68: Crossing a provincial boundary

We got to the other end of the beach and crossed a bridge over a river into Pobeña. After walking for a few minutes we noticed that we weren't seeing any yellow arrows. This is a common occurrence, because even though the trail is generally well-marked, there are some important stretches that are hardly marked at all. Or you lose the trail by missing a single marking because it is hidden, or because you aren't looking, or because it isn't there.

"Yes", the next man we asked said to us, "I think the path goes along the shore back there. You missed it."

I hate backtracking. "And the carretera?" I ask.

"Yes, that will bring you to the same spot. You need to get to Covarón, and then continue from there."

Anabel and I looked at each other and decided that we would keep walking. We had not gone very far, however, when we noticed that this was a bad idea. It is very stressful to walk along narrow country roads where there is traffic. We found a side road which led steeply uphill. It looked like it could bring us to a point further along the trail, so we wouldn't have to backtrack. To be safe, we asked a man who was working in his garden.

"Yes, you can get to the trail along here. You'll come to two stone pillars at the top of the hill. Walk through them, and you'll meet up with the trail."

The going was steep uphill, but the road was good. We found two decrepit wall fragments that could pass for pillars, but when we walked between them we ended up in cow pasture. There was no trail here. We heard the breakers of the sea up ahead, but a heavy fog was rolling in and we couldn't see very far. We picked our way along the grassy hillside on which the grass was a little too high and the hillside a little too steep for the walking to be comfortable. The fog rolled over us and we couldn't see more than a few steps ahead. We came to a fence. Eventually we reached a place where we could see the trail practically right underneath us. It was a difficult descent, though -- a steep cliff at some points, but even the easier bits were a difficult scramble. Anabel made it down with no major problems, but I took a while to descend, trying to be as tender as possible to my knee, but still making some whimpering sounds as it took a few jolts.

But the trail was very easy and attractive from here, more of a promenade. We met plenty of other people, but most appeared to be taking a walk along the beach and not a pilgrimage. For the third time since we had met up yesterday in the late afternoon, Anabel started getting into a conversation with a man who was walking roughly alongside us. He had done the Camino himself, and hearing him speak, I felt like a loser. He said that you are easily able to cover 35-40 Kilometers a day. On some days he had done up to 50. Me, I was having difficulty making an even 20 Km per day.

I had to keep reminding myself that it isn't a race, but apparently I did not fully believe that. Why did I feel this tinge of jealousy?

Eventually the conversation flagged between Anabel and this man, and he resumed his pace and left us behind. The fog came and went. We crossed from Basque Country into Cantabria, and had an overweight shirtless Spaniard take a picture of us at the border marker. We reached the end of the promenade, and somehow got off the trail and ended up on the carretera again. We went up and down some switchbacks and eventually got to Ontón. It was one in the afternoon, and the only bread store we could find had just closed for the siesta time. We were sort of stuck on the carretera, roughly parallel to the autovia (freeway), but with steeper slopes and more switchbacks. Sometimes we would cut corners on the switchbacks, saving us some distance but putting an extra strain on The Knee. My feet, too, were burning by now. We had lost track of where the trail should be.

We reached Mioño and there was a bus stop bench beside the road. We sat down for a break, but Anabel wanted to keep going. I told her that she should go ahead, I'd stay here and rest a while.

There was an construction work going on nearby. The whole northern coast of Spain seems to be a construction area. There was an information booth which was closed, and a building which looked like town hall, appropriately modest for a modest little town.

I lay down on the bench and reflected on what a bad place this was to try to take a nap. There was traffic and construction noise all around. I decided to try following the advice I had gotten from my German roommate in Bilbao, and listened intently to the noise.

67: Steps towards despair: A burden to God

I suffered much of my life under an oppression that, I think, many Christians suffer under: the idea of being a burden to God.

The good news of the gospel is, of course, that we can be free from our sins, but this is not always perceived as good news. For one thing, "our sins" can sound too much like "fun stuff" and we see the gospel as being a proclamation that we can be freed of everything we enjoy about life. This in itself can get us on the road to despair, because we have a hard time reconciling the joy of the Lord with the idea that we must give up whatever we find enjoyable.

But an even greater burden lay in the Christian message that Jesus died to take away my sins. This translates to the view that every sin I commit has caused him pain at the cross. Since, despite my efforts, I will continue to sin until the end of my life, it follows that Christ would suffer less if I were to die today than if I were to continue living (and sinning) for another couple of decades. And that Christ would suffer even less if I had not been born at all.

Throughout my life I have heard many sermons in which the utmost was done to get me to feel sympathy with Christ's suffering. No doubt there is spiritual merit in meditating on the suffering of our Savior. But the side effect has been to make me despise my life, which, after all, was the cause for his suffering. It has made me wish I had not been born, which is another way of saying that it has led me to despair.

I was not only afraid of a regular occurrence of sins adding up; I was also worried that new sins would be born. In other words, it was not only a matter of having more years to live in which more situations would arise in which I would again fall prey to the temptation to lie. It was a fear that new situations would arise in which I would fall prey to temptations I had never known before. As a 7-year-old I had not really struggled with lust. I would have had fewer sins, and therefore inflicted fewer injuries on my Savior, if I had died before reaching an age in which I made my acquaintance with lust.

So who knows what else is coming towards me in the years to come? I imagine situations in which I am coincidentally holding a crowbar at the precise moment that someone makes my temper boil over. How easily one can take a swing in blinded rage and murder someone! Wouldn't it be better for me to die now, before I have done something so awful?

Or what if I start drinking, and over the years slowly develop a habit of drinking uncontrollably? What if, in a weak and depressed moment, I am offered a hard drug that soon imprisons me in addiction? What if someday I am seduced? What if I join a movement that seems to promote high ideals but in the end corrupts me into becoming a violent power-monger?

It could all happen if I keep living. I certainly don't trust myself to be immune to any of these temptations. Considering how far God has allowed me to wander, I don't even trust Him to keep me safe. Sure He will forgive me, but come on -- what does forgiveness from God mean to the widow and orphans of a man you have just killed? The only way to avoid further damage from sin is to stop sinning, and the only way to stop sinning is to stop living.

66: Getting to La Arena

I wake up early again. My sleeping bag is wet with the dew. It is always a debate whether to get up right away into the chilly morning air, getting an early start and knowing that I'll be warmed up pretty soon, or stay longer in the sleeping bag, relatively cozy but also quite bored, waiting for the sun to warm and dry my surroundings a bit.

I wish I were one of those people who can just go back to sleep when they wake up in the morning.

I wait in my sleeping bag until that gets boring. I pull some clothes in the sleeping bag with me and get dressed before stepping out. We had left all our remaining groceries in a bag on the picnic table, hoping that no cats or mice would be attracted to it during the night. Everything still seemed to be there, and I started putting things out for breakfast. Anabel was waking up.

After breakfast we continued along the pilgrim/bicycle trail. Last night around dusk there had been a lot of cyclists, but now it was practically empty.

"Many of our best cyclists are from the Basque country," Anabel had said.

I eventually found another staff and followed her example of walking with two. My feet were getting blistered and needed all the support they could get. My knee, too, was feeling sensitive.

A man walked alongside us for a while. He found it quaint that we were traveling such a long way. He himself was not a traveler at all, he told us. But he did have to do this walk every morning because of his health condition.

Once again, I lost interest in the conversation after a while, and started lagging behind while Anabel continued talking to the man for the better part of an hour. When our ways parted we were almost at the beach of La Arena.

I had been saying that I might take a swim once we got to the beach. Anabel told me that was crazy, it was way too cold. At the time, this comment had strengthened my resolve even more, but now that we were actually at the beach, I did not have much desire to get in the water. It would involve changing clothes, and there were no dressing-rooms in sight. I took off my shoes and waded around for a bit. Then we walked across to the other side of the beach, where the trail was to continue. Anabel posed with our walking staffs for a picture.

65: Steps towards despair: A burden to the people closest to me

I do not fall asleep for a while, actually. I usually don't.

As I continue my thoughts on being a burden to the world, the circles get smaller and smaller, and two uncomfortable things start happening. The first is that it gets more personal, more emotional. Saying that I am in part responsible for the death by starvation of children in Africa is one thing; saying that my life is a nuisance to my parents and my siblings is completely another. Because (and this is the second disturbance) my parents and my siblings would not call me a burden.

I have caused them so many difficulties. As a child, sick and insomniac, my parents took it in turns to carry me through the house, trying to get me to sleep, all night long. My mother once fainted with me in her arms. For years she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

But my parents have never given the impression that this was too high a price to pay for having me.

I remember as a child, pulling my sister's hair. She was crying from the pain, but she was far too good to retaliate. She just took it.

And my brother, he suffered the most. I had an unpredictable temper and beat him up regularly, all the way into my teens. Once I hit him so hard he blacked out. In my mind I can still see him staggering backwards against a wall, his eyes glazing over and him sliding awkwardly, sideways downward and collapsing on a heap. Once I threw a deodorant can at him and hit his forehead. Again, there is an image in my mind of him reeling backwards, his eyes tight shut and his mouth open in an expression of pain and holding both his hands against the blood flowing over his eyebrow.

But even worse than the physical abuse were all my other forms of lording it out over him. All of his ideas which I quenched, all the times I ridiculed a song he liked or an opinion he held, all the times I discouraged him from following a goal, all the optimism and excitement which I put a damper on. I often wonder what sort of person he would be today, how much more his personality would have unfolded, had I not throttled so many developments.

But I am loved by them all. I'm not sure how I would really know what love is if it weren't for my family. And the truth, the difficult truth, is that I am the only one in my family who believes that my family would be better off without me. And what's more, my view of myself as an unjust transaction towards those around me is much more hurtful to them than any of the other injuries and inconveniences that I have ever caused them. No one else blames me for being alive. No one else sees it as a difficulty or an injustice. But they all suffer, not because I exist, but because I wish I didn't.

It gets complex. It becomes a whirlpool. My best (theoretical) solution to every problem I've caused (or faced, for that matter) is that this problem would never have existed had I not been born. Including the problem of me hurting those around me by wishing I had not been born. Thus my theoretical solution becomes a non-theoretical problem.

But still, it persists. If I had not been born, it says, I would not cause anyone pain by wishing I had not been born.

64: another night in a picnic area

Anabel and I got to one sort of picnic area after a while. It was a bit like the rest stops along a highway, but it was mostly for cyclists and pedestrians. There was a rancid smell in the air though, probably from a garbage bin or something, and so we kept walking. I did not want to eat my dinner and go to sleep in an area that smelled like that.

Shortly before dark we reached a similar parking area. There was even a gasoline station just a stone's throw away. We sat down and unpacked some food. Anabel had a baguette that, she warned me, would be "algo chicle" because it was already a few days old. I got her to try some of the pumpernickel that I had found at a shop in Bilbao, because she was completely unfamiliar with it. It seems that dark bread is not so popular in Spain. Between the two of us we also pulled oranges, cheese, chocolate, salami, tuna and yoghurt drinks out of our backpacks.

There was a view of some apartment buildings, and there were people on the street in front of them doing some sort of Basque dance. Anabel told me that she had a Basque flute with her. I don't even have a harmonica, I thought, even though I'm the one who studied music. But for the most part I was glad to be taking a break from music during this time, even though I did a lot of singing along my trek. I was thankful that I had gotten rid of my guitar, and was trying to imagine what that walk from Gernika to Bilbao would have done to my knee if I had had that extra weight on my back.

"Are you OK with sleeping here?" I asked Anabel, pointing to the grass and bushes around us.

"Yes", she said. She had been carrying an isolation mat with her for the whole pilgrimage, and had been hoping to make use of it at least once in an outdoor setting.

I was experiencing something very typical for me: the feeling that the spot I was at wasn't perfect for spending the night. In my various trips -- whether I'm hitch hiking, cycling or whatever -- I start getting into this mode where I keep thinking I'll find something better further along. This means that I usually end up collapsing beside the road around 2:30 AM, sleeping next to some junk pile or in the dark corner of a parking lot because the grass in the field that I passed four hours before was a little too long for my taste, and I had walked on into the darkness hoping to find something more ideal.

But I knew that we wouldn't be likely to find anything better than this. There was some garbage lying around, but I could live with that. I walked over to the gasoline station and used their bathroom to brush my teeth and refill my water bottle, and was again surprised that no one was charging me money for it, like they would have in Germany or the Netherlands.

A lady was walking her dog past the picnic area as I returned, and I hoped that people wouldn't be walking their dogs past my sleeping body all night long.

Anabel had spread out her isolation mat and sleeping bag beside, and halfway under, a large bush. I went around to the other side of the bush and lay my trenchcoat in the grass. It wasn't an isolation mat, but at least it doubled as a coat, cape, and a whole bunch of pockets. I crawled into my sleeping bag, stuffed earplugs into my ears, and went to sleep.

63: steps towards despair: a burden to practically everyone I've ever met

I remember as a kid, looking out my bedroom window at a few other kids playing in the street. One of them was overweight and I yelled something like, "hey, fat pig" at him.

For no reason.

I remember saying "hey stupid" to a new kid in school, because he was, you know, the new kid. I remember mocking my classmates for their spelling errors or for getting questions wrong. I remember contradicting and interrupting my teachers, to the extent where I probably still hold some sort of record at my old school for number of times I got kicked out of class.

For a while I went through a lying phase. This was mostly in fifth grade. Not only would I lie in order to worm my way around getting caught (for homework I hadn't done, for example), but I had a bad case of one-upmanship whenever someone told a good story or joke. I made up some adventure of my own, unverifiable to anyone in the room.

I'm far less comfortable with lying today, but my one-upmanship remains, in some more socially acceptable forms. It isn't necessarily even one-upmanship -- my stories are not always as good or as exciting as the ones the other people tell -- but it's a form of self-validation. "Well, I guess that was a pretty good story, but I'm here too, I have stories too." Sometimes I even feel that I can only move a conversation along by contributing a similar experience of my own to it, instead of continuing talking about the other's experience. This may seem like a minor thing, but it is symptomatic of my entire life: even in my apparent attempts to connect with others, to help someone else along, it is really all about me. I live by theft.

I remember how a friend and I would wrestle with the other kids living in his building. It wasn't exactly brawling, but it was more serious than play-fighting. Once I groped a girl inappropriately during such a fight (she was just reaching adolescence). What is incredible to me in retrospect is how naive I was about it. There was no thought of getting a cheap thrill in a sexual way out of this; I simply considered it a valid move in a semi-serious skirmish with a girl.

But her reaction, the look on her face and the sound that she made, has haunted me all these years.

What is the use of my life? Some guy out there might have an eating disorder because of the way people called him names when he was a chubby kid. God only knows what psychological disorders some girl is carrying around from a grope in a hallway fight. Who knows how many of the cruelties on my part have seriously injured others. And what have I done in return? Have I done anything good of which one can say, "well, of course you'll do some damage along the way, but you're doing something good as well"?

Nothing comes to mind. It seems like so many empty words. Even the better things I have done have been like the stories I tell -- a form of self-validation. Whose life is enriched because of me? Where have I even neutralized the damage I have done? I can't even apologize to most of the people I've hurt, because I can't track them down anymore.

Part of being a Christian means that you can't drag this stuff around with you all your life; you must accept God's forgiveness for it and move on. But far from uplifting me, this discourages me even more. For one thing, even in my more willing moments I can't surrender it, and so I continue to feel like a failure for carrying this around with me anyway. For another, it often seems like such a scumbag's way out;I'd like to pay back the damage somehow.

But of course I can't. Even my most determined efforts to do some good in order to compensate for the bad I do have only resulted in more bad.

And that, too, is a miserable realization. Where else can all this lead but to despair? What conclusion can possibly follow other than the conclusion that the world would be better off if I hadn't been born?

62: Leaving Portugalete

It took a long time for the photo store to get Anabel's pictures from her digital camera. During that time I went to two different bookstores, neither of which had a pocket-sized New Testament which I could take for the rest of the pilgrimage. I had a small booklet containing the four gospels -- a Spanish man at Taize had given this to me -- but I wanted to read around in the Epistles as well.

As the process in the photo store was delayed and delayed, we met a man who immediately began to talk to us about the Camino. He was one of the "Amigos del Camino", who dedicate themselves to promoting and improving the pilgrim ways to Santiago. He said there was another pilgrim shelter near Muskiz, but it wouldn't be open in April, and to walk it would take more hours than we still had daylight for. He walked with us until we were out of town, talking incessantly to Anabel with a million words of advice for a pilgrim. I was starting to tune out what he was saying, but Anabel kept asking questions.

Once outside of Portugalete, we started off at a brisk pace towards the lowering sun. Anabel had two large walking staffs, which looked sort of funny. There was something spider-like about the way these slender legs helped her walk.

"So why are you taking this trip?" I asked her. I asked this of every pilgrim I met along the way, although I eventually learned that it was not such a good idea to start a new acquaintanceship with something so personal, even though it would seem like the most natural question two pilgrims might ask each other.

"Turismo ecologico," she answered. "This trail has the infrastructure of essentially one long series of nature hikes. Also, I thought that crossing the entire country on foot would be a great way for me to do something, you know, get a feeling of achievement, to be able to believe in myself."

The words "believe in myself" usually just bounce around inside my head looking -- unsuccessfully -- for some meaning to attach themselves to. They must mean something, or people wouldn't use them, but I don't know what they mean. I've always "believed in myself", in the sense that I've never doubted my existence. What more can it mean to believe in oneself? People talk about it as if it were a sort of validation for one's existence.

I once wrote into my journal: "Even in my darkest hours I've believed in myself. That's part of what made them so dark."

"And you?" She asked.

It was only fair for her to take revenge by asking the same question. It is a difficult question, but I had the answers that I had been working out, even if they weren't the complete reasons for my doing this.

"Well, I wanted to travel again, see some new part of the world, but I hate traveling in countries where I can't communicate. I haven't been in Spain before, but I do speak Spanish, so this is ideal. And, as you say, it's a great infrastructure for walking, which is a travel mode I wanted to explore a little more. And I wanted some away time to come to peace and learn how to pray."

"So you're a believer?"

"Yes. Aren't you?"

"Well, I'm Catholic, but I don't believe any more."

"Yes?"

"When I was a child, my cousin became very sick. My mother told me to pray for her, so I was praying, praying, trying everything, you know, but she just kept getting worse. And then," her voice started failing her a bit, "and then she died. But my mom said I should keep praying, so that her soul would be set free from Purgatory, and I continued praying..." she was fully weeping now. "I'm sorry..." she said, trying to breathe normally again and wiping her eyes. We walked on for a while. I was experiencing the helplessness of every man who is confronted with a crying woman. The natural impulse is to put your arms around her or something, but I've learned that giving in to this impulse is not always a good thing. "Don't hold on to me" and all that.

"And then," she said a little more calmly, "later on I saw what this whole thing had done to me, and I decided that there is no one up there. No one who cares, anyway."

We walked in silence for a while. The evening sun made everything golden. The pilgrim trail here went alongside a bike trail, and cyclists in training raced past us.

This, I thought, was the kind of Catholicism I've grown up being taught to reject. This idea of appeasing God by praying enough, of spiritual blackmail and perpetual uncertainty. Every brand of Christianity can play such power games, but what is it about the Roman Church...? I was fully intending to discover my own spiritual connections to Roman Catholicism on this pilgrimage, the ones that I had never known as a child because I grew up in the sort of context in which Catholics aren't even considered Christians.

"Have you tried telling Him?" I finally asked.

"Telling whom?"

"Telling God. Tell Him He doesn't exist. Tell Him He's not fair. He can take it."

"Why should I do that?"

"Well, what can you lose? If you are angry at Him, you're not making it better by keeping your anger to yourself. Even if there is no God, any psychologist can tell you that there's value in releasing your emotions. But if God is there -- well if He's really unfair then you can at least tell Him so, but if He really loves you then He'll be glad to communicate with you, even if you're afraid that He won't like what you say." I started babbling. I often get this way. I tried to explain to her that God actually likes us. I told her of how long it had taken me to understand this, because I had been told all my life that God loves me, but had taken that to mean that He's forbearing with me, gets frustrated at how hard it is to change me, suffers when I do bad things, and is just generally burdened by my existence -- everything except the most obvious characteristics of love, such as "enjoys spending time with me" and "is more interested in freeing me than in controlling me". I tried to say that Jesus loves our friends even more than we do, loved Anabel's cousin, loves us more than we can love ourselves.

I don't remember what I said and how trite it may have sounded, but I remember the feeling. I'm not sure what it means that I become a babbling idiot when I speak about the love of God. It is interesting that in those moments I have so much conviction -- not pretended conviction but true, deep confidence -- in what I am saying. I can wrestle with God all night long and accuse Him of everything, can blame Him for creating me and thwarting me and tormenting me, can ask Him to take away my life because I have no desire to keep going. But when I start talking to someone about the love of God, I believe strongly and passionately in the love of God.

What does this mean? Does my own talking convince me? Does my conviction awaken in time for me to talk to others, and then wane again when I am left to myself? Is the love of God more credible to me when I am in the presence of someone who I wish were experiencing it? Do I subconsciously force myself to believe something because I want someone else to believe it? Or do I live in the conviction, but forget about it too often and need reminding? Do my words to others serve as a reminder to myself?

Many things I do not understand.

61: Meditations on the resurrection, Part 7: "Do not hold on to me."

When Mary Magdalene rushes to embrace the resurrected Jesus, he says, "do not hold on to me, for I have not yet gone to be with the Father." What strange words. I think the Greek text in the gospels can even be translated as "stop touching me."

One of the monks at Taize had spoken to us about this. He talked about how it is our instinct to hold on to the things that are dear to us, but how this then deprives these things of their essence because in holding on to something by force, we do not allow it to be itself. We end up clinging to a hull, or a shadow, or a past reality.

Jesus speaks a similar language throughout the gospels. He says that "he who tries to preserve his life will lose it". Many passages in the Sermon on the Mount seem to be variations of the principle that "you get what you want by learning not to pursue it in too immediate a way." And he tells his disciples that it is good for him to go away, because otherwise the Comforter wouldn't come.

But how is that "good"? Which disciple would have voluntarily gone through the transaction of having the Master removed from among their midst, even if he were replaced by the indwelling of the Spirit?

As I picture Mary Magdalene meeting Jesus in front of the empty tomb, I think I can understand, but I'm pretty sure I can't explain. Somehow the natural reaction of embracing someone who you thought had been taken away from you would not give you the same closeness in this moment. Somehow a much more intimate (and certainly more lasting) spiritual bond could be formed only by relinquishing the more immanent connection. Somehow a part of her heart was awakened that could only be awakened through the denial of a more immediate desire.

If walking with Jesus is nothing else, it is the progressive awakening of ourselves. He makes complete persons of us, awakening individual areas whose existence we had no idea of, areas which we cannot have any idea of unless we are deprived of our acquired habits of navigating around them. This can be a very painful process, but it is this which makes our walk with Jesus so joyful and worthwhile.

60: Portugalete

The rest of the walk was through one city after another. We wanted to find a good place to take a rest and have some lunch, but even when we did find a park there was construction work going on a stone's throw away.

Coming into Portugalete, we saw the famous suspension bridge. Built in 1893, it was the first significant example of a transporter bridge in the world. It is essentially a ferry that doesn't touch the water. I looked at the monumental work and imagined it being built in the 19th century and wondered why they didn't just put a rope ferry across the river.

We asked around for the pilgrim shelter. Many people didn't know, others directed us through town to a hall that was apparently used as a sort of school. There was no one at the reception. We asked some of the people passing through, but no one seemed to know whether Portugalete had a pilgrim shelter. We tried to ask our way to the city's information center, but that had moved recently, so we walked around through the city. Eventually we found it, but, like almost everything in Spain, it was closed for the afternoon. Lone sat down on a park bench. I found another bench, removed my boots, and lay down to rest. An hour later the info center opened.

As we walked in, a petite redhead with a backpack walked in as well. I had already noticed her at the hostel in Bilbao, partly because she walked around with two staves. It looked quite funny, since these were sticks picked up in the woods and not "professional" nordic walking sticks. She was another pilgrim also looking for a shelter. Her name was Anabel.

The receptionist at the info office told us that Portugalete's pilgrim shelter is a seasonal thing; during the summers one can spend the night in that hall where Lone and I had first been led to. But, as it was still April, we would have to spend the night in a hotel. We asked about price, and she said the cheapest was 22 Euros.

Lone decided she would go with that, but I thought I'd rather continue walking and spend the night outside somewhere. Anabel seemed undecided. "You'll sleep outside?" she asked me.

"Yes," I said. "I don't feel like paying for a hotel, and the weather report said that it wouldn't rain." I had made sure to catch the weather at the Bilbao hostel.

"But then where do you sleep?"

I shrugged. "A patch of grass somewhere. Or a beach. I've done it a few times on this trip already."

"I think I'll try that too."

"Great."

I still wanted to see if I could buy a Spanish New Testament, and Anabel wanted to find a photo store where she could dump the pictures from her digital camera onto a CD. Lone had a few things to buy as well, so the three of us went roaming the streets together.

Anabel

Portugalete is the only city I know that has motorized walkways on the sidewalks outside. There were many steep streets, so it was helpful to not have to walk all that way. But it did feel strange.

Anabel and Lone on a conveyor sidewalk in Portugalete

59: Meditations on the resurrection, part 6: Mary Magdalene

Mary Magdalene, it seems, understood a lot more about Jesus than the disciples did. No wonder the relationship is such a source of fascination and bad romance novels.

But the Bible doesn't tell us much about her at all. Some equate her with the adulterous woman who was almost stoned to death, and some with the one who anointed Jesus' feet. It becomes more confusing because it seems that two-thirds of the women in Jesus' life were named "Mary".

Easter morning finds Mary Magdalene sobbing before an empty tomb. Others had already seen it and gone home scratching their heads, but she couldn't just get over it like that. Two angels ask her why she is crying. In possibly the least astonished reaction to an angelic appearance recorded in the Bible, Mary tells them that her Lord has been taken away.

Jesus appears on the scene and asks her the same question. She does not recognize him at first, but when he says her name, she gives a cry and, apparently, embraces him. He tells her not to touch him (I think his words could even be translated as "stop touching me").

The resurrected Jesus was frequently not recognized immediately by those who knew him. The moment of recognition, when it comes, seems to have some personal significance for each of them.

Mary Magdalene recognizes him when he speaks her name. The Bible tells us that he had driven seven demons out of her. She recognizes the voice that had called her, by name, from out of the darkness of demonic possession. Was that moment a reminder of her first contact with the Light? Did it go back even beyond that -- was it originally maybe not so much a "calling by her name" as a "giving her a name"?

Many people tell us we have a choice as to whether or not we want to follow Jesus, but sometimes I wonder whether all of us really do. I live my day-to-day existence as if I had a choice in the things I do, but when Jesus called me, did I really have the possibility of rejecting the Call? I don't really feel that I did. I found, I think, what the Book of Common Prayer refers to when it says, "Your love compels us to come in." Compels.

The moment of being called. Was this what Mary Magdalene was re-living, or remembering, when she heard her Master call her by her name in front of the empty tomb?

58: Walking out of Bilbao

I had taken a full day's rest to allow my knee to recover. The second night at the hostel had cost me more, since my pilgrim's pass only got me a discount the first night. I called my parents in Germany again, then set out to continue the walk to Portugalete.

It immediately started with a long flight of stairs. A long flight of stairs. Great, I thought. My knee is going to love this.

This picture does not show the whole thing.

From Bilbao to Portugalete there is practically only a series of cities and suburbs lining the coast, but the trail occasionally dipped behind a ridge so that the cityscapes weren't visible and one could walk among greenery. There were many ramshackle huts of the rural poor, and a lot of garbage was lying around. It reminded me of some parts of Ecuador.

As I was puffing up a steep hill I saw the Danish lady I had met at dinner the night before. She was resting on a bench. I stopped and we spoke for a bit, and then continued on together. She had a pair of nordic walking sticks. We talked about why we were taking the pilgrimage and about where we lived and worked. Her name was Lone, and she lived in southern Denmark just north of the German border. She had four children and a few grandchildren. She said she needed some space to air out her mind, so she came on this pilgrimage.

Some sections of the trail have apparently been there since Roman times.

We passed a point where the trails divided. One led to Burgos and the Camino Frances, the other one continued along the coast. A trail marker helpfully indicated that it was still a good 730 Kilometers to Santiago.

We came to a small chapel. Since I was on a pilgrimage and all, I tried to stop at each of the chapels along the road and enter for a bit of prayer and silence, but I hadn't been very successful because most of them were locked. It was the same with this one. We drank some water and walked on.

The trail returned into suburban landscapes. We eventually lost track of the trail markers. Lone read from her guide, and I saw a road that could be the one we were looking for. It started going steep uphill. For some reason I always speed up when I walk uphill, and Lone was having trouble with the incline so she was lagging behind. We hadn't seen trail markers in a long time. Eventually an old car came down the hill. I flagged the driver to stop and asked if one could get to Portugalete by following this trail.

"Dear me, no," he said. "This keeps going up, and up, and when you get to the top of the hill, there's no way to go but down again. You can go down the other side, but Portugalete is that way." And he pointed.

"Well, you'll see we came off the trail a bit here," I said. "If you're heading back down the hill, could you take us with you to where the trail continues?"

He hesitated for the briefest of moments, then opened the passenger door. Lone was just coming into view at that point (it must have seemed strange for me to be talking about "us" when there was no one but me in sight). We were given a lift back down the hill and got off at a traffic light. It ended up taking quite some time until we were all out, with our backpacks and Lone's nordic walking sticks and my pilgrim staff and trench coat, and the driver explaining to us what our options were to continue our walk to Portugalete. The light changed several times and the car just stood there, a line of cars forming behind it. I made an apologetic gesture to the woman in the first car, but she laughed. I guess she enjoyed the sight.

57: Steps towards despair: a burden to humanity

Of course we all know that if you have a roof over your head and three meals a day, you're more fortunate than about three-fourths of the world's population, depending on what sort of statistics you're going by.

We probably all try to be grateful for it, but many of us who try to feel thankful end up feeling guilty and then defiant. Guilty for getting the long end of the stick without having done anything to deserve it, and of course defiant for being made to feel guilty when it's not really our fault either.

In my case this line of thinking also had the effect of putting me under pressure to make my life count -- to compensate somehow for the imbalance that I was causing by being. But this depressed me as well. It seemed like I would, in order to stop burdening the world, have to get used to the idea of having to live in asceticism and service. Mother Teresa was pulling her own weight, and then some. I could become like her, or be like everyone else and burden the rest of humanity.

This is depressing. I preached asceticism and planned it for my own life, but all this self-denial made me wonder what I even exist for. I like nice things as much as the next guy does. Why should I be the one who goes without them for the sake of easing the burden I put on the world? I wondered on the one hand why it was so difficult for me to embrace the joy of the Lord, but on the other hand I did not really allow myself to enjoy a whole lot. During my teens I felt vaguely guilty if I was taking joy in anything other than talking about the Bible or some sanctimonious activity like that. I felt too self-indulgent, and angry at myself for being self-indulgent, and angry at God for forbidding my self-indulgence, and angry at the world for being so imbalanced that my every desire for myself meant a curtailing of someone else's desire.

Asceticism as an end in itself can easily lead to despair. If a man who eats only one bread a day in order to discipline himself and help others is doing more than a man who eats three square meals a day, then it is easy to conclude that the one who eats nothing at all is doing even more. If self-denial is the purpose of being, then it would follow that not existing would make you (if one can speak in such terms) even more purposeful, because the self would be denied to the point of oblivion. It would be my best contribution; it would save me the excruciating toil of constant self-denial, and save the overpopulated world the space and food and air that I was taking up by existing.

56: Second day in Bilbao

I woke up and went down for breakfast. Then I called my parents in Germany from the card phone at the hostel. This was a telephone to which I could receive calls as well, so they called me back and we talked a long time on the lower rates.

I spent the rest of the morning in the nearby hospital waiting to have my knee looked at. My Dutch insurance card had worked its magic again, and I was not charged anything, and didn't even have to fill out any paperwork to speak of.

When the doctor finally had a look at me, he immediately sent me to X-ray. After waiting outside the X-ray room and then having the plates taken, I returned to the doctor. He said he couldn't see anything, but prescribed some pain medication and recommended that I rest for the remainder of the day.

"Pain medication" I thought as I walked out of there. I saw in my mind's eye how some tendon or cartilage in my knee was being torn to shreds over the next few days while I walked along blissfully drugged to feel no pain. I decided I would not take any painkillers.

The procedure had surprised me anyway. I know nothing about medicine, but it seemed to me that X-rays show you what's going on with the bone, and that a knee injury you sustain from walking would be more likely to be related to cartilage or ligaments or whatever. But an X-ray might show that too, for all I know. It seemed unlikely that someone who spent about a decade studying medicine would fail to have a grasp on what the most likely causes of knee pain on a long walk would be, and how to detect these.

I went to an internet cafe to catch up on my eMailing and blogging. I found an Aldi and did some grocery shopping. They even had pumpernickel, which I had not yet seen since coming to Spain.

The rest of the day was spent relaxing in the hostel. I did my laundry. I talked with an Argentine immigrant. I met more pilgrims: a Danish woman in the cafeteria, a French-Canadian guy in the laundry room. In the evening I saw the Austrian couple Helmut and Helga again.

55: Steps towards despair: a burden to other lifeforms

When I try to trace my thoughts back to their origins, I usually find my earliest memories of them to be on my way to or from school. Most of my school years were spent in Quito, and most of the time we lived within walking distance of our school. In the mornings, my father would usually walk us to school, and in the afternoons we would sometimes walk together and sometimes separately. We had great conversations during our times together, and but I also enjoyed walking by myself and pursuing my thoughts.

It seems that it was on these walks that my thoughts on the nature of the world and my role in it began to take shape. Looking back on it now, I find it remarkable how soon I came to see myself as part of the problem.

In a South American capital city you can see the growth from day to day. Hills that were forested last year are now another suburb, or expanse of slums, or combination of the two.

I knew I was a burden on the world because I knew two things: 1. Natural habitats are being destroyed and species are going extinct every day. 2. The human population on earth is increasing.

I did hear that the destruction of habitat was not caused directly by human population growth, but by greedy landowners, ruthless oil companies, and poorly educated farmers on the edge of rain forests. I also heard that the billions of people sharing the planet had not yet reached numbers at which one could talk of "overpopulation". I wasn't qualified to dispute either of these, although the "not yet overpopulated" arguments never sounded very convincing to me, and didn't seem to take into account that overpopulation -- by anyone's definition -- would be reached soon.

But I considered how I lived. We lived in a fourplex with a small garden. It was not luxurious, but I wondered how much of the earth's surface would be taken up if everyone in the world had as many square meters as we did. In some areas of the world there are three families living in a place like ours.

We had a car. We did not use it much, as we were within walking distance of school and work, but still, it needed gasoline. How much gasoline? How much gasoline would be needed if every family in the world had a car like ours? How many toxins and greenhouse gases would they all pump into the atmosphere? How much oil would need to be pumped out of the ground? How much rainforest would need to be destroyed to get this oil?

I ate three meals a day. How much land was being used to grow the wheat and potatoes and to provide pasture for the cows that went into my meals?

The electricity I used for my reading lamp, my computer, my radio -- where did it come from? Where was some reservoir flooding an ecological habitat, or some coal generator pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, or some nuclear power plant creating radioactive waste?

I did not know the answer to these questions. I always wished that someone could give us exact figures on what an equilibrium between humans and the rest of nature would look like. How much fuel can we burn before we're taking more than is replenished, and sending more toxins into the air than can be absorbed again? Given the world's population, how much land would each person be entitled to before plant and animal life would suffer irreparable damage? My suspicion was that we were already taking a lot more than our share. This was certainly true for the "wealthy landowners and greedy oil companies" we always liked to blame, but I couldn't help thinking that, to really achieve ecological equilibrium, everyone above the poverty line would have to downsize. But since most people weren't doing so, and certainly not voluntarily, even the more minor contributions of those below the poverty line were upsetting the equilibrium.

"Upsetting the equilibrium" is what I am doing. I am a breathing, eating burden on other lifeforms. No matter what efforts I put into this, I cannot become a positive or even a neutral force. I'll have to settle for being a less destructive force, but still destructive, because I cannot stop contributing my part to a massive force that is creating an imbalance which is disfavorable to most species and fatal to many. They would be better off if I didn't exist.

How can life possibly be lived when you have this knowledge? Apparently, everyone around me was doing just fine. What I could never figure out was whether people weren't seeing it, or saw it but had found a way to live in spite of it. There is amazing power in the optimistic idea of counterbalancing the damage we do by doing some even greater good someday. Fatalism, too, is powerful. So is the willful blindness of greed. I know this because I used these three methods myself in staving off despair.

54: the hostel in Bilbao

The bus reached its last stop and the driver showed me how to walk the rest of the way to the hostel. It was a huge building on higher ground overlooking the city of Bilbao. Several of the major cities along the Camino de Santiago do not have pilgrim shelters, so pilgrims have to stay in normal hostels. This one at least gave me a discount when I showed my pilgrim's pass. It still came to over 13 Euros, but it did, after all, include much more than my accomodations so far had. There was a cafe, several vending machines, laundry facilities, lounges and payphone. My room was shared with only one other person, and there was a great view of the city.

My roommate turned out to be an elderly German man. I took a shower and went to the cafeteria for some dinner. I tried to write while I was eating. Trying to sum up at the end of the day what had been going on in my mind all day long was always a difficult task. I was very tired and my knee was in pain. I decided I should go to a clinic tomorrow and have it looked at before continuing my walk.

Back in my room, I asked my roommate if I could keep the window open. The traffic noise was loud, but I had earplugs and I preferred having a breeze blowing through the room.

"No problem," he said. "I can sleep through anything. I can fall asleep on a bus, in an office chair, anyplace, any time."

This intrigued me. The man had the ability that I most wanted to have.

"How do you do it?" I asked.

"Well, I took some endogenous training, and that helped. You just close your eyes and relax, and listen intently to every sound that's around you. Then you focus on the rhythm of your breathing, but I'm usually already asleep by that time."

This was one of the most counterintuitive things I had heard. I usually plugged up my ears and tried to ignore all the sounds around me. Could it be that I could fall asleep if I tried to focus on them instead?

About an hour later I did put my earplugs in. Listening to the traffic noise in a darkened room had failed to put me to sleep.

53: Steps towards despair: burdening the world

My Weltschmerz, or my oppressive Weltanschauung (or depression, or melancholy, or pessimism, or whatever we want to call it) began early in life. As I try to remember just how early, it becomes difficult. Apparently I am genetically predisposed to melancholy. Apparently I was a very difficult child, sleeping very little and crying a lot.

This sleeplessness followed me my whole life and may have a lot to do with depressing me. You start developing a dim view of life if you never feel like you've slept enough. If rest is your most treasured and most elusive goal, you start despising your waking moments, and from there it is not such a large step to despising your living moments and wishing for a deeper, more lasting sleep.

But the question of purpose haunted me as well. I remember asking my dad why we are alive, and not finding any answer to be satisfying. I don't recall at what age I started asking, but I know it was long before my teens. It struck me that a God who would consider the human race to be a worthwhile project must have a strong sense of slapstick and some sadistic tendencies as well. But I didn't say this out loud.

I figured if I wasn't given any direct understanding of why I existed, I might as well try to leave the world a better place than I had found it. I guess you need to have some sort of purpose, and you could do worse than making this your purpose. It sounds so noble.

The problem, as I saw it, was that my very existence was putting a burden on the world, making it worse instead of better. This meant I would first have to undo the bad I was doing, and then do some good in addition. Implicitly, it also meant that everyone would be better off if I had not even been born.

Even though you can manipulate your thinking and distract yourself from it, it is only a matter of time before your thoughts reach their logical conclusions. And while I may have had my strain of melancholy all my life, the youthful optimism which once had counterbalanced it wore thinner and thinner until all that was left was the despair. Simply because I had been born, I was a burden to the human race, to all life in my planet, and to God.

52: Getting to Bilbao

I arrived at Lezama and asked a jogger which way it was to the pilgrim shelter. He pointed vaguely without breaking his stride. It struck me that it must get really annoying for people here to have to deal with such questions all the time from pilgrims. For the most part they were very polite and hospitable with me.

The next person I asked was able to point more precisely, but she added that the shelter wasn't open until May. I asked one or two more people, and they all confirmed this.

I stopped in a bar and sat down with some apple juice. Great, I thought. Another ten or twelve kilometers to Bilbao, where the next pilgrim shelter was. That would probably take me three more hours to walk. I wondered if I would find some good place to sack out for the night, and whether I would take it if I did.

When I continued the walk, it seemed to go endlessly along a major street through semi-urban area. Then it went up a hill. My left knee was starting to send stabs of pain at every step. I was cursing to myself. I could see the cathedral I had walked past, hours ago it seemed, not that far behind me. I could see the airplanes coming in for landing at the airport outside of Bilbao. The city itself was still on the other side of the ridge. The hillside was actually not as overgrown as much of the country had been, so I was thinking of just spending the night lying in the grass. It was only late afternoon, but I was tired of walking and last night had taught me that the pilgrim shelters can't be expected to be open after sunset.

I finally reached crested the ridge and saw the city of Bilbao stretched out before me. There was a sort of park here, with picnic tables and water fountains and such. I held my knee under cold water for a while.

I asked some men about Bilbao's pilgrim shelter, but they didn't know. One said there was a pilgrim shelter just at the bottom of the hill, "only about a fifteen minute walk."

Almost one hour later I was in the city. The sun was setting. Everyone I had asked about a pilgrim shelter had told me it was on the other end of Bilbao. Two ladies told me there was a convent in the neighborhood, but when I asked there the nun told me that she had no idea about a pilgrim shelter.

I took the bus across town to the hostel which serves as Bilbao's pilgrim shelter. I felt like this was cheating a bit, but I was having some serious concerns about my knee by now, and I wasn't gonna walk all the way across the largest city I'd encounter on this pilgrimage only to stand in front of closed doors and be left to find another bench to lie down on.

I also figured that this morning's extra kilometers I had amassed by walking around in a circle would compensate for the bus across town.

These were my boots on the 8th day of walking.

51: Have mercy on me, a sinner.

"Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner."

This prayer had become the rhythm of my walk. It has become my favorite prayer since I first tried it after reading that Orthodox monks pray it continuously. I later got the idea (reading Anselm Grün) to adjust the prayer to my breathing rhythms, and that was so internalized now that I could hardly start the prayer without inhaling for the first part and exhaling the second.

I also had plenty of songs that I would sing to the rhythm of my staff and my footsteps: Taizé chants, but also hymns like Be Thou My Vision, Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing, Ich Bete An die Macht der Liebe. It was great to have songs in 3/4 time, because my staff would hit the ground on every third step. That helped me to support both my legs alternately while I walked.

But usually I would just repeat the Jesus prayer.

The first time I had tried this prayer was on a bus in England. I was soon filled with so much light, such a feeling of a cleaning up of my inner self and a strengthening of a wall against chaos, that I began to weep silently.

I knew this feeling. I had already experienced it, in a much more intense and lasting way, a year before. It is difficult for me to try to describe that, but the words "I once was blind but now I see" would apply, with all the depth of meaning that they could entail. From then on all spiritual truth I encounter seems to be more like a reminder of what I saw at that moment than like a new discovery.

I know people who would consider the prayer to be theologically unsound. "We are not sinners" I heard a pastor say once. "We are saints. It's just that we still sin."

This sounded to me a bit like saying that we are vegetarians who still eat meat. But I have since stopped caring so much about how we use such words. I understand that whoever is justified by Jesus can no longer see his primary identity in his sinful nature even though he still falls daily, and in that sense I am "a saint who hasn't stopped sinning yet." But in so many other ways I can still not "go home acquitted of my sins", as the publican in the parable, unless I call myself a sinner and ask Jesus to have mercy on me.

The meaning of any sentence will change over time if you repeat it often enough. But not every sentence will uplift you and build you up as you repeat it. A prayer like the Jesus prayer may go through a thousand different meanings, but I could feel how it searched my soul and mended bits of it little by little. I could feel how sin is not so much something I do, but something I am. And how Jesus' mercy was a timeless constant; in asking for it I am not only asking to be shown mercy now or tomorrow, but also asking for the mercy that has accompanied me yesterday and last year; and at the same time thanking him for the infinite mercy he has shown me, and thanking him in advance for the mercy by which I would continue to live tomorrow.

At many times I have found it to be the only prayer I am even capable of praying.

50: "You should get an umbrella."

I was very happy to arrive at a village, because I was feeling weak and hungry. I went into the "Tabacos" shop. The smaller the village, the more you find in these shops, because they are more likely to be the only place where a villager can buy anything. Often they'll also have a small bar or cafe attached.

I got a baguette, a bar of chocolate and an apple. This combination was to become central to my diet for the remainder of the pilgrimage. I could eat all three in alternate bites so that the bread wouldn't be too dry. Butter, jam, honey, and even cheese are not very convenient to eat on the fly or transport in the backpack; oranges are a mess and bananas are usually sold before they're ripe.

There was construction on the road as I headed off toward Lezama. It was still going to be a good 15 Kilometers.

One of the things that surprised me about the Basque country was how Basque it was. When people said that there are parts of Spain where people speak Basque I had assumed that they meant something similar to what we mean when we say that there are parts of Nova Scotia where people speak Gaelic. I had expected maybe a few of the old people in the villages to have memories of their language and culture. I had not expected everyone, old and young, to speak Basque as a first language -- a default language. I had not expected all the roadsigns and advertisements to be in Basque.

Another thing that surprised me, but that was to continue long after leaving Basque country, was the amount of construction work going on. Apparently Spain's northern coast was becoming a fashionable place for people to move to. There were large generic Legoland suburbs being plunked down everywhere.

Two other pilgrims caught up with me right as it began to rain. They had large umbrellas, and one of them held his over me while the other helped me as I struggled with my raincoat.

"You should get an umbrella", he said. "We're doing this walk for the third time now, and umbrellas are the way to go. You sweat too much in a raincoat. Besides, water just drips right off of it onto your pants and your boots." I had my doubts as I pictured myself trying to maneuvre an umbrella through some of the foliage of the forest trails or on the windy coastal ridges, but it was hard to argue with their experience.

"What's your name?" one of them asked.

"Marco."

"Well, I'm Julio, and that's Antonio. Ha, we're all named after Roman Emperors."

"Are you still going far?"

"To Bilbao today. We'll stop at Lezama for a meal."

And they were off. Fifteen minutes later I couldn't see them any more, but I could locate where they must be in the scenery ahead by the sound of dogs barking.

What a pain it must be to live along the Camino de Santiago, I thought. If you have a dog, it's just barking at pilgrims all day long. The dogs were annoying enough for me, but what must it be like for the owner? Especially to see all these (let's face it) tourists walking by, in many cases right through your property. The locals were surprisingly friendly about all this.

I felt somewhat defeated because these two men had just breezed by me like that. I kept telling myself that this wasn't a race, but it was still hard not to notice that my pace must be abnormally slow. I tried to push myself for a while, reasoning that I would be happy to be at the pilgrim shelter a little earlier for a nice shower, but my knee started hurting again and I lapsed to my accustomed tempo.

49: Meditations on the resurrection, Part 5: Peter and John

In theory, it sounds quite easy to say that you will take a 40-day pilgrimage and meditate on a few things. You think you're going to be bored stiff if all you do is walk, and you'll need things to think about. I had said that I would use the time to learn to pray, and to meditate on the book of James. I also wanted to really let the resurrection accounts of the gospels sink in.

I was still having trouble focusing on these meditations, but I assumed it was because I had only been walking for a week at this point. I was trying to think about Peter and John's encounter with the empty tomb, but it wasn't easy to come up with any insightful thoughts on it.

We know Peter as the ever-impulsive one, and on hearing the women tell the story of an empty tomb, he immediately runs off to see for himself. John went too, but what surprises me is that there weren't more who went. Was it fear? "We're the gang who followed that man who was executed as a criminal. Maybe we don't want to be seen loitering around his grave, especially if the grave is indeed empty. The Roman authorities have some persuasive ways of discouraging that kind of activity."

But it does seem strange that you can give yourself the luxury of disbelieving a story about an empty tomb, when all you have to do is go have a look for yourself. The disciples simply didn't believe the women, even though evidence was there for the having.

Peter and John don't give themselves that luxury. They go look for themselves. Even though John beats Peter to the tomb, he seems a little nervous about going in there by himself. But once Peter goes, John follows, sees the grave clothes and the absence of a body and believes, "for", as he tells us, "he had not yet understood the scriptures that he had to rise from the dead."

Strange conjunction, that word "for." It seems to imply that, had he understood the scriptures, it would not have taken a look at an abandoned shroud to believe.

Strange experience all around. What do you do now? What's next? Any suggestions?

It seems to be the ultimate head-scratching moment.

48: The broken moped

I don't know how many hours I had been walking through a dripping, foggy forest when I saw a broken moped lying in a garbage heap in the middle of the forest.

For the second time.

For a moment it struck me as strange to find two broken mopeds in one day's walk. Then I had that "oh, no" reaction of realizing that I'd been walking around in a circle.

Where the forest trail met up with a paved road I had searched long and hard for the yellow arrow that was the trail marker. Not finding one, I had taken out my compass and tried to at least follow the road in a westerly direction, but at this place it ran north to south, and in both directions it bent westwards further down. I eventually tried one direction and, when I finally hit another yellow arrow, thought I was back on track. But I was back on a part of the trail I had already done.

I had gotten lost a few times before due to what I considered ambiguous or missing trail markers. I always thought ruefully that this would never happen to a real outdoorsman, remembering the hikes in Patagonia with my friend Bryan Ward.

The second time I hit the paved road I went the other way, and sure enough, there was a yellow arrow on the pavement quite close to where I should have been looking last time.

I was angry with myself for this waste of time and energy. I was also feeling hungry. Since yesterday's late lunch at the taverna, I had only eaten a few cookies which I had bought at the Cenarruza monastery. They were all gone now, and my blood sugar was running low.

47: "That Sounds Wonderful"

I once heard an atheist repeat that worn-out argument that people believe in an afterlife because they can't handle gazing into the void. "The void", it seems, is like sleeping, only deeper, with no dreams, and you don't wake up.

This sounded wonderful to me. I still have no idea why this view would be harder to handle than the various religious visions of the afterlife are.

I once talked to my sister about all the things that weren't worth the risk to me and she said, "Well, if you wouldn't have some ups and downs, then you'd just be floating around through an eventless life,..."

Floating around through an eventless life. This sounded wonderful to me.

The Stoics were accused of going for a sort of happiness that was "like the happiness of a stone."
This, too, sounds wonderful to me.

Jesus said of Judas that it would have "been better for him not to have been born."

Not to have been born, I thought, and the words sounded wonderful.

Paul Simon says in one of his songs "I am a rock, I am an island, and a rock feels no pain, and an island never cries."

I know he's being satirical, but taken at face value the words sound wonderful.

You'll notice that I'm interpreting all these things in exactly the way they weren't intended.

What sounds somewhat threatening and scary are Jesus' words: "I live, and you too shall live." They sometimes make me shudder. To me they open up a curtain upon a long, long road full of danger and suffering and loneliness and hardship and getting beaten again and again and again until anything one has learned to call one's "self" has been shattered. Sure one is clothed with a new self in the end, a shining and radiant and joyful self. But I still find that there is nothing in me which considers the exchange worthwhile, and that the only thing (in me) that holds me to this image is a fear of what God might do if I reject what He intends to give me as a gift. (Outside of me, the Grace of God also holds me to this image, but that's without -- possibly even against -- my will.)

I think you get the picture. I knew before I had started on this pilgrimage that I would be confronted with this fundamental conflict in my life. Call it Weltschmerz, because there are several ambiguous meanings to words like pessimism, depression and despair.

We all know that feeling where it seems that the world is upside down, and we find to our dismay that it is we who are upside down, and have to be turned right. This may be easy the first few times, but it can get extremely difficult.

It takes no astute observer to note that my general attitude towards life is inconsistent with my Christian beliefs. However, I rarely meet someone who can understand just how deeply rooted this attitude is in me, and how impossible it is for me to surrender it. For every time I tell myself, "Hush, you mustn't talk that way," an inner voice rebels, "but it's true!" I understand that it must be me who is upside down, but I cannot relinquish the perspective that it is in fact the rest of the world which is inverted.

46: leaving Gernika

It usually happens when I sleep outside: I wake up at the crack of dawn. My sleeping bag has drunk in all the dew and is sopping wet, but my eyes are sticky and dry.

I was lying on a bench in Gernika. I was actually surprised that I had only woken up two or three times during the night, and gone right back to sleep again. Usually the hardness and narrowness of a bench means that I spend most of the night in that state in which I am not fully asleep, or asleep but still aware that my hip is resting against something uncomfortably hard and that I can't just turn around because I'll fall.

I packed my things and went to the water pump. I loved these water pumps in the Spanish villages. In Germany it's an ordeal to find drinking water. Here it was available at every little plaza in every little village. I had a good wash and a drink and set out into the forest.

It was another wet and foggy day. The trail was uneven and there was nothing but forest for the first few kilometers. I reflected on how close I had been to attempting this stretch in total darkness late last night and was very thankful that I had decided to stay in Gernika. I think my flashlight batteries would have run out about an hour's walk into the woods, and my first hour did not present me with any sight of a good place to lie down. Sleeping in the underbrush would have made for a much worse night than lying on a bench did.

45: a monastic calling?

I pulled my wool cap over my eyes. I cannot sleep well unless I go into sensory deprivation. I usually plug up my ears as well as covering my eyes.

If I hadn't taken that bath in the river, I thought, I might have arrived in Gernika on time to get into the pilgrim shelter. But what's a pilgrim life if you don't sleep on a bench now and then?

I was thinking about the monks. I was thinking about Helga's comment and about my calling. What draws me to monasticism? There's plenty that I fear about it -- mostly that vow of stability, that lifetime of staying in one place, singing music that becomes very familiar after a few years, being at close quarters with people, living a life of short nights and frugal meals. But there's so much to love as well. Mostly the silence. I don't know much about silence -- I'm a talker -- but it has always fascinated me.

When I was an adolescent, I made a private vow of celibacy to God. I pretended it was in order to be more available to the service of God, but the real reason was that I was afraid of turning into a guy who wanted to get married one day, and I figured that this vow would at least keep me from such a foolish move.

If I were to try to explain the background to that fear, it could take a while. There are many causes. But it seems to me that my large and small vices, fears, sins and weaknesses are all overshadowed by one giant fear: the fear of living.

Of course, since I am alive already, this fear often takes the form of resentment. Resentment about being alive.

I am aware of course that this will have to go, and that God will change this about me. For the last few years, it has become a more and more frightening and real possibility that God will cure me by getting me married. There's no devious method I would put past Him: he'll make my sexual desires unbearable; He'll make me lonely and miserable; He'll make me fall head over heels in love; He'll get me drunk. In short, He'll do whatever it takes to make me end up eternally betrothed to a woman in order to give me a reason to live and a reason to start enjoying it.

It will work, of course. But it will be a long and painful process, and not just for me. But hey, no one promised that this life would be easy.

But is my attraction to the monastic life nothing more than the flight from this? I woke up to it one day and thought, that's all it is. I'm just driven from behind. I'm not drawn to monasticism because it is my calling, my pearl of greatest price for which I sacrifice everything; it just happens to be a place where I can flee from my greatest fears.

But sometimes I think it isn't. The very idea of spending my life in silence and contemplation makes me less afraid. Not that I'm any good at it. But I found, to my surprise, that my one week at Taize left me with a feeling of purpose. I had almost forgotten what that felt like. I had settled for finding something to ease the agony of being, but I suddenly found myself thinking that I would risk much, and sacrifice much, to attain the inner strength of silence and the charisma of contemplation.

This scared me.

I know that I cannot get away from what I fear by entering a monastery, but it seems that I would be submitted to a much more gentle and compassionate process of falling in love with life there. But when I pray about it, I still feel that it isn't meant to be. God is more interested, it seems, in turning me into a person who wants to get married.

Why am I making this pilgrimage? I don't know. But if you were to ask me if there is something I hope it will accomplish, I'll tell you that I hope it will resolve this battle.

44: Arriving in Gernika

I enjoyed the walk. I enjoyed having a pilgrim's shadow accompany me along the way.


I also enjoyed not having the guitar on my back. I took a scenic detour along the hiking trails, which was something I had meticulously avoided when I was still carrying more weight.

At one point I came to a river, and wondered if I should have my bath here. From a distance I had planned to rough it as much as possible -- sleep outside, bathe in rivers, etc. -- and I was wondering how committed I wanted to try to be to that. But I figured what the heck, I'm sweaty and there's water, so I went in for a bath.

The last bit I walked on the country roads, using the Kilometer markers to gague how fast I was going. I found that my normal pace was 4 Kilometers per hour. I could do a 12-minute Kilometer (5 km/h) but only if I pushed myself and ignored the landscape. I decided that that wasn't the point of this walk.

The sun was low when I arrived in Gernika (officially Gernika-Lumo, formerly Guernica for non-Basque Spaniards). I eventually found the pilgrim shelter, only to be greeted by a sign saying that it is closed after 6, and leaving a number to call. I went around looking for a public phone. I eventually ended up in the center of town (it did not occur to me that most bars have public phones, I was looking for the booth variety). I got into conversation with one man who offered to make the call for me from his mobile.

Mobile phones have made public phones obsolete, unless you don't own one.

The lady at the other end said that they were closed for the night.

Well, I thought, good thing I had my bath at the river, because worse than sleeping outside is sleeping outside when you're covered with dried sweat.

I kept walking with no particular plan. It was fully dark now. I thought maybe I'd make my way out of the city and find a field to lie down in, but when I got to the edge of the city I saw only a construction zone and the trail disappearing into the woods beyond that.

I wasn't in the mood to go into the woods at night, not knowing how long I'd be tramping along with a small flashlight before I'd find a place to spend the night. I decided to backtrack and find a park bench.

I found a bench in between a bunch of high-rise apartments, but even though people were walking past me, no one paid me any mind as I took out my sleeping bag and wrapped myself into it. It was a cold night, and I put on my wool cap.

43: Steps towards Grace: "You are the Faith that I need."

Years ago I went on a hike through the Italian Alps with two local women. One had brought a devotional book, and during our break, as we sat and munched on sandwiches and enjoyed the landscape, she read out of it. It was one of Watchman Nee's works (I don't remember the title). He was saying that as Christians we have the tendency to pray that God will increase our virtues -- humility, chastity, faith, etc. -- whereas the core of Christianity lies in the recognition that it is Christ who is to be all in all.

On a practical level this would mean that instead of praying, "Lord, increase my faith", I can pray, "Lord, I thank you that you are all the faith that I need."

This offended me. I very much viewed the Christian life as a transaction, an example of lived-out reciprocity. God does something for me, I do something in return. There is no doubt that what He will do will always be much more momentuous, but that's because He's God. I certainly shouldn't come to Him expecting Him to do for me what I could be doing for myself.

And faith -- virtue in general -- I considered something that I should be able to achieve, with a bit of willpower. Sure I would say that I needed God's help in this. But it struck me as ungrateful to try to make God "do all the work." It sounded exactly like the sort of fluffy talk that people use to try to worm their way out of the austere difficulties of attaining virtue.

Grace always offends these religious sentiments of ours. The fact is that when Jesus offers to "do all the work", it isn't just a polite offer. It isn't like someone saying, "can I help you?" to someone who could also handle it alone, or who maybe needs a hand. Jesus in fact has done all the work, and the best way for me to both glorify him and, as it were, "return the favor", is to not try to do it again.

I had thought of the essence of Christianity as being, "you died for me, and in gratitude I'll try to live a virtuous life."

It took me many years to understand that my own virtue, and my attempts to increase it, were a larger obstacle between me and God than even my sins were. I think I did not understand the essence of Christianity until I was able to pray, "you died for me, and in gratitude I'll surrender my attempts to live a virtuous life."

Because a virtuous life turns out to be something we can only achieve by surrendering our efforts to achieve it to the One who has achieved it. If I could get there myself, I would not need Jesus. Glory be to Him! By being the faith I need, He counts Himself to be the faith He requires me to have.

42: Walking to Gernika

The Mass was beautiful. The bishop was there, and it was the ordination service of one of the monks as a deacon. The church was packed. Some parts of the Mass were in Basque.

After the service I started walking. I did not expect to make Gernika that evening, but had heard that there was a pilgrim shelter closer by.

But it turned out to be a beautiful day, and I was feeling stronger than I had expected, so I decided to just keep walking. I stopped along the way for a full meal at a tavern (a luxury I was declaring to reserve only for Sundays). I enjoyed the sunshine and the beautiful fields and the friendly people wherever I asked for directions.

41: The pilgrim's first Sunday

The monks had to be up at some ungodly hour for their morning prayers, but no one woke us pilgrims. We had breakfast brought to us around eight, after which Mathieu and Camille headed off to Guernica.

I decided I would stay for the church service, and Helmut and Helga had the same plan. We had a relaxed morning, since the service didn't start until noon. Helmut was a retired deacon of the Catholic Church, and this interested me. He explained which sacraments he was allowed to administer and what the role of a deacon was and how it resembled that of a priest with fewer rights but more freedoms (like the freedom to get married) and how that itself caused tensions in some churches. We spoke of the Church in Austria and of ecumenical movements.

I asked him about partaking of the Eucharist without being Roman Catholic. One of the unique features of the monastery at Taize is that the Catholic and Protestant monks celebrate their communion services together without anyone being excommunicated. I have never understood how this works, because Roman Catholics are allowed neither to invite outsiders to the Eucharist, nor to partake of other churches' Eucharist services. I once hitched a ride with a Protestant in Bavaria, who told me he went to the Catholic school and was given the Eucharist just like all the other boys, even though the priests and monks at the school knew that he was Protestant. When the monk I talked to last night told me that he would be administering the Eucharist, I asked him if I could participate even though I was Anglican, and he said he saw no problem with it.

Helmut made a good-natured dismissing gesture. "If the Catholic church really enforced all these dogmas that it holds, we'd be in a lot of trouble," he said, which I couldn't help thinking was a curious thing for a deacon to say. But I couldn't really consider his view hypocritical either. He seemed to believe in a very organic relationship between the dogmas and the way they are lived out in practice, but this belief was coupled with a strong love and faith in his church.

The bells started ringing. As we walked towards the main entrance to the church building, I told them how much the monastic life fascinates me. "I often wonder if I'll end up as a monk myself," I said. "Even as a child, I was telling people that that's what I wanted to be."

"That could be a strong indication that this is your calling," said Helga.

In a way, this was exactly the sort of comment that I had long been hoping to hear. But even though I had not even been fishing for it exactly, it struck me with all the dissatisfying falseness of hearing someone say something you've tricked them into saying. Her comment had been sincere enough -- it even had that off-the-cuff sincerity -- but she had inadvertently touched a nerve. I became a little sullen.

"One would hope so," I murmured.

40: the Cenarruza monastery

It was evening when I arrived at my next pilgrim shelter, which was the monastery at Cenarruza. I had been walking down a muddy trail for the last bit, through a town called "Bolivar" where they actually had a statue and a little museum devoted to the South American liberator. (I wonder if there's a similar commemoration of George Washington somewhere in Britain?)

When I was almost there I was overtaken by the young French couple I had met outside of Orio a few days earlier. A monk came to receive us and showed us the pilgrim shelter. We were able to shower and could even hang our clothes up to dry on an indoor clothesline with a small heater/fan blowing on it. We attended the evening prayer service, and then the monk brought us a fantastic dinner. We were joined by an elderly couple from Austria. After dinner we went to the compline service. One of the monks stayed up far past his usual bedtime to hear me talking about my own darkness and heaviness.

There was peace there. I slept well.

French couple Camille and Mathieu with one of the monks. It was cold, so we were wrapped in blankets.

My first blister of the pilgrimage. There would be many, many more.

On the outside, Helmut and Helga from Austria. Inside, Mathieu and Camille from France.

39: surface and solidify, please

I spent the rest of the day walking to the monastery at Cenarruza. I was glad to be rid of the extra weight, but I had digressed from the trail and was walking only on highways and country roads, some of which had heavy traffic and no real shoulder to speak of. It was somewhat stressful to have to be dodging traffic.

I was six days into my pilgrimage, and the habits were beginning to form even though I didn't consider them to be habits. For one thing, I was still procrastinating some of my pilgrimage goals to a later date. But for the most part I figured that the first ten days or so were not to be regarded as typical, as they would be the time in which I would be finding out what it means to be a pilgrim.

But there was one thing that I was already noticing. A few days into a new schedule, a schedule that consists mostly of walking and solitude, I was realizing that my thoughts were trying to materialize. There was a lot of murky seaweed in my mind that was trying to come to the surface and solidify into a recognizable shape. I was only getting vague hints, but I was getting far more than I do on a "regular" day. You can hide from yourself easily enough when you have all the distractions that we surround ourselves with in our lives; it becomes a little harder when you are walking alone for most of the day.

I knew that it had something to do with my insomnia, something to do with my Weltschmerz and with my fear of achievement. I thought that there was a misdiagnosis somewhere -- that what I had been doing to myself was the equivalent of telling an overeater that she would look much better if she were slim, or of giving a bowl of sugar to a hypoglycemic because it just seems logical that low blood sugar would be rectified by increasing sugar intake. Reality does not fit these forms of "logic": overeaters usually suffer from their condition because they are obsessed with the slim-body ideal, and hypoglycemia is exacerbated by sugar intake.

Something similar to this must be going on inside of me, and part of me at least is aware of it and has been trying (for who knows how long) to communicate it to the rest of me.

Not that I was aware of all this on Day 6. It was all murky seaweed yet.