My Anti-Blister, Self-Care Plan from the day before is
basically this: I’ll met Gitte for breakfast early in the morning and we’ll
walk from Navarette to Najera, then catch a bus from there to Santo Domingo de
Calzada, a larger city with a special connection to the Camino – it holds the
museum and church dedicated to Saint Dominic of the Road, a man who spent much
of his life building roads and bridges for pilgrims along the Way in the 11th
century. This is where I plan to stop
for the night even though I know Gitte is headed further. It seems like a smart compromise, I won’t
have to walk as far and I’ll give myself some breathing room for the future if
my feet don’t heal as quickly as I hope.
First, I get confused by the time and leave Gitte waiting
for nearly an hour, so when Joseph and I come sauntering downhill from the
albergue she’s visibly irritated and I am immediately ashamed and embarrassed. Then, the bar we were to meet at is closed,
so the three of us end up wandering well out of the main, older part of town
and into the more modern section before we find a place to eat. It’s a strange little café, with some sort of
lottery machine in the corner and a widescreen television over the tables. I’m distracted by the moving pictures as
Joseph tells us all about how dumb the Spanish king is thought to be, but we
are not allowed to have an opinion or repeat this observation… because we aren’t
Spaniards ourselves. There’s also a trio
of attractive and smiley, though standoffish, young women eating at the café.
They have really nice gear. It
matches. It's clean. It's the opposite of us.
When we say goodbye to Joseph in the bar, I feel a bit of
sadness and remorse. It’s not often that
I feel connected to or immediately friendly with other men, but for whatever
reason he and I seem to have a connection and I’m sorry to possibly see the end
of him. These aren’t things that you can
easily express in words to a middle-aged Spanish man as you’re hurrying out the
door at 7 in the morning, but I do my best with a “Vaya con Dio” and a firm
handshake. He seems sad himself and
reluctant to go, but maybe I’m just imagining it.
Later in the day, Santo Domingo holds all kinds of
fascinating turns in the streets, tightly-wound corners and looming stone
buildings that put me in mind of what I consider ‘authentic’ Europe – the kind
of city well-suited to a Jason Bourne movie or a Woody Allen romance – and Gitte
and I gladly, cheerfully pay the fee to go explore the museum and
cathedral. I remember being frustrated
that I cannot capture the sheer height of the clock tower or church, alongside
the close, ‘oldness’, of the streets.
The perspective just won’t fit and I know that when I get home and show
these pictures to my friends and family, it won’t be enough.
The museum is striking, it’s the first large place I’ve
spent time in that so dramatically displays its’ roots in the Camino de
Santiago. There is also an exhibition of
the life of Blessed Theresa of Calcutta, and I’m struck by the effect of Christ
on this person’s life – I’ve read a small amount about the woman, and what
stands out for me is the idea that faith can work on us in such extraordinary ways,
ways that inspire the world to ask deeper questions about how we are meant to
live our lives.
I love museums, how quiet and reverent they can be in the morning
when few people are out, and it’s nice to have the freedom to take my time and
explore. I like that the silence of the
cathedral forces Gitte and I to communicate with mostly our eyes and facial
expressions. On the way out I buy a
simple red rosary, which to this day might be the best 2 Euros I’ve ever
spent.
Maybe it’s the rest from the museum, or the amazing weather,
or feeling afraid of saying goodbye to another friend on the Camino, but after
we leave the church and Gitte pushes me to continue on with her to a tiny town
6 more kilometers down the road called Granon, I cave.
By the time we get there, I’m so frustrated about my feet,
my willingness to be peer pressured, how absolutely tiny this town is compared
to the relative comfort of Santo Domingo, and Gitte’s chattiness that I’m
bordering on angry and snappy. There is
one restaurant that looks less than appealing, and a parish albergue connected
to the church of John the Baptist that immediately does little to recommend
itself: there is loud construction outside, an open floor plan with no beds,
only mattresses, two cramped showers, and did I mention the construction?
Listen close, kids, here is a lesson. I’ve been sucked into a quick judgment. I will be proven wrong. After I utterly fail to take a nap, bothered
by the jackhammers and the chatter of a couple from California in the corner, I
shuffle down into the common dining area (admittedly a beautiful conversion of
the church’s attic, with high open windows and a welcoming fireplace surrounded
by comfortable chairs) and fall into a conversation with the British
hospitalero. Over the next few hours
while we sit, drink tea, and wait to start dinner, I meet so many new faces and
people I can’t keep up – it quickly starts to feel like a family reunion with
all the attendant hustle and bustle. Our
schedule for the evening has been set: at 6 we all come down to the kitchen and
prepare the food into large pans and dishes – the Spanish hospitalera directing
us from the tiny kitchen like some kindly general – and, once finished, walk
the food over to the town baker who will graciously bake the food while we go
to mass.
Again, the pilgrim’s mass is gentle and touching – the
wooden pews in this ancient stone building are full of pilgrims, the priest is
kind and welcoming, the liturgy familiar and comforting, and the blessing
afterwards leaves me feeling both special and humble.
Dinner is magical.
After the mass we go, as a group, to the baker’s to literally sing for
our supper – each nationality expected to sing in chorus a song from their
country. Us Americans fall into ‘Ring of
Fire’ which is a good choice because I know the lyrics. Dinner itself is served on two massive rows
of tables, Harry Potter style, under the peaked roof of the common room, 60 or
so energetic pilgrims packed in and laughing, passing plates down the rows,
cracking bottles of wine and water, chomping on bread. Toward the end of dinner we are asked to each
stand up and say our names, countries of origin, and a reason why we have come
on pilgrimage.
Listening to so many people name their diverse and sincere reasons, even the explanations that
are vague and unformed, is damn humbling.
Obviously we all come from different places, have different stories and
backgrounds, but to hear the roll call in this dramatic way serves well to put
me in my place: humbly among an amazing group of people whose reasons are all
as valid as my own. When my turn rolls
around I leave it at “I’m here for discernment, and to listen to whatever God
wants to tell me”, which is a terse answer, but an honest one.
After the dishes are done and the night starts to wind down,
people have started to lay down in sleeping bags and the conversations have
fallen to low murmurs and quiet cadences, I open one of the rooftop windows and
stick my head out to stare across at the church steeple and the stars
above. I know literally nothing about
the constellations and the night sky, but I remember being a teenager to sneak
out of the house and go lie down on the road in the field below my parents’
house at night, staring up at the stars and aching for something larger than
myself, some eternal and immense sense of connection to history, to the larger
world, to the workings of faith. Weird
how that works out.
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