My time on The Camino was one of my favorite seasons of the race so far. We walked around 150 miles on foot over the course of 10 days, slowly making our way along “The Way of St. James.” Unfortunately, it’s almost impossible to sum up in one blog, so I’m going to split my reflections into at least two blogs, with excerpts from mini journal entries from various days. I probably won’t write about every day, but there were several days on this path that resonated deeply with me. I hope you enjoy reading about my thoughts and experiences!
Day 1: Ego
Our team started the Camino today. We spent some time meandering the streets of Porto, waffling a bit between staying the night there or walking a few miles. We had just gotten off of an overnight bus, so none of us had slept much. But after walking around for a while, we decided to put a few miles behind us.
Our beginning wasn’t the smoothest, but in my experience, beginnings rarely are. Right before our team started walking, we had a little bit of conflict, and it was clear that it was impacting our day. Without going too much into the conflict itself, the important part to the story is that my ego was a central character in the conflict. As we were preparing to begin this spiritual journey, a part of myself that needed to be dealt with made itself clearly known.
I don’t generally think of myself as someone who operates with a lot of ego, but when it bubbles to the surface, it’s usually a problem, because it can be hard to name and it comes to the surface quickly with condescending remarks, or sarcastic comments. Thankfully, God helped me name it today. I expect this will be something I’ll have to engage with again during this journey. Beginnings aren’t always the smoothest in spiritual experiences like this, but they can be opportunities to name things that need to be named, and commit to engaging heart conditions that need to be wrestled with and redeemed.
Day 2: Breathe
Today I practiced breath prayer throughout our 12 mile walk. Breath prayer is a simple way of using your breath as a way of meditatively praying a simple prayer multiple times throughout your day. If you’re interested in hearing more about how to practice and form a breath prayer, you can check out one person’s description of the process on this website: https://www.asacredjourney.net/how-to-practice-breath-prayer/. Generally when I’ve practiced breath prayer, I’ll pray a name for God when I breathe in and a desire of my heart when I breathe out. Today, I’ve alternated between two prayers that revolve around the same idea:
“Beautiful Jesus, I offer my heart again.”
and
“Here’s my heart, I give it freely.”
My focus today has been on making sure my heart is a welcoming place for the spirit to take up residence. Just as breathing is central to physical life, this openness is central to life with God. My hope is that this openness will lead to deeper communion with God during this journey.
Day 3: Aches and Pains
Today is the first day that I’ve started our walk with aches and pains. It’s also one of our longest walks of the Camino (around 24 miles). I’ve heard (and sometimes experienced) that pain can be a unique teacher. For most of my life pain has come in the form of emotion, either a result of my own insecurities, or shame that’s come out of poor life decisions or harm I’ve caused others. It’s almost never been physical pain. I know the pain I’m experiencing today is a fraction of what a lot of people experience on a day to day basis, but I want to be open to it teaching me during this journey. A few early reflections:
- Sometimes our aches and pains tell us what our bodies need. Too often we’re not kind enough to our bodies when they try to tell us it’s time to stop and take a break or to seek help. Whether it’s in emotional or physical pain, we need to learn to treat ourselves kindly and to care for all parts of ourselves.
- Sometimes our aches and pains can be dishonest. I’ve found that at times, my body can push further physically than it thinks it can, and that it actually needs to be pushed past initial pain for growth to happen. There can definitely be unhealthy expressions of this, but a healthy level of struggle and pain is often necessary for the strengthening of our physical and spiritual muscles. I need to be able to identify the aches and pains that are lying to me, and be ready to dismiss them: “You’re too weak” or “you can’t do this” or “you’re not good enough” or “the task is too big.” Messages that try to degrade your humanity, keep you distracted or idle, or cause you to move in an unhelpful direction. These messages are usually in direct opposition to truth that the spirit is trying to get into our souls: “I am your strength”, “I am with you”, “you’re my son/daughter”, etc.
My goals today are to rest when I need to rest, and to maintain a positive attitude when my body or my spirit is hurting. If my ego or dishonest messages bubble to the surface, I want to be able to name them and shift my gaze to goodness and beauty. I don’t believe that God causes all of our pain, but I believe that a foundational truth is that God is present in all of our pain, attempting to speak kindly to us. What have you learned from seasons of pain (physical or emotional)? What kind word do you most often hear God trying to communicate to you in seasons of pain?
If you’ve read this far, thanks for reading! I’ll get the next few entries out soon!
