Buen Camino

Finding new depth to "life as pilgrimage"

My friends,

I returned to the States a few weeks ago and was asked to reflect on my experience walking the Camino de Santiago. I’ve copied my short essay here so that you all get a bit of an update while I finally sit down to write a full newsletter. I’ve (thankfully) been unable to spend much time on my laptop lately. Anyway, here is the Camino:

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A foggy morning leaving Portomarin.

I set out on the Camino hoping to find my way to a concrete idea of what exactly a photographic “pilgrimage project” could be. I didn’t want to just take pictures of people walking and speak sentimentally about the beauty of it all (although it is beautiful), nor could I stomach the secular route of desacralizing a thoroughly religious act and calling it something like a fitness challenge. I’ve been on quite a few pilgrimages in my life and yet still didn’t know what exactly I had to say about it. To the disappointment of some of my friends, I didn’t have a groundbreaking moment of enlightenment or ecstatic vision along the way, but I am taking slow, intentional steps towards a complete picture of what pilgrimage can and ought to be. Pilgrimage is not a fitness routine, it is not an accomplishment, it’s not a religious “technique,” or even a search for enlightenment. It is a radical and incarnate engagement with reality itself, when taken in its fullness, and changes one's life only insofar as it makes clear what life actually is.

When people ask me about the Camino, the first thing I find myself saying is “It was the best routine I’ve ever had.” Maybe an odd thing to say, but it’s true, and not only encapsulates the vast majority of what I actually did on the Camino but also serves as a jumping-off point for a deeper discussion about what pilgrimage truly is. It is my firm belief that the pilgrim’s life on the way to Santiago is a near-perfect pattern of what life ought to be like every day. Far from a wandering and purposeless vacation, it is a relentless and at times grueling series of miles each day, and yet filled with so many genuine pleasures that even the blisters become a joy (at times). You wake up, pray, work hard for miles, break for the day, relax with friends over a few good drinks, go to Mass, eat dinner, and go back to bed. That’s the pattern of every single day, and it’s that consistent simplicity married with the ultimate destination of a holy site that makes the pilgrimage worthwhile. Modern life is exhausting and complicated despite its many amenities and promises. I have never been more rested or consistently joyful than when my transportation was my feet, all my possessions were on my back, and my only goal was my Father’s house.¹

Many people begin the Camino longing for or expecting some kind of dramatically enlightening experience. They set out seemingly hoping that God, if He exists at all, will spell something out in the sky for them. There were some I met mere days from the end who had been walking for a month and said they were just as lost, anxious, or existentially bored as they were at the beginning. What they failed to realize, and I hope they eventually learned, was that revelation is only rarely patterned in single transcendent moments. God is in each moment, yes, and He certainly does utilize them for enormous instantaneous encounters, but more often than not we meet Christ rather simply, in the silent song of a life that is simple, embraced, and lived with others. Weeks of walking, the primordial form of human movement, with few possessions to weigh you down, passing from village to forest, city to pasture, resting not only in bodily pleasures like a glass of wine or cold stream but in the happy love of true communion with your companions; that is the life in which Christ chose to incarnate. It is the basic and authentic life of man upon the earth, and it is there that we meet Him most easily. The Camino is not a walk for something, it is a walk to and through something. Pilgrimage is a walk to and through something, and with someone. That something is a life well lived and a true foretaste of Heaven, and the someone is Christ. We are pilgrims on this earth. This is how you were meant to live. Life is pilgrimage, and despite how often I say it, I have never understood it as I did on the Camino de Santiago. May God grant me that grace next time too. 

in statu viae

Ryan

1. Luke 2:49