down the road. A kind young girl sympathized with me and gave me a lift in her little red Renault, but tomorrow I’ll have to walk the extra kms on my own legs.
I left Nevers after some more time in the chapel with Bernadette; I felt like she was joining my pilgrimage as another sainted companion on the Way. I like her companionship. The candle I lit last night was still burning as I left.
I passed through the cathedral on the way out of town and spent a minute or two with the great peaceful Christ I mentioned yesterday. The pastor spotted me and came up to greet the pilgrim; he was very kind and offered to stamp my pilgrim “credencial’ for me, then walked me a block or so to show me the way forward. It took a while to walk out of the busy city but soon enough I was back among the grand farm fields that are now so much of my visual life out here. As I passed through the small town of Magny-Cours, a lady called out to me from her front door to wish me well and offer me a cold glass of water.
Maybe she be doubly blessed in the Kingdom of God for her charity towards a stranger! Wish that I were so kind!
The September sun is shining, the legs are holding up, the French people continue to inspire me: I don’t mind being in the wrong town tonight!

Nevers

2007-09-12T19:28:00.001+02:00

This morning’s walk was an easy and pleasant 16 kms to the big city of the area, Nevers.
Upon entering the city my almost ever faithful Compostelle arrows disappeared, and left me trying to figure my way with only my map at hand, and I’m not much of a Boy Scout!
I was misdirected once by a lady on the street which sent me off wandering into a suburb of Nevers…about a 1 km. mistake, so not so tragic.
My first stop was the wonderful Romanesque church of St. Etienne, dark and heavy and cool. Some French tourists were inside and seemed delighted to have a real pilgrim show up on the scene. They ended our little visit in the nave with the now so familiar “Courage”.
I made my way then through the streets of Nevers to the “Espace Bernadette”, where the sisters welcomed me and gave me a room for the night (well, they didn’t really “give” me the room, I’m a paying guest, though it’s a bargain!). The convent chapel is just across from me, where Bernadette’s uncorrupt body is kept. It’s open to the public, and there are always a good number of people there, all very prayerful and quiet.
The Cathedral is an easy walk from here. A 13th C. crucifix in the nave really attracted me; there is little emphasis on the gory details, Christ is completely peaceful in his death and life seems still to be emanating from his body. I find this kind of image invites me into the mystery of Christ more than others.
No need to stay here another day, but I’m a little concerned about tomorrow’s trek: it’s 29 kms to the next town with very little in between; I’m trying to contact a family that takes in pilgrims at 21 kms, but no answer so far. I’ll keep trying.

Guerigny

2007-09-11T18:27:00.000+02:00

Last evening as I came down for dinner in the restaurant half of my humble hotel I was presented to two other pilgrims already seated, both French-speaking Belgians, Daniel and Jean-Pierre. They welcomed me to their table & together we enjoyed our “plats du jour”. I was amazed that they were putting in 30+ km days, double my average since re-beginning, and Daniel was almost my own age. I was jealous of their fitness for just a moment; then considered I have nothing to complain about especially after my August hiatus. At least I’m walking…that’s something!

During the dessert course, it dawned on me that I had forgotten to take my little mountain of pills in the morning, two of which do a great job of keeping my ticker in proper time (atrial fibrillation inherited from Mom). Then it hit: Thump, thimp, thump-thump… and lasted the whole night and into this morning. After some hasty messages back to my doctor in Leuven, the word was that I could walk today when the ticker got back into sync. I waited quietly on my bed, but with some concern that it was never going to get back to normal, sent a quick word to St Jacques for coronary assistance, then at 9:30 it just clicked back into fine working order.

I said my thank yous, quickly packed up and was on my way to Guérigny, 18 km down the Chemin. I practically flew down the path, hiking more than 5 km/ hr, including a couple of long climbs: that’s great for me! So just when I felt less than adequate next to a couple of super-walkers, AND then got stopped in my tracks by my own fliberty heart, I somehow still put in a great day of walking (I was a machine out there today!) Thanks Big Jim. Tomorrow I’ll hit the big city of Nevers about noon. Bernadette of Lourdes is buried there; she has become a focus of modern pilgrims. So I will be sure to pay my respects and offer a prayer for friends and family. Whenever one of us Codd kids was seriously sick, out came the Lourdes water; it must have worked - we’re still all pretty healthy.

Premery

2007-09-10T14:57:00.000+02:00

Continuing from yesterday: I safely negotiated the dark parking lot and lightless and paperless public toilet at 6.15 this morning and thus began a new day…
After getting my stuff all back together and settled into Gregory the Great’s interior I sat down for my breakfast before taking off: coffee, yoghurt, and cold pork sandwich. Not so different from last night’s dinner: cold pork sandwich (first half), or yesterday’s lunch: cold saucisse sandwich. Tonight I’ll have a proper dinner for a change! Anyway, it was enough to get me a fair ways down the road in good time: I did the first 10 kms. in just 2 hours (after that I slowed down a bit). The morning was cold enough to see my breath and stayed cool until about 11.00, just as I came into Premery. September’s mists curled over the countryside like diffuse streams of white angel hair on a Christmas tree, then lifted and disappeared. Lovely, but a reminder that summer is quickly being overtaken by autumn.
My first look at Prémery does not leave me so impressed; it has the aspect of a once busy town that is on the wrong side of progress: lots of closed shops and storefronts. I’m spending the night at a low end hotel/restaurant. Toilet: almost like yesterday: downstairs and outside (and shared with the restaurant guests).
A final word for today about Gregory the Great, not my pack, but the real one. I was listening to Thomas Cahill’s “Mysteries of the Middle Ages” last night, and was pleased by his comment that Gregory was the most pastoral pope until John XXIII, because of his openness to adapting Christianity to the barbarian cultures of Europe. Much of popular Christian culture as it has come down to us is a direct result of his wisdom, everything from Easter eggs to Christmas trees. I like this Gregory and I’m glad to have him along as yet another patron saint of this pilgrimage!
A demain…

St. Reverien

2007-09-09T15:37:00.000+02:00

One thing I have learned as a pilgrim is that a good sleep makes all the difference in how a day on the Way goes; last night I fell asleep quickly but woke up many times to the strange noises my Trappist roommate made in his sleep: not snoring, but loud exclamations incomprehensible to me, and enough to keep me restless and tossing and turning till dawn. So today’s 19 km. walk was a fatigued one where every step was work and almost nothing was fun. Just one of those days…..
My destination, St. Révérien, is a little Vezelay without tourists or religious in its quiet streets (also no store, café, or restaurant); it too is set on a hill and its 12th century church is mostly Romanesque and very beautiful, having once been a priory of the Cluny Benedictines. The patron, St. Révérien, was a 3d century missionary to this region in the time before the Romans liked Christians, so he had his head removed by the Romans, who had a garrison near here.
I’m holed up in the city’s refuge for pilgrims, and alone so far; it’s a nice place but it took some work to discover that the toilets are the public ones across the “Place de la Eglise”. That will be fun at 6 am! In the mean time, I rest my feet, do my wash and hope for a good night’s sleep!

Corbigny

2007-09-08T18:01:00.000+02:00

I had my longest and most challenging day of walking since returning to the Way a week ago. The 21 kilometers between Bazoches and Corbigny are marked by long and steep ascents and descents, such is the topography of this corner of Bourgogne. The positive side of this is that the scenery is stunningly beautiful, all green and glorious, especially in the morning sunshine! After one long climb that left me breathless, I was met at the top by a Dutch couple who have a small summer home in the village of Chemin. They welcomed me to sit and enjoy a tea with them in their lovely vegetable garden, and we shared a most pleasant hour chatting about things American and religion in our times. As I got ready to get back on the road, Louise and Adrianus pulled a couple of apples from their tree and gave them to me for the road. Such simple but gracious kindness! I am staying tonight in a pilgrim refuge with a very kind and helpful lady caring for us. I am here with a Belgian Trappist who has walked to Compostella already, it seems, and is returning home now, also on foot. He speaks no Anglais, and my Francais is not good enough to learn more of his story. Tomorrow will be much of the same terrain, I presume. Even more of a concern is that the village I will spend the night in has no stores or cafes, so I will have to bring food enough for two days….more weight in my pack!

Bazoches

2007-09-07T22:01:00.000+02:00

Only fifteen kilometers from Vezelay, this hamlet is another world: all farms and fully rural except for two grand chateaus in the vicinity. The route out of Vezelay was very well marked with Compostelle arrows, something new. Much of it was an old Roman road. The hills of Burgundy are not insignificant, and it seemed I was climbing more than descending: today’s fifteen kilometers were work! Last night I was invited to concelebrate Vespers and Mass with the Fraternity of Jerusalem in Vezelay’s Basilica of Mary Magdalene; the liturgy was the very image of “solemn simplicity.” I was honored to be there and pray with them. Gene and Caroline Foley, my guardian angels who have stayed close during these last few days of trying out my tendons and walking again, left for Leuven after breakfast this morning. How grateful I am for their unstinting support and encouragement in getting me out on the Way again! Tomorrow will bring me to Corbigny, I hope!

A Kingdom-of-God Kind of Place

2007-09-05T22:53:00.000+02:00

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.

Packing Up Gregory the Great

2007-09-01T15:23:00.000+02:00

Waterloo (hopefully for the last time!). With an 8:00 am departure planned for tomorrow, Sunday, today is a "laundry and pack" day in which all the little odds and ends of getting ready for a trip are filled with a quiet excitement and a pleasant feeling of expectation. There is anxiousness in these activities, too. Will the tendon stay well? Will my knee hold up? Will the September weather remain warm enough for my summer-weight clothes, and if so, what about October? How much French have I forgotten in the past month? How lazy and out-of-shape have I become? Do I still have the gumption to get up and go and do this thing? Ah well, as with my last June days in Leuven before commencing this pilgrimage (for the first time), my interior response to the fretting is: "Your job is to just BEGIN; let the Lord and Big Jim take care of the rest!" So I'll just begin...again.

The laundry is now washed and pretty much dry and the sorting of things has begun. It is time to start feeding my socks and shirts and various gizmos back into the wide open mouth of Gregory the Great, my ever-faithful backpack (its brand name is "Gregory"; I added "the Great" in honor of the 6th Century pope who's feastday, by the way, is Monday, September 3rd). Keeping the weight down is, as always, the great challenge as I deal with Gregory, that and actually carrying him, of course.

The plan is to take it easy the first few days; it is about 60 kms from Tonnerre to Vezelay, the great pilgrim town built on a hill, but I'll do those kms in easy to digest "etapes": 10 tomorrow (Sunday afternoon), 15 on Monday, 20 on Tuesday, 15 into Vezelay on Wednesday. I will rest and visit this beautiful town and its basilica dedicated to Mary Magdalene on Thursday before continuing south on Friday. That's the project for this week.

So I am about to take up again the cloak and staff of the walking pilgrim again. I am happy but also hope that I am up to it, not just physically, but interiorly. This is a special kind of work, a sort of "ministry of presence" in the church and world. This is something I discovered in July and have had some time now to think about and relish. How often people along the way came to chat with me and share in a way in my Way. Sometimes, it was almost like they were saying, "Look! A pilgrim passes! Let us go and get a touch of his pilgrim graces!" I felt sometimes like a spiritual talisman or religious charm for them, as if they believed that by greeting me or feeding me or shaking my hand, they were being blessed by Saint Jacques and the Lord, too. There is responsibility in that: to be gracious to them as they are gracious to me, to be a blessing for them as they are a blessing for me, to sow a bit of hope or faith or love in my passing through their lives even as they sow the same in me. Few have ever asked why I am doing this; they seem to know, or it doesn't matter: "Once a pilgrim, for whatever reason, the pilgrim grace is there." I don't think I was imagining this. I look forward to going back to that pilgrim ministry now.

I'll post updates here as often as I am able in the days and, dare I hope, weeks to come. Thanks for following along!

The Doc Says "GO!"

2007-08-30T11:19:00.000+02:00

GOOD NEWS! I will be continuing my pilgrimage on Monday of the coming week! The troublesome tendon quite suddenly decided to get better on Sunday and has continued to improve since. I went to the local physical therapist in Leuven yesterday (Wednesday) and he suggested giving it a few more days of rest, ice, light exercise and stretches, but after the weekend, he told me, I should be good to begin again. He noted that there is always the risk of further problems and that if the tendon flares up again, stop. But on the other hand, there is also a good chance that it will be fine and I won't have more problems further on. So on Sunday, my friends, the Foleys, will drive me back down to Tonnerre, France, where I left off and then stay close by for a few days to make sure all goes well. They will even carry my backpack for the first couple days to let me "break in" more easily.
I'll continue sharing my daily progress on this web log. And beginning next week I'll be back using my French mobile number: +33 674 70 42 61.
I'm very happy about this, all the more so because I had been lately seriously doubting that I would be able to continue. My plans must change in that there is now no way to go all the way to Compostela but if I can make it at least to St. Jean Pied-de-Port in the Pyrenees where I began my previous pilgrimage, I'll be more than satisfied. That is still almost 1000 kms to walk (600 miles) and almost two months to do it, so it is still a substantial challenge ahead. Thanks for all your prayers and support! Keep it coming!

28 Years and Counting

2007-08-26T10:52:00.000+02:00

Waterloo (still!). Yesterday, the 25th of August, marked the completion of 28 years of life as a priest for me. My sense of calendar time has become so amorphous this summer that, though I knew it was Saturday, I wasn't aware of the date until last evening when I turned on my mobile phone to check for messages. There it was on the opening screen where calendar items and appointments are listed: "Ordination Anniversary--Kevin." I am glad to have noticed before the day ended for I am grateful for this life and have never felt I could be anything other than what I was led to and what I have done my best to say yes to all these days and years since Saturday, August 25, 1979. I am happy to be a priest and could be no other. It is me. Even with my faults, failings and multiple sins along the way, priesthood has been and remains the real pilgrimage of my life. As I have walked my way through these years, every day has brought graces and blessings and "kingdom moments" in abundance, almost always "incarnated" in the extraordinarily ordinary people who I meet along the way. Every confessee, every counselee, every person I've given communion to, every person I've ever buried: what a treasure to meet them and walk with them for a brief moment or two in their own various pilgrimages. I regret not a wit the fundamental choice to be a priest, but only my failures in generosity, my laziness in prayer, my lack of wisdom in guiding others, and my many and varied sins along the way that have kept me from being more like Jesus. What more can I say: I am grateful!

So how's the leg, anyway? Obviously, I'm still here in Waterloo, beginning my fourth week of "hiatus" from the geographical pilgrim route (the interior pilgrimage, of course, continues!). There are some signs this weekend that it may be getting better; the crepitation (that is, the gritty, grindy feeling when the tendon is extended and relaxed), is negligible this morning though some ache remains. This gives me some hope that it may finally be healing itself, but after so many minor improvements followed by relapses, I am not yet ready to declare myself free to go on. I've given myself to the end of this week to make a decision about calling the rest of the pilgrimage off. If I choose not to go on, I shall go to Spain and as quickly as possible get set up in a pilgrim refuge or parish along the pilgrimage route and use the remainder of my time to care for others among St. James' beloved pilgrims. That would hold stories and adventures worthy of telling too, I'm sure. Stay tuned!

In the meantime, I read. I finished on Friday a little novel called Vernon God Little, which won the Booker prize in 2003. I enjoyed coming to know the central character, a sort of Bart Simpson on steroids, but found the line of the story by the end neither very believable nor, alternatively, very insightful as a presumed satire of American society and our way of pursuing justice. Now I am half-way through American Gospel, a brief history of the relationship between religion and state in the United States. Next on the reading list? Fr Vince is encouraging me to dive into the final volume of the Harry Potter series. Maybe, if things go well, I'll be back in my own special pilgrim world of adventures and mysteries somewhere south of Tonnerre before I get to it!

Not quite yet...

2007-08-19T15:13:00.000+02:00

Waterloo. The cast on my left leg came off on Friday morning as expected. It was a simple and straightforward process: the young nurse wielded her buzz saw and sliced down one side and up the other, then pried the two halves open with an oversize pair of pliers, and, voila, the cast was in the trash can. I immediately stretched my foot forward and back, feeling with my fingertips for the "scratchy" feeling in the tendon that indicates inflammation and finding none. A bit of sensitivity at the top of the tendon remained but seemed very minimal. I slipped carefully off the gurney and took a few tentative steps, then put on my light boots and with Caroline Foley at my side, hobbled out of the hospital. It seemed so strange that it was as difficult to walk without the cast as it was when it first went on two weeks ago. The body takes time to adapt...and then "unadapt" to these encumbrances.

Caroline, Gene, Fr. Vince and I went to lunch in town, then I did a bit of shopping for pilgrimage extras at the local sporting goods shop: a couple pairs of socks that I've come to like better than the others (Bridgedale: you make great trekking socks!), some boot wax and a small bottle of mosquito repellent. My ambling slowly about Leuven seemed fine enough, though it took a while for a more natural gate to begin returning. I was grateful and hopeful for a Monday return to Tonnerre, France and the continuation of my pilgrimage southwards.

Saturday was a different story. I decided to take my new tendon out for a "test drive" so put on my boots at midday and headed down the main shopping street of Waterloo, the Chaussee de Bruxelles. I walked easily and lightly, being extra careful of potholes in the sidewalk and stepping up and down over curbs. I walked for an hour before deciding to turn back and did so with no problem whatsoever. I was thrilled. Shortly after turning back up the Chaussee, I noticed a bit of sensitivity in my lower left leg again, but not bad. I was back in the rectory in less than 35 minutes, and as a precaution, iced the tendon before taking a shower and getting ready for the 5:00 pm Mass, which I had offered to take for Vince, who was busy with two weddings in the afternoon. While at church, I noticed more ache. I reached down under my alb to feel the tendon; with great disappointment, I realized that the grating feeling in the tendon was back in full, which means the inflammation is back. By late evening, it was aching as it did even before the cast went on two weeks ago. Today, it is slightly better, but a long way from good enough for walking 20 kilometers every day.

So there will be no return to Tonnerre on Monday and probably not for the rest of this week at least. I am taking an oral anti-inflammatory, continuing with icing it and lightly stretching it, and hoping and praying that it will heal soon, but the clock is ticking and the days available for me to walk are only decreasing as I wait. I have in my mind a not-so-firm "deadline" for continuation of the pilgrimage: the end of this month of August. If it is not ready to go by then, well...

My disappointment is real enough, but it is bounded by my new-found sense of "living in the present," not fretting about what I can't control, as well as by the on-going encouragement of my friends, particularly Gene and Caroline Foley. "Don't give up yet!" they tell me. "You still have plenty of time to accomplish MOST of your mission, if not all of it!" They are absolutely right and I am so appreciative of their cheering me on.

So, Santiago, Jacques, Big Jim: if you want me to keep on walking your way, fix this thing! If not, I'll find other ways to stay connected to you and your Way during these precious months with nothing else to do but be a pilgrim...or help your pilgrims.

A "Vermeerish" Weekend

2007-08-14T11:08:00.000+02:00

Waterloo. So what does a pilgrim on medical hiatus do to fill the time for fifteen days? Well, he reads, of course; (I just finished a delightful little novel by Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, about a fifteen year old boy suffering from a form of autism). But even reading can grow tiresome day after day so if the sidelined pilgrim has some good friends, he is well advised to take up their invitation to a weekend jaunt to some wonderful place filled with new things to taste and see. Such was my good fortune over the past weekend! Gene and Caroline Foley, ever attentive to caring for me in my present circumstances, welcomed me to join them for a little trip up to Caroline's hometown in Holland, Den Haag ("The Hague" in English). We left Leuven on Saturday morning quite early and headed north. We stopped in Gouda, the big cheese of Dutch towns, had lunch there and enjoyed walking its market and along its picturesque canals (well, sort of walking, in my case...the cast slowing me down considerably on the cobbles!). We bypassed the big city of Rotterdam and got to Den Haag in time to do a bit of grocery shopping and then settled into the home of Caroline's son, Koen, who with his children, is presently on vacation in Iceland.
The highlight for me of our weekend foray into the Netherlands was Den Haag's Mauritshaus, filled to its gills with great artistic treasures; here you find Rembrandt, Rubens and Vermeer in just the right doses: enough to awe, but not so much as to overwhelm. I was especially thrilled to be able to enjoy for the first time Vermeer's "Girl with the Pearl Earring" and his "View of Delft." What extraordinary works! That mysterious girl is as "alive" today as she was when Vermeer painted her; you almost feel you could have a good chat with her! The sky and special light playing over the town of Delft captured in Vermeer's oils and brush strokes in his other masterwork in the Den Haag museum was evident in the real world as we drove through the countryside yesterday, casually working our way back to Belgium. Being so close to the sea the blue of the sky has a silvery undertone to it and the light of day adds a shimmering quality to everything it touches, especially the waters of the North Sea and the inland harbors ; what kind of word can you find to characterize this light? About all I can think of is "Vermeerish". Before we got serious about returning to Belgium, we passed a couple hours in the late morning wandering about the university town of Leiden, which reminded us all of our own Leuven, though with a Dutch touch. A bit of my own national history is noted there: the famouns Pilgrims of Plymouth Rock spent several years in Leiden before heading across the sea to North America and the first Thanksgiving.

So now that I'm back in Waterloo for a few more days, I'll start a new book (an early novel of Iris Murdoch), and begin planning the next "etapes" of my pilgrimage south, from Tonnerre, where I left off, to Vezelay, one of the great French towns associated with the pilgrimage to Compostela since the early middle ages. The cast on my leg will come off on Friday of this week and, presuming all is well, I should be back in France and ready to begin walking again on Monday (again with the help of the Foleys who have offered to drive me back down to Tonnerre). Vezelay will be about three days of walking further on, if I go my own route rather than the much longer "official GR". So that is next on my rather wide-open agenda: mapping out my way on the Way. I feel it already: it will be good to be back!

Like Missing a Friend

2007-08-09T15:07:00.000+02:00

Waterloo. I am now well into the midst of my "medical hiatus" and though the cast around my lower leg is a nuisance for its clumsiness I am fine and being well-tended to. Fr. Vince's rectory is quiet, comfortable and cozy, perfect for reading and resting. Both yesterday and today have been gray days with heavy clouds overhead, and today's weather has been additionally marked by a constant drizzle. I am happy to be indoors and dry. Unlike the forests I've wandered through in the past month, there is no slippery mud to navigate my way through in this house, but the tight stairway between floors is not so easy either with this cast making every step something to be tended to consciously.
Beneath the surface of this present contentment, though, there is the quiet unease of a sort of loneliness that comes from feeling distance from a friend. The friend in this case is my road and my walking. I miss it. I am a bit lonely for its company. My legs at night are restless in bed, twitching this way and that as I fall asleep, unhappy at not having worked enough during the day, wanting to be pilgrim legs again. I never thought of the Way as a friend before, but that is what it has become; with its fields and vineyards and deep dark woods, with its kind people who greet me and say to me "Courage!", even with its unexpected ups and downs and tough moments, it is a friend now and it is not so easy to be separated from the constant company it has afforded me for so many days. As with all friendships, this time apart reveals my fondness for it and even deepens it. It is really a fondness for life, for simplicity, for freedom, for God's face revealed in the details of leaf, soil, sky, flesh, words of welcome.
Some people here seem surprised that I want to go back and pick up where I left off, as if you could have enough of friendship. Others do everything possible to not let me even consider the possibility of not going back to Tonnerre to continue. I understand both because I have a lazy side and feel the attraction of stopping now even as I greedily want to know all the new riches that will be discovered and all the new graces to be experienced once I begin again.

I continue to be astonished at the number of people who are following this pilgrimage through this blog. Their e-mails to me are so encouraging and teach me so much. I received an especially wonderful one from John, a friend in Maryland and student of The American College in he '60's, who wrote yesterday:

From what I have learned about your
pilgrimage from you, if getting to or being at Compostela were the most important aspect of your journey, you would have taken a plane, train, bus, car, or even a bicycle ;-).
Once you decided to pilgrimage via foot and strapped on Gregory the Great, you
made the journey itself the most important aspect, accepting all the vagaries
that come with that way of the Way. Walking the pilgrimage expresses intense
physicality--one can almost feel the sweat from your writings--with its
heightened sacramentalism. Wherever you go, people will remember
'that American pilgrim priest'. If during the summer of 1964, people thought two
Americans on bicycles were a strange curiosity, I can imagine what they think of a walking American, especially an American priest. At the least, you will give those who meet you something to talk about--I am certain that those old ladies at the nursing home in Brienne-le-Chateau are still talking about that stranger who brightened and blessed their Friday in July. Once made, those encounters can become grace giving grace--a challenge to some and a comfort to others. What better way to share the blessings! Walk as far as you are able and use the slowness of foot to savor what comes your way.
You are not alone. Courage! John

Thanks, John! I will do my best. For now my pilgrimage is one of pause and waiting and letting this moment along the Way be grace upon grace too.

Two Week Layover

2007-08-06T17:06:00.000+02:00

Leuven. The news from the Leuven orthopedist is mostly good: the left leg does not have a new fracture. There is an old one there, presumably the one the doctor in Tonnerre spotted, but it is almost certainly the remains of a skiing injury from almost thirty years ago. The real problem, is, in fact, a pretty serious case of tendonitis. The doc here recommended as the fastest way to have it heal having the leg in a cast for two weeks; that should do it, and thereafter, I should be ready to begin walking again. So the cast went on and I am now hobbling about with a fairly heavy load of fiberglass wrapped around my lower leg.
Right now the coming two weeks seems like an eternity to me, but the days will pass and perhaps I can get some good reading done. I'll do my best not to get anxious, nervous, or irritable in the days to come and just keep seeing even this as part of the pilgrimage, a twist I didn't expect, certainly, but just as much an "etape" on the Way as everything else I've experienced thus far.
Now, it is out for pizza dinner in Leuven with the few seminarians still floating around this otherwise very empty American College.

No Storm Can Shake My Inmost Calm...

2007-08-05T10:19:00.000+02:00

Waterloo, Belgium.

Waterloo??? This is a long way from Tonnerre both geographically and spiritually, and it still remains something of a surprise to me that I am almost back where I began a month ago. El Camino, le Chemin, the Way, has its own way, with plenty of twists and turns and new beginnings, this I am learning. Surprise is as much a part of this Way as knowing the next step; in fact, I believe it is more a part of the Way than having a clear and certain path ahead. Almost everything about the pilgrim's way is a matter of NOT knowing what is ahead, learning to live peacefully in this ambiguity, and being constantly surprised by what turns up: catastrophe or grace or, most usually, both at the same time.
So this week's "catastrophe," (a favored word among the French to describe such things, I have come to discover), brought on by a cranky tendon and the goofy diagnosis of a very goofy village doctor, (my opinion at the moment...we'll see tomorrow if I am right or owe the man an apology), is also a great grace. In these days away from the walking part of the pilgrimage, I am resting, recuperating, and best of all, reflecting, that is, having the time and space to let the experience thus far soak in, begin seeing its patterns, feel it at work in my innards, deepening me, changing me, creating something new in me. Take fretting, for example: in the early days, heavens, did I fret! All I could see ahead were potential problems, worst case scenarios, "what if this..." and "what if that..."; that worrisomeness, that disposition to expect the worst, that awful fretting that has been such a big part of my life for so long, seems to have been cleansed from my mind and heart over the past thirty days or so. This I only notice now that I am here, on leave from the daily regime of walking, walking, walking, though it is the "walking, walking, walking" that has done this.
Then there is the opportunity now to step back and remember the faces and voices and gestures of kindness of so many whom I have met along the way. Their smiles, the glint in their eyes, their enthusiastic support expressed so often in the lovely word (as it is pronounced in French) , "Courage!" come together in my imagination in a single collage of images that brings me joy and gratitude. This communion of saints along the Way makes the more full communion of saints that we profess each time we say the Creed, the great cloud of witnesses that St. Paul writes about, becomes as real and corporal as the flower lady at the Eglise de Notre-Dame in Tonnerre, who came up to me as I sat resting in the cool and quiet of the church on Friday morning waiting for my ride back to Belgium, and assured me with the most kind smile possible, that it was okay for me to "repose" in the church as long as I wished. These people are saints. For their goodness and attentiveness to weary pilgrims, they bind themselves to Jesus' body and together, without even knowing one another, they form one body, one communion, one church. What a tender joy it is to be part of this body, too.
And then there is prayer out there. It comes in so many ways on the Way. Having a hymn roll around over and over again for days in the back of my head, sometimes retreating into the subconscious where dreams are concocted, other times coming to the fore of consciousness, but there all the time: "...there is power, power, power in the blood...in the blood of the Lamb! There is power, power, power in the blood...in the blood of the Lamb!" This is fine prayer. There is the silver rosary that my fingers work their way along in the early morning freshness, the Hail Mary's keeping time with my booted footsteps and the passing of white dashes in the center of the road. There is the exclamation, "Oh my Jesus!," exploding from my guts with each extremely painful, tendonitisized step along the twelve kilometers between Bragelogne to Etourvy. Those exclamations were not a taking of the name of the Lord in vain, but a prayer to the Lord to get me through one more step...and one more step...and one more step. I didn't see it at the time, but I do now.
So my friend, Father Vincent Chavez drove down to Tonnerre from Waterloo on Friday morning and met me in the center of town at about 11:30 and after having an early lunch there, we got in his car and headed back to Belgium. Somewhere between Tonnerre and Troyes, we saw a highway sign indicating that ahead was an eglise with three sanctuaries. We both thought it would be fun to stop and see whatever this odd description of a church might be. So when we got to Isle-Aumont, Vince pulled into the village center and parked in front of a rather ordinary looking village church. From the outside, not much to see. Its doors were locked so we wandered about the church yard a bit and peered in through the keyholes to see what we were missing on the inside. Then an elderly lady approached carrying mops and brooms and offered to open it up for us and show us around. It was a remarkable and beautiful place, far beyond either of our expectations. Bits of it go back to the 5th century and the Merovingians, other pieces are Carolingian, including an altar stone set in place as it was in the 8th century. A scallop shell indicating its history as a church visited by pilgrims to Compostela was carved into the base of a stone column. But best of all for me was the armless corpus of the crucified Jesus from the 13th century. His face and particularly his closed eyes expressed pure tranquility in his agony. That tranquility made sense to me. I felt it. I loved it. In some small way, it is mine now. This too is prayer. This is the Jesus I know and love and with whom I walk. He is teaching me things I didn't know I needed to learn. "No storm can shake my inmost calm, while to that rock I'm clinging..." That song too rolls around in my head now and in my imagination it is the Christ of Isle-Aumont that I see when I sing it.
So tomorrow it is off to the doctor I go. I hope for good news and a return to the walking part of my pilgrimage, but whatever happens, walking on or no walking on, grace upon grace is what is ahead. Of that I am sure.
A final word of thanks to Fr. Vincent for taking a day to drive to Tonnerre to "rescue" me and for welcoming me into his home here in Waterloo as a brother and a friend. His kindness to me is part of the pilgrimage, too.
Waterloo??? It is a surprise to be here, certainly; but in pondering it a while, it is not so far from Tonnerre after all.

Tonnerre

2007-08-03T09:20:00.000+02:00

What was a little bit worrisome pain in my leg on Wednesday became a pilgrim catastrophe on Thursday. Every step on my 12km. walk was very painful. When I reached Etrouvy, I asked about seeing a doctor, with the hope of just getting some strong medicine to care for the blazing tendon. The good lady in charge of the Foyer where I had stopped drove me to Tonnerre, the nearest town with a hospital. After much waiting and then X-rays, the doctor told me to STOP WALKING for a month.
He said there is a small fracture in the leg bone. As I said, catastrophe! I don’t really believe the doc; I still think it is tendonitis, but will go back to Leuven today to play it safe and get a second opinion. If all is well, I’ll return to this point and recommence the pilgrimage. If it is a fracture, then the walking part of the pilgrimage ends here today. I’m feeling surprisingly peaceful about all this, at least for the moment; maybe the 500+ kms of solitude and prayer and dependence on God and the kindness of so many strangers have had its effects…. I’ll write more from Leuven.
Kevin

Bragelogne

2007-08-01T18:02:00.000+02:00

Sunshine prevails for another day, but also as the day lengthens it becomes very warm for walking. For no good reason, a tendon in my left leg began to heat up as well and is quite sore tonight. Walking 25 kms didn’t help, but tomorrow will be a light day. Weather report for tomorrow has rain and lightning, but I hope it won’t happen. Two Belgian pilgrims are here in the gite as well.
Kevin

Courtenot

2007-08-01T07:01:00.000+02:00

There is nothing quite as sweet in the life of a pilgrim as being received by friends along the way. Such was yesterday’s grace when I came walking down the Rue Haute of Courtenot to find my friends Fr. Chavez and Madame Mimi Solvay standing on the corner of the Solvay country home waving and cheering me on the last few meters of the day’s walk. What a joy to be embraced by old friends again and escorted like an arriving prince into the foyer of a beautiful old home. Mimi and Vincent had both driven from Brussels just to greet me as I arrived in this lovely village. Lunch was served (accompanied by champagne!), Mimi showed me around her beloved gardens, then departed for Brussels, while Vincent remained to spend a rest day with me here. We drove up to Troyes to visit the beautiful cathedral there and spent the rest of today quietly enjoying the hospitality of the Solvays. Tomorrow, it is back to the life of a pilgrim,
but with body rested, clothes laundered, (including Gregory the Great), and the grace of friendship sustaining me.
Kevin

La Villeneuve-au-Chene

2007-07-30T11:05:00.001+02:00

It is morning, and the sun is shining brilliant and crystalline! What a wonder after a day and night of wind and rain!
Sunday’s Gospel reading (Luke 11), in which Jesus teaches his friends not only what to say in prayer ("Our Father...") but also the attitude of confidence before a father who loves his children, seems as clear out here as the morning sunshine after a dark and miserable day. With a clarity I’ve seldom felt before, I feel looked after.
So in just awhile, I put my boots back on for another walk, the half I didn’t finish yesterday.

La Villeneuve-au-Chene

2007-07-29T23:24:00.000+02:00

Spent last night in Amance. Had the Gîte d’Etape to myself, only eight euros! No store or restaurant for food, only take-out pizza, so had pizza for dinner and breakfast! I had hoped to do twenty-eight kilometers today and arrive in Courtenot this afternoon, where I will stay with the Solvays, friends of the American College, and meet up with Fr. Vincent Chavez for a free day. But the rain and wind were fierce so had to stop here, where I was welcomed at a warm, dry, and cozy B&B. I guess it will rain all summer! My meditation for today: “Thus says the Lord: Stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls” (Jeremiah 6:16).

Finally! Internet access!

2007-07-27T19:38:00.000+02:00

Dear Friends,
This evening is the first time since I've been on the road that I've been able to have more than a bit of time connected to the internet and can write something a bit more substantial than what I can do using my mobile phone's text messaging to get reports from the road posted to this blog (with the great assistance of ever-faithful John Steffen, doing the hard work of transcribing what is on that little mobile screen to the blog).
I am presenly in the town of Brienne-le-Chateau and the guest of the local parish priest, Père Norbert, a very young priest (ordained just seven years) and doing a great job here and in his more than fifty surrounding villages. I accompanied him this afternoon to a bi-weekly Mass at the local nursing home and was invited to give the final blessing in English; the old ladies were delighted!
Today was one of the tough days on the road, not because of rain or too many kilometers, but just one of those days when nothing feels right: the backpack is out of balance and hanging too low, the back beneath it itches from mosquito bites, not enough to eat for breakfast so energy is low, etc. Discouragement takes hold. I think every pilgrim has these days; nothing tells you they are coming, and they go away just as quickly as they come. Often they are a harbinger of something very good just ahead. But while you are in them, they are a pain. Mass with the oldsters took the edge out of this particular one, as did finally getting to see the past three weeks of emails waiting for me: so much encouragement from so many friends and family and folks from just about everywhere on the globe. Thanks so much to all of you!
This pilgrimage experience is very different from the much shorter one I did four years ago; it is less intense ("Gotta get there!") and more diffuse, because the whole thing is so stretched out. Certainly, I am much more alone now. I have to depend on my own emotional resources much more if I am to keep going. Maintaining good mental attitude is really the name of this game since the temptation to discouragement is always lurking in the background and sneaks up on me when I let my guard down. I find myself saying, "I can't do this!" even though I AM doing it! The refrain of the Spanish hymn is the key to staying afloat emotionally: "Un dia a la vez!" One day at a time.
The popular image in America of French people being slightly snobbish finds no grounds out here. They are being terrific with me in each village and town I pass through. Their kindness to this stranger passing by loaded down with pack and sweating like an old pig and only able to squeeze out a few broken words in their language has been gracious and generous beyond my wildest imaginings. They know well what a pilgrim is, and they care for their pilgrims with delight and joy. They seem to sense that helping us is a blessing upon them, as indeed, I trust and hope, it is.
So what do I think about all those hours on the trail? Surprisingly little. I live in a very limited present out there that extends up to the next crown of that hill and over to that field on the left and the other on the right. Mostly, I just walk. Sometimes I talk to myself. For awhile each morning, I try to pray for those who have asked me to do so and those I care about and their needs; but the explicit, word-driven prayer rather quickly settles into non-words, then steps, then fields, then the roadside crucifix which I pass by with a nod to Jesus, then the next village with its church steeple and its bells drawing me in at the Angelus. Sometimes an old hymn plays in the back of my brain for hours, just hanging there, repeating itself over and over again. That is prayer too.
So, my friends, I'll keep going as I am able and will keep praying as I go. Say (or walk) a prayer for me when you think of it.
I don't know when I'll have internet access again, so it will be back to the brief daily text message reports for a while.

Chavanges

2007-07-26T22:36:00.000+02:00

This ville is not where I expected to end up today, but the not-so-small matter of food changed my plans. I didn’t begin the day with enough, then discovered that the first two towns I came to had no bar/café, nor does Lentilles, where I was headed. So I detoured slightly to Chavanges, which does have food. The empty parish house serves as the pilgrim refuge, a very old half-timber place; not fancy but good enough.

Saint-Remy-en-Bouzemont-Saint-Genest-et-Isson

2007-07-25T19:31:00.000+02:00

Saint-Remy-en-Bouzemont-Saint-Genest-et-Isson. Today is the feastday of St. James, so there surely are grand celebrations going on in Compostela. I’m a long way off yet, but with who knows how many others, I’m slowly walking my way in his direction. This village has the longest name in all of France and a big village heart; though less than 1000 folks live here, it has a beautiful refuge for us pilgrims! Today was a twenty-kilometer day—about right … and the sun shone the whole trek!

Vitry-le-Francois

2007-07-24T08:50:00.000+02:00

Rain accompanied me the whole day yesterday, but the predicted lightning never showed. I arrived here soaked to my toes after twenty-seven kilometers. Staying with Polish sisters who make room for pilgrims. Today I rest and dry out.

Saint-Germain-la-Ville

2007-07-22T17:32:00.000+02:00

Bypassed Chalons (twelve kilometers) in favor of taking full advantage of a great day for walking and covered twenty-six kilometers. Staying in farm gîte; got last room in town!

Juvigny

2007-07-21T23:16:00.001+02:00

I covered twenty kilometers today, leaving the vineyard country for fields of grain and beets. Had hoped to make it to Chalons, a big city, but the last ten kilometers were too much for a hot afternoon. Am staying with the local pastor, eighty-plus years and still working!

A very special blessing

2007-07-20T23:27:00.000+02:00

Verzy. Heart of Champagne country, after a three-hour walk (twelve-plus kilometers). Got a late start due to farewell breakfast with the Foleys and a bad thunderstorm. Tomorrow will be long, I expect. My day in Reims with the Foleys was grand!

Today an extra report from Caroline and Gene Foley, who met Fr. Kevin yesterday in front of the Cathedral of Notre Dames de Reims, having arrived late the night before. Kevin had walked for a couple of hours that morning on his way from Vitry-la-Reims, where he had spent the night with a very friendly curé (who even drove him into Reims the night before, so he would know the way the next day!).
We all had a second breakfast together and then got Kevin checked into the Maison Saint Sixte, a former seminary run by the Diocese of Reims that is now used as a foyer d’etudiants. We agreed to meet again an hour later, so Kevin could take a shower, do the usual laundry, etc., before we would head off together.
First to visit was the St. Remi Basilique, a beautiful old church with a long history (it was here that Bishop Remi baptized King Clovis in 496 A.D.). We spent so much time there that we were hungry again, but the brasserie across the street served the most cheesy croque monsieurs we have ever seen!
After that we headed for the Cathedral, where there turned out to be an official Accueil for pilgrims. Kevin was greeted with a warm embrace, had to tell all about his walk, write something in the Livre d’Or de Pelerins, received his pilgrim’s stamp, and, most importantly, got some useful info on possible lodgings further along the chemin/camino. Leafing through the golden book, we were amazed by the number of pilgrims who do the “whole” camino, starting at home in Holland, Germany, or Belgium—an average of one or two a day had passed by since April. A brief visit to the cathedral, especially to see the beautiful Chagall windows again, and then it was time for some relaxation. So we went to the Piper Heidsieck champagne caves; of course, the visit included some sampling!
We felt we couldn’t leave Reims without visiting St. Jacques, the oldest parish church; sadly though, it was all locked up. However, Gene even managed to get someone to open the otherwise closed St. Jacques church, for a brief visit and another stamp in the pilgrim’s passport! We then had dinner together on top of a Holiday Inn hotel, with a beautiful view of the cathedral.
Friday morning we were all up early and again had croissants and coffee together in a brasserie close to the Hotel de Ville. By then it was raining pretty hard, so we all sat together in our car alongside the canal waiting for the rain to stop before bidding Kevin “adieu.” It never did stop, so he bravely put on his rain jacket and covered up his backpack, and we watched him tramp off along the canal, in the rain... Buen Camino!
It was another short walking day, like yesterday—but he arrived, “wet but sound,” at Verzy at 1:20 pm. “Three hours of walking in the rain is enough!” All in all, Kevin has walked already more than 300 kilometers. He looks great, the leg is not giving any major trouble (a small miracle!), and his French is getting better by the day. But most of all, he’s overwhelmed by the kindness of the many people he’s meeting in the small villages, the young couples, the overworked parish priests, the grandmas and grandpas, who take him in, treat him as an honored guest, and won’t hear of any remuneration. It is a very special blessing.

Notre Dame de Reims

2007-07-19T23:59:00.001+02:00

Reims. Arrived at the front porch of the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Reims at 10:30 am! The Foleys were there to meet me with hugs and big smiles. I’m staying at the Reims seminary, now a student house for lack of seminarians.

Vitry-la-Reims

2007-07-18T19:01:00.001+02:00

I’m enjoying the hospitality of the parish priest here in this village just ten kilometers from the heart of Reims. I’ll arrive in that famous city for pilgrims tomorrow morning. I can hardly believe that I’ve come this far!

2007-07-16T22:54:00.000+02:00

Due to the high cost of blogging using my mobile phone, I will post fewer blogs in the future, doing so when I have access to the internet.

Unreserved kindness and generosity

2007-07-16T00:16:00.000+02:00

Signy l’Abbaye. I have a few days to catch up on due to phone problems once I crossed far enough in France to lose my Belgian system. I am back in contact with a new phone number: +33 674 70 42 61.
I woke up on Friday morning still very “burned” from the previous day’s tramp through the mud of the Ardennes, so I decided to take the day off and use it to write in my journal, catch up on laundry, and just give my body and spirit a chance to take a breath and recover a bit from the beating they had been taking the previous four days. It turned out to be a very good decision for two reasons. I got to see the Bastille Day fireworks over Rocroi that night and the next morning; and yesterday I was really ready to go again.
My goal for the day was Rimogne, but once again I misjudged the distance involved (this time in my favour) and arrived there after only three hours on the road … all of them pleasant and easy. It was a sunny and fresh morning, which made the walking a pleasure. At Rimogne I decided to keep going a couple more hours to the village of Remilly-las-Pothees and was assured by the barmaid who served me a sandwich that I would find lodging there.
So, off I went about noon, just as the day was getting seriously warmer. The first hour or so was fine, and I was greatly enjoying the vistas of the rolling hills covered in wheat or clover for the dairy cows all around. But the last two kilometers up to Remilly turned into a very steep climb up, up, up. My body was slowing down, and various parts were starting to earnestly complain. I finally arrived in the small village quite hot, dry, and exhausted. I was assured by an old couple sitting under an umbrella in front of their ancient house that there was indeed a gîte in the town where I could spend the night. I came upon some young people, one of whom took me to the man in charge of the gîte. He answered the door and told us both that there was no room in the inn… and that the next place was just two or three kilometers down the road. Catastrophe! I didn’t know what to do … I just didn’t know how I could walk two or three more hilly kilometers.
I stewed for a while before going back to the gîte man to ask which place on the map would have lodging. I also asked about staying in the local sixteenth-century church. He showed me the town with no guarantees and told me the lady with the church key lived down the street. Meanwhile his wife brought me a slice of freshly baked rhubarb pie, which I wolfed down; then I headed out to find the church lady. I didn’t find her, but I did find Jean in front of his house painting his garage door. When I approached him, he smiled warmly and immediately took my cause as his own, even inviting me to take a shower and rest in his and his wife’s beautiful home while he sought permission from the mayor for me to spend the night in the village hall. He and his wife, Anne, treated me like an honoured guest, even welcoming me to their dinner table (well, actually the garden table), where we enjoyed a light supper, some fine wine, and warm though laboured conversation until well after 11:00 pm. Jean walked me to the hall, where I laid out my pad and sleeping bag on the tile floor for a decent though far-from-elegant night’s sleep. So my “catastrophe,” as so often happens out here, turned into a grace. It was a pure joy to come to know Jean and Anne, and I continue to be amazed by their unhesitating and unreserved kindness and generosity towards me. Thank God for such good people as these!
Before supper, Jean wrangled the church key from the lady next door (it took some convincing on his part), and the three of us walked over to look inside this sixteenth-century treasure. Sadly, the interior is in very bad repair and terribly neglected. Mass is no longer said there except for an occasional funeral or wedding. The old stained glass is falling to pieces, the statues are lined up to one side, dusty and removed from their once proud niches, the plaster and stones are deteriorating. An age has passed.
This morning I woke from my first night’s sleep on a floor a bit stiff but not really too much more than usual. The sky was mostly blue, and the first rays of sunlight were already warming the earth as I walked out of Remilly, though not before leaving in Jean and Anne’s door a brief note of thanks written on a coffee filter robbed from the village hall’s kitchen. And off I went for today’s relatively short hike (fifteen kilometers) to Signy.
It began with another serious climb out of Remilly, but the road was fine, mostly a paved single-lane path through the same rolling hills that had become so familiar … and that are so beautiful to behold under the morning sun. About two or three kilometers before Signy the GR route ran into some deep woods; pretty soon I was ankle deep in mud on a road that had been overrun by 4x4 vehicles leaving deep tracks and the same gloppy mud that I have come to hate. The heavy underbrush on either side of the road limited my options for going around the worst of the mud. At one point I misstepped, lost my balance, and thought I was finally going down into the mire; just in time my Nordic walking pole caught my weight and I avoided disaster … but my poor boots, which I had just cleaned and waxed, were once again covered from top to bottom with this awful stuff.
I arrived in Signy at 11:15 and headed for the church, open but empty. Mass here was celebrated last evening. Nobody in the presbytery either, so I got a room at one of the town’s hotels for 38 € for the night, then went and ordered a proper Sunday dinner at a restaurant. Now as the afternoon grows hot I am watching the Tour de France on television and comparing it to my own Tour de France. I am happy with my slower version. In a while I’ll say Mass in my room … no other options today … and eventually get a good night sleep in a real bed and be ready to head out again tomorrow for another leg of the Tour.

Rest & recuperation

2007-07-13T23:52:00.000+02:00

I took the day off here in Rocroi and got a good rest and recuperation. I feel much better tonight than I did this morning … and the clouds finally broke! The locals are now celebrating Bastille Day with lots of sirens, fire crackers, and a marching band, but I’m going to bed.

Mud-luscious

2007-07-12T23:39:00.000+02:00

Rocroi, France. Please, if you will, take note of today’s dateline: FRANCE! I made it across the frontier to this lovely little village surrounded by great battle fortifications in the shape of a five-pointed star. My accomplishment today, however, did not come without plenty of toil and travail; this was a tough and dirty day.
Morning broke with heavy clouds and mist covering us from one end of the sky to the other… not a promising beginning for one just yesterday drenched by similar clouds. I got out the door and out of Oignies around 8:30 am; Herman was away about twenty minutes before that, now travelling with backpack, having given up his fancy sled-like rig the previous day. I started out happily enough… no rain after all… and followed the signs and my gps for about two or three kilometers, until, to my horror, I suddenly realized I had just retraced OUT of town my very steps INTO town the day before! I had to choose whether to walk back to Oignies and start over or replot from where I stood. With the help of the gps, I planned a new route that would connect me to the GR trail further on, so off I went, none too cheery since I knew I had just added five or six kilometers to the day’s work, and at least an hour of walking to my program of reaching Rocroi across the border.
What I encountered along the way was a mix of wet grass up to my knees, so much moisture in the air that my glasses fogged up whenever I stopped for a breather, hills up and hills down, and roads, trails, and paths that were presently so loaded with the remains of yesterday, roads that were far more viscous than solid: mud, mud, gooey, sucking, slippery mud! The poet e.e. cummings wrote a poem called ‘in just- spring’ in which he describes the world as ‘mud-luscious,’ but this is now ‘in just JULY’ … the middle of SUMMER, and such mud as I contended with all day is hardly luscious, and it seemed to never end. For hours I picked my way through, over, around, and sometimes just deep into the stuff … it was slow going, very tough work, which has left me exceedingly tired at the end of this day. I want no more of it tomorrow; maybe I’ll take a day off and just hang out here in Rocroi, if for no other reason than to give my clothes and long-suffering boots a chance to dry out (nothing dries in this wetness!).
For all that, still and all, here I am in France … and I walked here … that’s something to be grateful for, considering my ill-starred beginning 12 days ago. And I have no blisters or tendonitis or any of the other usual pilgrim afflictions (amazing really!), and though I am a complete dunce at communicating in French, people are being very kind to me (pilgrims seem to be a somewhat beloved breed around here). So grace abounds, even in the mud of the earth.

Au revoir, Belgique!

2007-07-12T00:02:00.000+02:00

Oignies-en-Thierache. My five-and-a-half-hour walk today carried me to the very cusp of the French frontier, but not quite. Crossing into la belle France will come early tomorrow. Belgium, true to its reputation, fairly drenched me late into today’s hike, almost as if it wanted to treat me to its famous rain showers one last time before I leave her damp soil. The kind lady who hosted Herman and me in her chambre d’hôte provided us a fine breakfast … Not so petit as petit déjeuners go. She told us she knows the priest in Oignies, our destination for today, and even tried to call him for me so that I would have a place to lodge tonight (Herman planned to camp out).
I set off down the highway to Treignes, just a couple of kilometers away, and picked up the GR 654 there. It led me through some fields of hay and grass and the usual gang of mildly interested but altogether mute cows, then through increasingly heavy Ardennes forest, deep green, damp, beautifully quiet. I passed through a couple more of these villages with seemingly so little in them except grey stone houses, barns, and more cows on the outskirts. I was then led by the increasingly rough and undeveloped trail alongside a small creek rambling through a valley with steep rises on either side. Occasionally the path disappeared altogether as the creek overran it, and I had to jump, crawl, and carefully pick my way to the next GR mark. It was so damp down there that, even before the rain, I was already soaked with dew and sweat.
After a while, I connected myself to my iPod (the first time I’ve used it while walking thus far… I have just been too occupied with my own thoughts) and listened to some hymns by a fellow named Fernando Ortega and then the Anonymous Four. Before long, in the utter loneliness and quiet of the forest, I was singing along out loud; there was no one around, so no need to feel embarrassed, and it was great fun. After a while, the rain began to fall very lightly, but with each leaf above my head acting as a sort of mini-drum, the sound was too resonant to pass up, so I put away the iPod to enjoy this pure music from nature herself. Little of the rain was getting through the blanket of leaves above my head, but enough to indicate that I should pause, drop my pack, and pull out my Gore-tex rain jacket. Shortly thereafter, it began to pour, and in the last three kilometers or so I was drenched and tired.
By the time I got to Oignies, I must have looked like a drowned rat. With hopes of finding lodging quickly, I asked an old fellow at work in his garage where the abbé lived, and he informed me that he is presently away on vacation. Oh great! Just then Herman, also very wet, arrived on the scene; so we went to the post office to ask about a place to hang our wet hats and rest our weary bodies. The lady at the window had no good news for us: there were a couple of very expensive gîtes at the other end of town, but the local gas station might have a place, so we trundled down there but found the place closed up tighter than a drum. Back up the hill to the center, Herman saying that he was going to go another seven kilometers to the next village but have a coffee first. We spotted a restaurant and took a look: all cloth table coverings and fancy decorations, not the kind of place likely to be amenable to soaked pilgrims just out of a day tramping through the woods. However, there was a sign on the door that said the place was also a three-star hotel. I looked at the price list posted near the door: 50€ for one, 67€ for two. Herman found that too much and again planned to go on further. I wasn’t going any further (my knee was beginning to ache… enough is enough for one wet day), so I went in to ask for a room, sopping wet. The lady took me next door and led me upstairs to a small but clean and modest double room. The price listed was 45€ for one and only 54€ for two, so I dropped my bag and rushed outside in hopes of catching Herman before he left town. He was right at the corner, still getting rained on, so I hollered for him to come back, and he agreed to share the room. The warm shower and change into dry clothes, not to mention a soft bed to nap on, make this place worth every eurocent it is taking out of my coin purse. Even more so now that a heavy rain has begun to fall again OUTSIDE! Tomorrow I will cross into France after only nine kilometers and then continue on to the medieval city of Rocroi. Au revoir, Belgique! May at least a little sun shine in the morning.

Mazee

2007-07-10T20:44:00.000+02:00

After spending last night in Hastière and its fine little refuge for pilgrims, the host, Marcellinus from Togo, Africa, informed Herman of Antwerp and me that there is a direct bicycle route to our destination for today, Doische. I chose the route Marcellinus indicated rather than the zigzaggy GR 654, and indeed it was much more direct and really a pleasant route to walk, most of it through lush green vegetation. I met very few people along the way: a few bicyclists whooshing by on their beautiful machines.
I arrived in Doische after just three-and-a-half hours of walking, so I decided to buy a few things from a small grocery store, then head on down the route another eight or ten kilometers to this little village of Mazee. It took two attempts to find lodging, but I was welcomed happily to a little chambre d’hôte, Le Point du Jour, which overlooks the valley that most of the rest of the village occupies with its old stone homes and the smell of burning fire wood in the air (does that mean it is going to get cold here tonight?). My friend Herman made the same decision as I, so he arrived at the door shortly after me. We don’t walk together but quite often have been ending up at the same places in the afternoon, so we share tales of the day and plans for the morrow.
I have been skirting the French border all day, sometimes just a few meters from it. (A horn of French territory juts up into Belgium; I’m walking along its western side.) Tomorrow I may definitively enter France or perhaps stop just short of it, if the day gets too long. I have gotten to know a side of Belgium I never really knew so much about; Wallonia is beautiful in its great rurality, and certainly I have enjoyed these days the sing-songy ‘Bonjour, Monsieur!’ that is the ever-cheery greeting I receive as I pass by.
Heavy clouds still hang about, but no rain fell on me today. I am grateful for that and for so very much else. Now to figure out what to eat for dinner in a place with one bar and no restaurants!

Hastiere

2007-07-09T23:46:00.001+02:00

The wonderful lady of the house who welcomed me to her chambre d'hôte in Dinant served up a great breakfast—better than any hotel, and not just “family style,” but really as if I were for that day part of the family. The matter of paying her the forty euros seemed strained, in fact, almost as if it was an unnecessary and unpleasant thing that had to be done as non-offensively as possible.
I got out the door at about 8:45 am and continued my march south, passing again through Dinant, now a sleepy little river village in comparison to Sunday’s bustling tourist site. My intention for the day was to follow the Meuse River—for what I wrongly figured to be about eight kimometers, then pick up the GR 654 (Europe’s extended walking route) and finally climb out of the river valley (which is mercifully level) and finish off the day in the very small village of Soulne. What I thought would be an eight-kilometer prelude to the eleven-kilometer walk out of the valley turned into a fifteen-kilometer walk, including some pretty jungle-like stretches along the river bank; I even had to get down on my knees in the mud to crawl under a huge tree that had fallen across the path, and this with thirty pounds (twelve kilos) on my back!
Anyway, I marched on and came upon the village of Hastière after about three-and-a-half hours of moving at a pretty good clip for me. I found a little family restaurant and sat down for what they call petite restauration. I ordered a Ciney beer and an omelet. In the meantime, I sized up my situation and realized just how badly I had goofed up on my distances. What was worse, the next village was at least another five or six kilometers along the river and, according to my guidebook, has no lodging, and the next one, Soulne, my original goal for the day, had only one gite d’etape but no stores or restaurants, and it was another eleven kilometers beyond that.
So it seemed that the wisest thing to do was to call Hastiere home for the night and conquer the hill and dale to Soulne (and maybe beyond) tomorrow. The kind folks at my restaurant, when I inquired about a gite or chambre d'hôte, asked if I was a pilgrim to Compostelle and then told me that the church rectory across the street now serves as an auberge for pilgrims. My waiter, a young teen, even led me right to the door! What kindness is shown us pilgrims! So for ten euros I had my own room with a beautiful view of the Meuse River, not to mention a warm shower and a comfy bed.
Haustière is home to a beautiful eleventh-century Romanesque church, once part of a great Benedictine abbey, ruined during the French Revolution. The church, to which this house is the rectory, is really very special and has a millennium of history caring for pilgrims like me: evidently this place has long been on the road to Compostelle. Those earlier pilgrims left some nice graffiti on the walls of the ancient crypt of the church. I left just a note in the guest book saying how proud I am to be among their company in this place.
The trouble knee did very well today... I hardly felt it through the morning, so maybe the walking is actually helping it. I can tell that my leg muscles are hardening up nicely as the days go by. Gregory the Great still feels plenty great, but I am getting used to him riding atop me, like an old horse. We’ve now traveled together about ninety kilometers, or sixty miles, if I am adding right. I’m probably about two or three days from crossing into France. The weather was great this morning, but it is raining now. Who knows what tomorrow will bring—almost all good, if things continue as they have been. I'll miss the Meuse: this wonderful river with its deep green shoulders and great, grey granite cliffs has been a fine companion these past days.

Dinant

2007-07-08T22:28:00.000+02:00

After a pleasant evening with Père Bernard at his rectory in Yvoir, I had a very short walk this morning into the touristic village of Dinant, only eight kilometers. I arrived at the church of the Abbey of Leffe just as mass was beginning. The priest was front and center leading the penitential rite when I came through the door. He looked at me but didn’t miss a beat. The liturgy was very beautifully done, and it was a joy to be seated, sweaty and probably smelly, in the last row. At the end of mass everyone knew what I was up to and greeted me warmly, and one monk retrieved the abbey seal to stamp my pilgrim passport/credential. He told me that they receive about two pilgrims a day, which is way more than I would have expected. Two other times today I was recognized as a pilgrim, my cockleshell hanging from my pack being the giveaway. I am amazed and touched in retrospect by how they and almost everyone else then treat me, not as a dumb tourist who can’t even speak French but as a sort of hero: they smile kindly, go out of there way to make things easy for me, and say a final word like “Courage!” to me as they wave me on. I need that courage and encouragement because there are so many moments when I myself think I’m nuts for attempting this and for worrying about all the things that might go wrong even if they don’t. The temptation to catch the next train back to Leuven is strong, especially in places like this where the train station is only a couple of blocks away. I would be home in an hour! Tomorrow I follow the Meuse River another day and then it’s back to the GR trail that will take me out of this lovely valley and towards the French border. I imagine I will encounter for the first time lots of steep grades that will put my weak knee to the test in a new way. Also there are few towns of any size, so the going could get tougher finding lodging, and I am without my beautiful but too heavy tent! Well, as I write this it is raining again; the sunshine was nice while it lasted, but all things wet and damp is the norm I’ve gotten used to.

Godinne

2007-07-07T23:45:00.000+02:00

This Saturday was blessed with fine walking weather, cool and mostly sunny, little wind, and no rain. I left the Auberge de Jeunesse at about 9:00 am for a relatively short hike to the riverside village of Riviere, where I hoped to find the local priest and asked for a place to stay … but I was told he is sick and would not be back. With my fellow pilgrim from Antwerp, Herman, we moved on to the next town, Godinne, where things seemed more promising. As we entered the village, we came upon a 91-year-old priest walking along, so we asked him where we might spend the night. He told us we should walk across town to the large Jesuit College there. We trundled to the massive buildings and looked for someone to help us. An old Jesuit well into his 80s came upon us and went to look for the superior but didn’t find him, so he led us to a grassy field to wait an hour or so until the superior returned. We rested in the grass, ate a snack, and then were surprised when the old Jesuit returned to tell us that our request for a place to spend the night had been turned down. Oh well. We left. Then Herman went his own way. I began searching the town for the parish church, finding it only after thirty minutes of wandering about. An old lady was in the sacristy. I did my best to explain my predicament in my altogether broken French, but she got the idea and told me that the parish priest wouldn’t be around until mass time at 5:30, two hours later. I left feeling terrible frustration, as it seemed I might be spending the night on a park bench. So I went off with my pack and sticks looking for any kind of lodging. Nothing … so back to the church. I sat in its cool interior and read the Sunday readings, which consoled me … Jesus telling his seventy-two to hit the road without packs or sandals. At 5:25 Père Bernard, a young priest, arrived and greeted me like a brother, even welcoming me to concelebrate the mass with him. He is taking care of me tonight. God bless him! So another pilgrim day under my belt. Tomorrow I will have a short walk to Dinant. I’ll follow the riverside path rather than the official route, which is all up and down and a lot further as it zigzags across the countryside. The Meuse River is beautiful, so I’ll keep following it.

Namur

2007-07-07T01:03:00.000+02:00

My day began on a glum and grim note: not much sleep due to a pesky mosquito buzzing me every time I began to nod off … until I was no longer able to nod off. He won … I never managed to swat him as the hours dragged on. Dawn came with rain and wind battering the old, worn rectory of Father Paul, and I felt no inclination to spend the coming day fighting yet more of this dreadful weather. When I went downstairs to the kitchen to join Paul for his breakfast, his animated spirit did much to make the gloom lift. At one point he declared, “Every day is a great day for me. I have never been unhappy even one day in my life. That is my charism, I suppose.” I was ready to begin my own happy day when Paul offered to drive to the edge of Perwez, not something I would usually accept, since part of the pilgrim spirit for many is the importance of walking every step of the way. But his pilgrim hospitality trumped my pilgrim purity, so I agreed, and off we went together. When I thanked him for all his kindness, he just laughed his great laugh and declared, “It’s the normal thing to do, nothing more.”
Today’s walk to Namur was not so easy; powerful winds buffeted me almost the entire day, and I was mostly confined to highways instead of roads and trails like yesterday. But the most challenging thing was just the distance involved, somewhere around twenty-eight kilometres, a six-and-a-half hour hike. My fragile knee held up, but it is quite sore tonight. A good night sleep is good medicine, though.
It seemed as though Namur would never appear as I walked the last few kilometres. But once I hit its northern limit, it took another forty-five minutes to cross through its busy commercial centre and find my way to the town’s youth hostel. My roommate for the evening is also a pilgrim, Herman from Antwerp. He is sixty-three and pulling his stuff behind him on a special little wagon made just for the purpose. We had dinner here together. He is the first pilgrim I have met so far. I am feeling a lot of temptation to quit, but I remember this from last time and another, wiser pilgrim’s advice: “Don’t quit until you’ve been on the road for at least five days. The first week is always the hardest.”
I ran into a very funny old lady as I passed by a dairy barn this morning. She came bounding out of a shed to see who was making all the racket (my walking poles are very noisy on pavement and cement), and then with great interest probed into what I was up to, then called her grizzled husband over to see this curiosity. They had never heard of Compostelle but seemed delighted that somebody was doing something so nutty. That’s all for today. If my knee still aches in the morning, I may take a day off here in Namur, because the next segment involves lots of fairly steep climbing and descending. Well anyway, I’m happy I made it this far.

Thorembais-Saint-Trond

2007-07-06T00:18:00.000+02:00

Finally, this morning, after three days of frustration and further and better preparations I got myself back on the road, though not without a fair amount of worry about how my old meniscus-troubled knee would hold up. My friends Gene and Caroline drove out to the Hamme-Mille campground where I had left off on Sunday afternoon. They also conveyed my backpack, big Greg, to the parish house where I would be spending the night, making my walk much lighter on my dicey knee. I was using my little GPS today to navigate along and, after a bit of confusion at the beginning, figured out how to use it to get myself heading south. My knee was feeling pretty good … a little bit of ache from time to time but nothing disastrous. I walked through some beautiful Belgian countryside, which was mostly fields of grain or vegetables with more than occasional dairy farms dotting the landscape. It was all rather beautiful, even under constantly dark and heavy skies. I was rained upon from time to time but didn’t melt, as my pa always assured us when he expected something done outside on days like this. I crossed over twenty kilometres of muddy roads and paths to the little crossroad village of Thorembais-Saint-Trond, where the pastor, Paul Hanson, welcomed me for the night. He is quite a priest! Having spent over twenty years as a missionary in Haiti, he runs his small parish like his former mission, with a grand vegetable garden out back (he was husking fresh peas when I arrived), raises his own sheep and slaughters them, and breeds racing pigeons for fun. It has been great fun visiting with him and his friends this evening. All in all, I am feeling much more optimistic about things than earlier in the week. Tomorrow I head for Namur with full pack and the hope that all goes as well as it did today, though I have just discovered that the waypoints I loaded into my GPS to guide me have disappeared. AAARGH! Somehow I’ll have to find my way. Santiago, guide me! May my knee hold together for another day.

Reculer pour mieux sauter!

2007-07-03T09:52:00.000+02:00

As the days leading up to my departure draw severely down, my nervousness about the whole enterprise rises. With just three days to go, I am so behind in my preparations, I haven't even come close to finishing the job of packing up my office and apartment and putting my mountain of "stuff" up in the attic, and I have another day of hosting over one hundred of the American College's alumni. But much more daunting for me is the sheer size of this proposed adventure and my presumption and hubris in thinking this is something I might actually do. It now seems impossible and a hundred tiny voices within me are saying, "You ARE nuts! Don't do it!" "Stop while you still can! There are a million things that could go wrong and probably will go wrong! Etc." "Shut up, already!" I answer back. I know I'm an idgit for thinking I could do this, but I have no other option now. I have nothing else to do and nowhere else to go for the next four months. And beyond the noise of these aggravating voices is the memory of those days when it seemed with clarity and attractive power to be the absolutely right thing to do. I treasure that memory of surety even as I shake with self-doubt. In the midst of morning Mass yesterday, I had a moment of renewed clarity; it came to me that all that i am responsible for now is to begin. Just begin. Let the rest rest. Yes. I'll just begin and go from there. I was consoled and brought back down to earth.

So on Sunday, I will begin.

Friday and Saturday, I must finish clearing eight years of life here out of the College and pack up Gregory the Great. Saturday afternoon, I'll go get my Leuven Pilgrim stamp for my Credencial at the Sint-Jacob Parish office. Sunday morning I'll pray Laudes here in our chapel with whomever wants to join me, then walk a kilometer to the Sint-Lambertus Chapel in Heverlee for Mass in this lovely 12th century church...then make my final farewells and be on my way.

Many of our American College alumni and friends are going to be pledging a certain amount of money, whatever they want, for each mile I walk. The funds collected will go the College to continue work on our beautiful old chapel or to support a scholarship endowment fund for our seminarians. If you'd like me to carry a special intention to Big Jim, I'm happy to do that for you too. Visit the American College website for more information: AC Pilgrim.

Just Begin!

2007-06-27T16:39:00.000+02:00

A Preliminary: Maastricht's Saint Servatius

2007-06-08T11:59:00.000+02:00

On Wednesday of this week, I was welcomed to the beautiful city of Maastricht, about an hour's drive from Leuven. One of our College's students, Alexander de Graaf Woutering, is a priest of the Roermond Diocese that includes this city with plenty of roots going back to Roman times. Our visit was not primarily a touristic one; Father Alexander wanted me to see the wonderful Basilica of Saint Servatius ("Sint-Servaas" in Dutch) through the eyes of its pastor for almost two decades, Monsignor Matthieu Hanneman [http://www.sintservaas.nl].

Sint-Servaas was a fourth-century Armenian Christian who first traveled to Jerusalem, and then up to present-day Belgium as one of the founding "apostles" of Christianity in the region. From very early on after his death in 384 AD in Maastricht, the site of his burial was venerated by locals and eventually became a favored destination of Europe's Christian pilgrims.

Msgr. Hanneman and Alexander led me through the ancient basilica of Sint-Servaas, guiding me to a number of places not usually open to tourists. Their enthusiastic explanations and intepretations of what I was seeing allowed me to see the church's details as they see them, with love and appreciation for what they were showing to me was infectious. The highlight of the visit was being led to the burial crypt of Servaas himself beneath the floor of the nave of the basilica. There, Msgr. Henneman unlocked two wrought iron gates to allow me into the heart of the crypt. A stone sarcophogus was set within and though most of Servaas' bones were long ago scattered to many other churches in the region as relics, still here within the original tomb remain some elements of his mortal body. As this has been for many centuries one of Christian Europe's significant pilgrimage sites, I felt as I stood within the crypt that I was unexpectedly making a first stage of my own pilgrimage by joining the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims across the ages who had already visited Servaas. I set my hands upon his tomb, knelt for a moment, asked him for a bit of help along the Way that I will soon be commencing, and gave his tomb a little pat of appreciation.

These old time apostles have become special to me. Jacob/James/Jacques/Santiago did this to me: by following his Way three years ago I came to understand in a much richer way that these Old Holies are still with us and we are all brothers and sisters in the same family, one that is not bound by centuries or death. Jesus Christ took care of that. So having greeted Servaas to the east in Maastricht, I now feel ready to look south and west to Compostela and my old friend there who I presume upon to be awaiting a return visit.

On another note, I visited the orthopedist earlier today. He identified my problem as the meniscus on the inside of my right knee, probably worn and torn a bit. But if I can walk on it, he said, walk. So I shall walk, troubled meniscus or not.

Just Thirty Days...

2007-06-01T20:58:00.000+02:00

June 1: Only thirty days until my "C-day" (see previous post) and now I am getting nervous though that edginess about the upcoming adventure is mixed with excitement and a sense of mission.
I have packed my backpack and given it a name (it was produced by a company called "Gregory" and so it has been dubbed officially "Gregory the Great" (non-church types will have to Google the name to learn more here). My boots are fitting great these days; I took a risk and spent a lot of money on this Meindle brand out of Bavaria, but it was worth the investment because they now fit like gloves...and feel like gloves on my feet. I've been to the doc and he says my cholesteral is perfect (with the help of a pill), my blood pressure is right where it should be (with the help of a pill), and my heart is ticking the way it was designed to tick (with the help of several pills).
There is just one problem: I've developed a hitch in my right knee that has become rather painful at times, while at other times it is barely noticeable. The fickleness of it is what bugs me most. Some are telling me that I'm finally feeling the dark side of 35 years of jogging. Maybe. I go in to see the orthopedist down the street later this coming week; then I guess I'll know. I went out yesterday for a two hour hike with my pack loaded to 25 pounds and as the walk progressed through the soft and green Egenhoven Woods the knee got better and better so that is a hopeful sign. I'm looking for hopeful signs, of course, because I do not intend to let this knee keep me from my pilgrim mission...and it now truly feels like a mission. I MUST go! I'm being drawn, called, pulled, jerked onto this road. If Santiago wants me back, then he will have to take care of me along the way. I'm trusting this one to him. I feel like I know him, having done this once before (though, admittedly, on a much smaller scale).
I'm also deep into the process of letting go of my world here in Louvain. It is not so easy and my patience is thinning even as my focus on daily tasks and responsibilities gets more diffuse. "Authority" here is running through my fingers like sand. So I'm doing my best to ride this last month as it comes and not take the daily problems or upsets or demands too seriously. This parting is a sweet sorrow and one I'm trying to savor even as I wish it were already over. Am I counting down the days? Look at the title of this post: of course I am! I can't wait to begin my new pilgrim life though in the end it will not be so different from my present and past life since I remain who I am here or there. Pilgrims don't escape...they just walk more freely for awhile.
Grace and peace!

Just two months before "C-Day"

2007-04-29T22:24:00.000+02:00

Whether it is the "Chemin de Saint Jacques" of Wallonia and France or the "Camino de Santiago" of Spain, I am just a day shy of two months until "C-day"...that is, "Camino/Chemin Day", (unfortunately the Dutch "weg" doesn't fit my "C-day" thematic here, but it is a very good word too and so very close to my own English "way"). I have done some planning in my imagination of that day: July 1, Sunday. I will have my backpack readied the night before, get a nervous but sufficient sleep, at 7:00 am walk out the great door of our American College with whoever wants to accompany me for the first kilometer or two, pause at the medieval Saint Lambert Chapel just outside of town, celebrate Mass there, then bid a final adieu to my companions and friends, heading down the Naamsesteenweg and into the Heverlee Woods by myself. It won't be a long walk that day...just 15 kilometers or so. I'll hold up in a campground near the small town of Hamme-Mille; there I will learn how to set up my tent, arrange my stuff and warm up my first meal atop my little gas stove...perhaps meatballs from a can. I am no camper so it will be a fast learning curve out there. No problem, I'll have the whole afternoon to figure it out.
Well, that is how I am imagining it two months out. It seems idyllic enough in my imagination and probably will be. It is what follows that is now scaring me. So much can go wrong, especially with my 54 year-old body. I have a knee that is bugging me these days...a bad sign. What if my backpack is too heavy? Blisters after a day? Why not. I remember the pain of tendinitis in my lower leg from my "short" Spanish pilgrimage three years back; will it pay me a return visit? What if no one speaks any English at all? What if my tent is missing exactly the one cord or pole or spike that holds the whole thing together? How soon will discouragement set it in the form of the whine, "What am I DOING out here!" Ahh! So many worries! So many potential disasters! I accept them the fact that they are prowling around in the back of my mind all the time, but I am choosing to engage "spiritual override" and push ahead anyway. I AM going to do this. I WILL to do this. Santiago is CALLING me to do this.
Just a few days ago, some friends here in Leuven, Gene and Caroline Foley, treated me to a concert of the Galician-Celtic music group, Milladoiro. I've had some of their cd's for some time now and like their music very much; it is all gaetas, whistles, harps, a violin, drums. As they were beginning the second half of the program with a piece I especially love, "Alalá das mariñas", I looked at the banner stretched behind them on the back of the stage; it read simply: "Xacobeo", the Galician adjective for Jacob, James, Santiago, Jacques. Upon seeing the name and with the smooth sounds of Alalá das mariñas sifting through me, I feel the pull again : "You've got me, Santiago. You've got me again. I'm coming. I'm coming."
It is a "pull": unreasonable, weird, subtle, gentle, forceful, reasonable, mysterious, magical, mysterious again. It is like love. I suppose it is a kind of love. Pilgrim love. It will make it possible. It will guide me, guard me, protect me on the weg (there: I got the Dutch word in, too!). The whole thing and the whole thing in all its parts, is a prayer. Is prayer. I expect wonders amidst the trials. I expect Santiago and the Lord to do things to me out there; I don't know what exactly: make me better somehow. Make me understand home and not-home more deeply. Loosen up the stuff that constrains me. Laugh, weep, sigh each time a little more profoundly. Rediscover gratitude and rejoice in it.
So with two months to "C-day" I size it all up as best I can. I'm nervous. I'm excited. I'm afraid. Really, when all is said and done, tonight anyway, I can hardly wait...

Three months to prepare!

2007-03-23T22:47:00.000+01:00

Dear Friends,
I begin this blog just about three months from the day I hope to walk out the big green door of The American College in Louvain. I am both excited and a bit afraid. I know the pilgrimage experience is an extraordinary one for body, soul and heart since I've done it once already, but the one I am close to beginning will be so very different in so many ways: three times as long, crossing French-speaking Europe for at least two months and I speak hardly any French, many fewer pilgrim hostels along the way...
This will be an exercise in trust mostly: trust in the kindness of strangers and trust in a God who seems to have a special place in his heart for pilgrims through the centuries, and trust in Santiago, an old friend now, who beckens me to come back for another visit to his place.
There is so much to do! Maps to figure out, a few things yet to buy for the road (plain old soap for body and clothes!), pack up my present life here in Louvain into boxes and ship it all back to the States before I leave, take care of more farewells than I can even imagine...
I am also anxious to get going...adventures await, and quiet, and prayer, and pondering, and learning...