Mama Monday #67

 

These quotes below are from a book I've been reading about the Camino. 

So excited about sharing this experience together!!! 

Pilgrimage is about integration, body and soul, feet, and faith.

– Paul Boers, The Way is Made by Walking, page 23

 

Pilgrimage in its truest sense is religiously motivated travel for the purpose of meeting and experiencing God with hopes of being shaped and changed by that encounter. Pilgrimages are often concretely physical—journeying to a particular place, perhaps with some extraordinary expense and exertion—and spiritual- one hopes to meet God in this travel.

– Paul Boers, The Way is Made by Walking, page 41

 

Church Father Clement of Alexandria famously described prayer as “keeping company with God.” That’s one of my favorite definitions. Walking the Camino was an embodied experience of such companionship, one that informs my regular life back home as well.

– Paul Boers, The Way is Made by Walking, page 48

 

Part of my pilgrimage discernment included paying attention to dreams, which were more vivid than usual. Once  I slept in an old, former monastery that had hosted pilgrims for centuries. Not surprisingly, I dreamed about cloistered grounds, labyrinthine buildings, and encountering mysterious monks. At one point a character who looked at lot like Brother Paul spoke about the life of faith and quoted a wise mentor as teaching, “See God at work in all things.”

The refrain stayed with me long after I woke. I pondered it all day and often thereafter. It rang true and was theologically satisfying. It does not say that God is in all things, some static or inert presence.  It certainly does not claim that God is all things, the heresy of pantheism. Nor does it assert that God wills all things to happen precisely as they do, ever since my sister died at age seventeen, I am reluctant to accept that idea. But I can look for God at work in all things, at all times, in all places. No matter how bad the situation, God does not give up, despair, abandon us. God is there, conferring hope and help.

– Paul Boers, The Way is Made by Walking, page 51

 

While this journey was a pilgrimage, even a dream come true, it continued to challenge me on all kinds of levels. It was not just the taxing work of walking or even the difficult sleeping arrangements. I was not en route to “get away from it all.” Rather, the exotic and unfamiliar circumstances, and being free of routine responsibilities, meant I could pay better attention to God.

– Paul Boers, The Way is Made by Walking, page 72

 

And while I needed to learn difficult lessons on this pilgrimage, there were refreshing graces as well: a call not only to own up to my own limitations but to accept them as a way of trusting God’s fuller grace.

– Paul Boers, The Way is Made by Walking, page 82

 

In walking the Camino, carrying few possessions and being vulnerable to circumstances, more than anything I learned to be prayerful. I constantly offered up to God concerns and worries, places that I hoped for resolution and help. But at the same time, I saw God at work in what was happening. Surely God does not operate differently along the Camino than in the rest of life. But I learned to pay better attention to God- God’s company, God’s workings, and God’s interventions.

– Paul Boers, The Way is Made by Walking, page 83

 

Abundance and scarcity are two modes of perception that crucially shape our imagination and choices. I know they make a difference for me. Do I really believe that God is at work, present, and able to make a difference? Can I trust God with my life? Do I live in the security of such convictions, or am I perpetually fearful and anxious?

Too much of my life is spent worrying about what others may or may not do, protecting myself against possible hazards, competing for seemingly scarce resources. I find myself in an endless race for security and success. But the Camino experience kept drawing me into counterintuitive modes of functioning.

– Paul Boers, The Way is Made by Walking, page 83

 

Meals together were one of the most significant aspects of the Camino. I often find myself recalling where and with whom I ate. I liked- often even loved- the food, but I was most grateful for the company. As Christine Pohl writes: “A shared meal is the activity most closely tied to the reality of God’s Kingdom.”

– Paul Boers, The Way is Made by Walking, page 102