“The only significance of life consists in helping to establish the kingdom of God.” Leo Tolstoy
El Camino de Santiago originated as a pilgrimage that follows the path of Saint James the Great as he planted churches in northern Spain. Today, its spirit of pilgrimage and challenge attracts hikers of different kinds from all over the world. For reflection and for the chance to build relationships with other pilgrims, our entire squad of 35 hiked from Pamplona to Burgos, over 130 miles, in 9 days.
After two nights in an airport, we arrived in Pamplona and walked about a mile with all of our things to where we were staying for the night.
Everyone was amused by us, since we stuck out like sore thumbs walking through town with all of our things, one big pack on our backs and another one on our front.
We had some delicious gelato, made spaghetti for dinner, and early the next morning we split up in our teams and began our journey.
The sunrises were breath-taking, the many sunflowers vibrant, the views gorgeous, the little towns all along the way beautiful, the chocolate croissants delicious (those were usually consumed before I thought about a photo), but the climbs were often intense and the pain was real.
Some days we seemed to climb mountains and hills all day, some days we walked for miles and miles of desert with no towns or water fountains during the hottest part of the day, some days were incredibly long and we hiked for nearly 12 hours.
We stayed in these places called albergues (meaning shelter in Spanish), which were hostels specifically for pilgrims along the Camino. We met other pilgrims and had wonderful conversations about backpacks, Spanish food, life, and faith. We built community over dinners cooked in various shared kitchens, washed our clothes by hand with whatever soap we could find, drank from a free-flowing wine fountain, attended mass and received a pilgrims blessing, prayed with strangers and with each other, worshiped with other teams on a mountain top, lost the trail and wandered on highways, waited at bus stops on the days when we simply couldn’t go anymore. We learned humility, to live on very little, to trust Jesus with every step, that we might endure even when the pain seemed insufferable. I truly don’t think I had ever been in so much pain, at one point every step causing tears. But on the Camino, the weary pilgrim keeps going no matter the pain. One learns to walk in suffering, a lesson that will likely take my entire lifetime to fully grasp.
One of those early mornings, like before the sun was even making an appearance early, and when I was tired, aching, and truly over the whole walking until Jesus comes back thing, I was looking at the dirt path under me and noticed the hundreds of shoe prints along the road. There were so many different varieties: hiking shoes, tennis shoes, sandals, hiking pole imprints, all different brands and patterns, and no two must have been the same. There were so many shoe prints, in fact, that they seemed to shape the very road we were walking on. And I sensed God say, “That is my Kingdom.”
It’s by the grace of God that we can walk with Him in this life, and by doing so, each of us leave unique imprints behind on this dusty road to heaven. When we respond to God, I think in His grace He allows us to shape this kingdom in the unique way each of us walk, talk, and live our lives. I was struck by this idea; that we don’t change the direction of this kingdom road, but in many small ways, we can control what it looks like.
But kingdom looks very diverse, with many different behavioral norms and skin colors, and this kingdom road is built and shaped with many varied dusty shoe prints of wandering hearts seeking heaven on Earth, not just our own. Imagine how boring a road would look with only Chaco imprints.
Kingdom should ultimately look like human flourishing and the Gospel penetrating and effecting culture, and that doesn’t mean making everything look American. It should include the least of these being dignified as they will be in heaven, not just giving them a cut of industry so that they can be more like us. It should honor beauty and goodness in all cultures, not lifting some cultures up as the most beautiful or good. Overall, it should look like the Holy Spirit evidently at His reconciliatory work in the lives of all peoples, cultures, narratives, ecosystems, and novelties. It should look like Heaven changing Earth, not Western changing Eastern, nor the Protestant changing the Catholic, nor white, wealthy men changing the culture of a rural African community. And even on a smaller scale, it means making room in our lives for those who differ from us. Learning to look not only for the pattern we leave on the road to heaven, but to learn from the lives of others and the imprints they leave behind.
While we are called to be holy and be more like Jesus, that process will be wholesomely different for each of us. We are all shaped by our relationships, upbringings, and cultural lenses, and this will ultimately shape the dusty shoe print of grace we leave behind on this road of kingdom.
This all really cemented for me when, with swollen, blistered feet, bruised shoulders from our packs, and aching bodies, we all finally arrived in Burgos, a beautiful city full of tourism and cathedrals. But it was also full of my squad, who made their presence known by worshiping in the streets while waiting for our 10-hour long bus ride to Mijas.
We all had learned similar lessons through suffering, had had similar experiences, but had stayed at different places, had eaten different food, and had walked with different people along the way with whom they had built different relationships. We had all walked the same Camino, had established the same Kingdom, had arrived in the same city, but in different shoes.
“Buen Camino” is something I probably heard and said a million times, as it is a saying pilgrims will greet one another with along the way. You literally wish a “good walk” upon one another, and I think we can start wishing that on the others in our lives. We all have different walks but being on the kingdom road is a good walk, no matter the differences.
May the Lord grow in us today an awareness of how we are leaving a kingdom shoe print with the patterns of our lives, as well as grace for the imprints that are vastly different than our own. May we begin to make space in our lives for those who hike in Crocs when we walk in New Balance. Because sometimes it’s not so much the walk that matters but who we walk with.
Much like in this photo, it’s not the grand cathedral that really matters. It’s beautiful sure, but what’s really, truly, grand are those precious squad mates at the bottom.
Those cold, beloved friends who are dancing and laughing. It’s other people that truly matter in this life and making space for them in our hearts, in our schedules, in how we serve, and ultimately how we love, live, and establish the Kingdom of heaven on earth is what a buen camino truly looks like.
