21: a Basque Mass

I still had a few minutes until the mass would begin, so I took the time to pray for a bit. Then a priest went to the front and started talking in Basque. The sparse congregation responded. The priest said something else, and again the congregation knew what to say. The talking was fast, and they were almost interrupting each other.

I was a little disappointed. I could not understand Basque, and I wasn't familiar enough with this liturgy to follow it in my mind. The speaking was mechanical, not like anyone meant it so much as like they were trying to get through it as fast as possible. And even though we were in a monastery, there were no monks anywhere to be seen.

I stayed and observed for a while, but then I got tired and restless. I took my pack and snuck outside. I went to the beach, spread out my trench coat, and lay down to rest. I was hoping to be able to fall asleep early tonight, but I lay there on the beach for several hours, taking turns trying to sleep and trying to think about something. There were dark clouds gathering, and the sea-wind was getting cold. Great, I thought. Get some sleep before it rains.

20: a side note about liturgy

Like many people, I gave myself the luxury of holding certain views for much of my life without really knowing much about the issue. Growing up in a mainstream Evangelical missionary setting, I was taught early on that Roman Catholics have it wrong because they're trying to earn their salvation and because their doctrines and traditions are additions to the Bible and whatnot. I not only held this view, I defended it as well, even though I didn't know many Catholics, didn't know much about their theology, and had never been to mass in a Catholic church.

Then I experienced liturgy.

Most of my life I had assumed that a church service consists of two things: songs and a sermon. There were of course other elements, like an offering, a communion celebration, maybe a time for announcements or testimonies, but the main course, the indispensable bit, was the singing and preaching.

I had a hard time finding a church in which the music and the sermonizing really moved me. I brought my standards down to "one out of two ain't bad". Then I stopped expecting to get anything out of going to church at all, telling myself that it is a fleshly and not a spiritual attitude to go to church in the expectation of "getting something" out of it.

Then I experienced liturgy.

The Anglican Church in Amsterdam was not my first exposure to liturgical services, but it was where I started "getting it". The sermons were hit and miss and the hymns were difficult and obscure (though I loved them because they were challenging), but that was secondary. I saw that sermons and songs did not have to be the main part of a church service at all. And I experienced that God met me and lifted my spirit week after week in the repetition of the liturgical "dialogue". I would seriously spend much of the week looking forward to hearing the priest say "lift up your hearts" and replying with the rest of the congregation, "we lift them to the Lord." I know this sounds a little bit pathetic, but I had really stopped expecting to have spiritual encounters in church, and this moment (among others) could touch my spirit in a way that made me giddy.

Like many Anglican churches, ours then got rid of much of the liturgy in an attempt, I assume, to be more "relevant". Since then I viewed the Roman Catholic Church in a different light. For all its faults, it could at least be counted on to not try a trick like that (or so I thought), and maybe that would be a place where I could still experience the Spirit of God. So as I walked past the Franciscan monastery in Zarautz and saw that Mass was about to begin, I went inside.

19: Zarautz and a tick

The descent into Zarautz is much like the descent into many other towns on Spain's northern coast. After walking through mountainous terrain and rugged shorelines for a while, the view opens up to show a beach right beneath you, with a city to its left and the blue waters of the Bay of Biscay to the right of it. There was a beach promenade further down, and a golf course as well.

I soon found the clinic. I was getting heartily sick of the weight I was carrying, though. Even though I'd only been walking for four days, I could already tell by the feeling of my pack whether my water bottle was full, half-full or empty. I wondered for the umpteenth time if I should get rid of the guitar.

I walked right into the most positive experience in a clinic of my entire life. The people were friendly and forthcoming. My Dutch insurance card got me in completely hassle-free -- not only was I charged no money, but I did not need to fill in any paperwork. I did not have to wait more than five minutes in the waiting room.

The nurse was friendly and we chatted about my pilgrimage. She had done part of the trip herself and was going to do another leg this summer. She removed the tick with a pair of sterile tweezers and killed it. I had felt a little self-conscious, going to a clinic because of a stupid tick, but that was put in order. I told her it's been over ten years since my last tetanus shot, so she gave me one then and there. This was great, because it meant I wouldn't have to worry about this every time I scraped my knee or whatever.

At the end she gave me a lot of advice for my pilgrimage. She told me to wear two pairs of socks to avoid blisters on the feet (I had been doing this already) and to get another pair of shoes or sandals or slippers or whatever (which I was reluctant to do, since the weight on my back already felt excessive). She remarked on my sunburn.

I headed out. I followed the signs to the Franciscan monastery. I saw that there was a church service about to take place, so I went in and sat down. I had never been in a Catholic Church for mass before, and had been hoping to remedy that for a long time. I decided this would be a good opportunity to stop procrastinating.

18: Silence, Part 1

I crossed a bridge and took to the trail leading to Zarautz.

I was thinking about silence. I had started thinking about it when I was at Taizé. Taizé's prayer services include a silent time that usually lasts 5 to 10 minutes. The first two times I went, I found that to be an uncomfortably long period of silence, but after that I felt that the silence could be even longer. I started realizing just how long it takes me to gather my thoughts.

But I was very annoyed by the lack of actual silence during these silent times. There were thousands of young people from all over Europe, and thus there was a constant concert of coughing to be heard. It was like the pianissimo sections of a Tchaikovsky symphony: you can bet your life that those will be the moments when several people in the audience will find it necessary to cough.

"And it's funny," my friend Ryan had once told me, "that people don't normally cough. Like, listen for it in restaurants or wherever. It's when everything is quiet that you get that itch in the back of your throat…"

So it is. I almost suspect that the coughing in these cases isn't really a throat irritation so much as a subconscious unease. It is as if we have some need to assert ourselves. We rebel against being forbidden to make a sound.

Even as we entered the Taizé sanctuary, there were people with large signs which read "Silence" in several languages. These signs had little to no effect on many of the conversations taking place between the people who were entering. Even an usher coming and "hushing" the people who were making too much noise was not taken seriously. People hate being hushed. Even those who are well-meaning will usually just drop the volume of their conversation, but not stop it completely.

But just as they hated being hushed, I hated the fact that they didn't fall silent. The person seeking noise is always at an advantage, because he can generate the noise himself; the person seeking silence has to count on the co-operation of everyone within hearing distance.

Why did this annoy me so much? I got to where I couldn't even concentrate on my prayers because I was so angry at everyone who insisted on coughing and clearing their throat during the silent times. But surely one must learn to accept certain sounds as being a part of the silence? Our own breathing, our own heartbeat, will not go away.

But how much sound can be accepted as being "a part" of silence?

The true contradiction is this: I talk a lot.

Part of it is that I'm fastidious -- I try to get things precise and exact. This is the same quality I've mentioned before in connection with not making mistakes graciously. When I listen to myself speak, I constantly feel that I am telling half-truths. Ambiguities and slight inaccuracies bother me, and I feel compelled to correct or qualify them, to make room for disclaimers and exceptions. These parentheses-within-parentheses make whatever I'm saying longer, less interesting and more confusing. Even if you've never heard me talk, you can see that characteristic in my writing.

[The other contradiction is that I can't pay attention for very long if someone else speaks this way.]

But while this characteristic may account for the length and nature of my discourses, it does not explain the fact that I feel compelled to speak in the first place. Why is it that I get so annoyed with people who can't maintain silence during a prayer time or a symphony, and yet am also the most likely guy to break the "uncomfortable silence" in a table conversation?

Well, the clearest reason is of course that a prayerful silence and an uncomfortable, conversation-stopping silence are two different things. But there are other things I find in myself: I suffer, for example, from the delusion what I have to say is too important to keep to myself. I also find that I somehow feel personally responsible for the awkward lulls in conversation -- as if everyone were feeling uncomfortable and it was my duty to relieve them of their discomfort by resuming the conversation.

Yes, I certainly feel that responsibility. Where on earth could this come from? This is something I'll need to meditate on.

17: Igeldo to Orio

I remember the walk from Igeldo to Orio as a pleasant one. The guitar weighed heavily on my back and gave me something to think about, but it was an otherwise enjoyable hike. I was pleasantly surprised that it took me less time to get to Orio than I had thought. There is a little chapel shortly before you get into the town, but it was closed. I saw a young couple walk by with raincoats and large backpacks. We got to talking a little bit. They were from France, and also doing this pilgrimage. They took a picture of me.

A little further along there was a pilgrim shelter. The place looked good, and had atmosphere. I asked how much it was, and the lady told me 10 Euros. I asked if I could just hang out and rest a bit before heading on, and she said sure.

At the campground they had asked me if I had a pilgrim’s pass. I didn’t even know what that was. I asked this woman if I could get one here. Yes, she said. She would just need to see my passport.

I was slowly learning about what it means to be a pilgrim on this road. There are many shelters along the road, where you can stay for cheap or even for free if you have a document showing you to be a pilgrim. This document gets a stamp at every stop along the way. Everybody knows this, of course, but I was the pilgrim who had come without doing any research.

Poem on the wall of the Orio pilgrim shelter.

The lady gave me a map and explained where the next three shelters were. I thanked her and went on my way. I was thinking about that tick in my side, and hoping to still find a clinic or something to remove it before it would spread some disease, or whatever the heck it is that ticks do. But it turned out that there was no such place in Orio. The tourist information office was open though, and the woman at the desk told me that I should go on to the clinic in Zarautz, a few kilometers further.

16: The interconnectedness of things

I still didn't have much of an idea of what it meant to be a pilgrim on the Camino de Santiago. It was only my fourth day, and I had met no other pilgrims and no real pilgrim services or shelters along the way. This was OK with me, because my plan was to learn these things as I went along. This turned out, I think, to be a good plan, even though it meant making some mistakes along the way.

I knew that the pilgrimage was becoming a trendy touristy thing. I had intentionally planned to avoid pilgrim shelters for this reason. I had wanted to rough it as much as possible, but now I was starting to have doubts about this. My previous experiences of roughing it had always been a few days only, and they had been different. They had usually been hitch hiking trips, which normally don't involve walking great distances on mountain trails.

Spending the whole day walking had not become a routine yet. It still felt like a sometimes arduous, sometimes exhilarating weekend retreat. My thoughts were fresh but scattered. I wondered what sorts of things I'd be learning over the next weeks. I looked at landmarks on the horizon and wondered how many hours I'd have to walk to reach them. I wondered if I'd be able to gauge distance well by the time I'd been doing this for several days.

I knew there would be plenty of time to meditate while walking, and I'd brought plenty of things to meditate on. I was meditating on the resurrection accounts in the gospels. I was meditating on the Lord's Prayer. I was meditating on the Efche (Jesus prayer). I was meditating on two or three hymns. I was meditating on some of the things that the monks at Taizé had said to me during Holy Week. I was meditating on the Epistle of James.

This was probably too much, and too disparate. And, not being very experienced in meditating, I found my thoughts wandering around a lot. Sometimes I let them wander, following them curiously to see where they were going. It wasn't until the last part of the pilgrimage that I would start to see how interconnected these various strands were. Maybe it means that God was guiding my thoughts to one point. Maybe it means that I don't have a large arsenal of original thoughts. Maybe I have only one, and, given enough time to trace my thoughts to their origins, I'll see that they all came from that one.

Most likely there were a handful of things on my mind, and my brain was following the trend of all human brains to associate everything with the things that are preoccupying it anyway.

You can connect any thought with another, if you give yourself enough time. To me, 40 days were enough to show me some surprises.

15: A morning at the campsite (Day 4)

I woke up unwillingly. I’ve always envied people who can go right back to sleep if they wake up before they have to.

I had to check out of the campsite by noon, so I was in no hurry. I took all my clothes and went to the wash basins. I hadn’t found an ideal piece of travel soap yet, but what I did have worked just fine. I washed my clothes and hung them up.

The problem was that my clothes would not dry in time. I should have done them last night, but I had been too tired.

As I showered, I noticed a tick in my side. Great, I thought. I didn’t know much about ticks, but I did know that they spread disease, and that you should remove them without getting their head stuck inside you. I had recently read that the traditional ways to do this – holding a match against the tick or drowning it in oil or something – were not such a good idea after all. There were apparently special tweezers that were the best way to get this done.

I had all morning to hang around the campsite. I called my Mama in Germany and we talked for a bit. I mended my guitar bag, which had a strap that was coming loose. I sat on the outdoor tables writing in my journal and eating some overpriced bread and yoghurt from the campsite grocery store. It started raining lightly, so I hung out under an overhanging roof.

Eventually I did pack my damp clothes and headed out. I would need a hat, I thought. My nose was quite sunburnt. I tied a wet shirt around my head like an Arab head covering, and it kept my head cool, but did not really keep the sun off my nose. I packed my things and started walking.

14: The underachiever, part 1

At school, my teachers seemed convinced that I was a bright kid. They saw that I was barely passing my classes and not doing any work, and they wanted me to make use of my intelligence. I thought that I was making use of my intelligence. I saw that I was passing my classes without doing any work.

I guess we just had different ideas of how best to make use of an intelligent mind.

13: Camping in Igeldo

Shortly out of San Sebastian, the road started going steeply uphill. It was a beautiful balmy evening. I talked for a while with a man who was walking his dog. It felt like it had been a long time since I’d had real human contact, even though I had talked to the members of the Twelve Tribes commune that same morning. The solitude of walking had produced so many thoughts in these last three days that I felt like I had a lot more to say than would be polite in conversation.

I knew there was a camping place further up. It was mountain terrain again, but this time it was a road instead of a narrow hiking trail.

I wondered whether I should camp at the campsite or beside the road. I didn’t really have a tent – just a pair of large plastic coverings for bicycles. I could get into those if it rained during the night. The campsite would probably charge me money.

As I walked, I kept a lookout. Where would I be able to spend the night?

I was already starting to see the difference between this type of travel and the kinds that I had been used to in the past. I had done a lot of hitch hiking, and that had frequently included sleeping outside. But I now noticed that this pilgrim road was something completely different. There weren’t service stations to crash behind, and no good fields either. Right now the area was semi-residential. None of the patches of grass were very good – I’d be in full view, and besides they usually sloped steeply.

It was getting dark when I arrived at the campsite at Igeldo.

When places like this have made money from me, it was almost always because of That Feel. Probably not the exact same That Feel that Tom Waits named a song after, but very similar. It is when the sun is setting and you still don’t know where you’ll spend the night. It’s a melancholic time. You think of people going into their homes, hanging out on their sofas watching TV or whatever. And for a moment you’re almost tempted to strike up conversation with someone, convince them you’re harmless and you could keep them company for that evening, help them with their dinner, swap some stories, and sleep on their sofa, with a roof over your head.

But of course you don’t do that. Or maybe you’re the type that does that, but I’m not. I once met a guy traveling across Canada in his car, spending his evenings in bars and talking to people, ultimately managing to get himself a place to sleep every time.

That Feel. I had been keeping a lookout for a good place to sack out for the last hour now, and nothing very inviting had presented itself. I could go on, into the darkness, and no doubt I’d find something. No doubt even many of the places I’d seen and rejected would look very feasible if I were tired enough. In this state I usually keep going until I’m too tired to remain standing, and then just crash in some unlikely place.

But I was now talking to the receptionist at the campground. There was hot water there. I’d be able to shower and wash my clothes. She found it somewhat strange that I’d be inquiring about a camping place when I didn’t have a real tent. I asked about the cabins, but they were out of my price range. Oh well, I thought, if it rains, I can always spend the rest of the night under a piece of roof, like the one by this office, or in the laundry area.

12 Euros for that though. And I paid it. I paid 12 friggin’ Euros for a patch of level grass and a chance at some hot water.

Some pilgrim I was turning out to be.

12. Steps towards Grace: straining out a gnat

I’m not good at making mistakes graciously. When I play soccer, for example, every bad pass, every fumbled play and every wide shot is accompanied by an apology and a self-deprecating remark or gesture. In music, if I make a mistake while performing, there is always a facial twitch that accompanies it.

I think I’m too self-conscious. I’d hate for people to think that I’m under the impression that I’m doing all right. I feel in those moments that the only thing less forgivable than making a mistake seems to be to continue apparently unaware that I have just made a mistake.

This is, of course, very unprofessional. Even the greatest will make mistakes, even completely unforgivable mistakes, but they need to have the inner fortitude to continue without a public display of regret or self-chastisement, to let the past be the past and be willing to appear the fool.

Now imagine how it is in larger areas of my life – sins, injuries, injustices I commit. I feel that I have a moral obligation to refuse to simply pick myself up and move on after failing.

Any quality we have can be made to take on the appearance of virtue to ourselves. I lived for years believing that at least I hadn’t gone completely to the dogs – at least I was hard enough on myself to not simply shrug off and justify my mistakes. I lived as if it were my duty to kick myself around. I feared that if I didn’t do that, it would be a sign that I don’t take my sins seriously enough, and next thing you know I’d be living the debauched life.

Many people live this way. They understand that no crime is so bad that remorselessness can’t make it even worse, so they nurse their regret as a prized treasure and safeguard against evil.

So the same force that causes me to lose my temper with myself when I play a wrong note condemns me much more severely for, say, breaking my word. I considered this force to be one of the best things that I had, and I was right, because it is our moral sense. I would not simply ignore it – I was too proud of my standards and too afraid of becoming a bad person. I would feel like a weasel if I tried to worm my way out of this condemnation. But I could not bear it, either. I could not live under it and still enjoy life.

Since we have to live with ourselves, we undergo strange compromises. You’d think that someone who’s hard on himself with his errors in a soccer game or a piano recital will be hard on himself in the important moral and ethical issues of his life. But it turns out that as you grow more meticulous about little things you can start to ignore large and real faults. We can only bear self-condemnation to a certain point. Our threshold lowers as we become more exacting with ourselves, and when that threshold is breached, we must deflect the self-condemnation to remain alive.

Jesus said that the Pharisees “swallow a camel and strain out a gnat.” When moralists warn against numbing your conscience, they usually imply that it is by swallowing enough gnats that you desensitize yourself to the prospect of swallowing camels, but they neglect to point out that sometimes it is by straining out the gnats that we lose sight of the camels we swallow whole. You can numb your conscience by listening to accusations just as you can numb it by ignoring them. I cannot live with the unmitigated force of my conscience. I have to numb myself to it to survive.

This is where legalism leads. It is the Catch-22 of trying to live a moral life. It is the reason why every uncompromising attempt to live a life of justice and virtue must end in either hypocrisy or despair.

At first glance it does seem like the remorseless have it easier. And, if once you recognize your own despair and self-condemnation as a sin and not a virtue, it seems that the remorseless (who are free from this sin) even have the moral high ground. Is that what really lies behind the professionalism involved in moving on after messing up, behind the sanctity required to "forget what lies behind and press on toward the mark"? Or is it, in the end, just a question of lowering your standards, of being easier on yourself?

Again, if you were to assume that, you’d be wrong. We all know that this can't be the answer. The real answer lies elsewhere.

11: A chill day

That day I did not get very far. I was sunburned, and my muscles were sore from the unaccustomed exercise. And above all I was feeling the strain of not having slept very well for the past three nights. I felt that I had time to kill anyways. It had taken me only a few hours to get from Taizé to St. Jean-de-Luz, and I had expected to spend a few days hitch hiking that stretch.

It was a pleasant walk into Donostia San Sebastian.

I found a café in which to eat something and write in my journal. Then I went to the tourist office to ask a few questions about the Camino de Santiago. They gave me a brochure (in German, no less) which had a basic map and some pointers for the entire stretch. It was not specific at all, and (as I found out later) quite outdated, but this served as my rough guide for most of the path.

I hit an internet café and caught up a bit on blogging and eMailing.

The rest of the day I spent lying on the beach. I was really hoping that I would be able to fall asleep, because I have a bad habit of getting sick if I go too many days without sleeping well. That would not be a good way to start a pilgrimage.

I thought about my guitar. She was the single heaviest object I was carrying. I had originally planned to make the whole pilgrimage with only the guitar bag strapped to my back. Since it was meant for a larger guitar than the one I was carrying, I could fit a few extra clothes into its recesses and pockets. I also had my trenchcoat, which was too warm to wear in the daytime of a Spanish spring, but which provided me with a good cape, blanket, and even mattress. It, too, had plenty of pockets.

And yet, I found that I needed to pack a small backpack as well. I was won over by the self-consciousness of knowing that it will be hard to keep yourself and your clothes smelling nice if you only take what you can stuff between a guitar and a guitar bag.

But I had made sure to take only what I could bear to part with. Apart from my digital camera and my mp3 player (both being gifts from my father), my documents and my journals, I could throw away anything I was carrying with me if it got too heavy.

And the guitar was getting heavy. She was an old, beat-up instrument I had bought for 10 Pounds in a Salvation Army Thrift Store in Bournemouth 7 years ago. But she was robust and had character and a sound that was ideal for busking and campfire singing. I could, of course, bear to part with her, because she had served me well these years, and I had already suspected that this pilgrimage would be our last trip together.

I was lying on the beach, in the shadow of some beach club building, but I wasn’t able to fall asleep. I dug out the guitar and played a few songs. Should I do this “right”? Should I find a street corner and see if I can make any money with this? That was, after all, one of the reasons for bringing the guitar.

But I was too lazy and self-conscious. I spent the afternoon like a beach bum, chilling in the sand, singing a bit, reading a bit, lying down for a while. I thought vague thoughts about how to continue the pilgrimage. I tried to do some praying and meditating, but this was harder when I was just sitting there instead of walking.

Eventually I did manage to fall asleep for a bit. When I woke up it was late afternoon. I gathered up my things and started walking out of town.

10: Meditations on the Resurrection, Part 3: "Wasn't this what you've been waiting for?"

The chief priests

The truly scary lesson here is one that is, in a way, impossible to learn: the chief priests hear of the supernatural events at Jesus’ tomb, and their first (and only) thought is, “how do we prevent this word from spreading?” The idea that a stone-rolling angel, an earthquake and an empty tomb might be indicators that the crucified man was indeed the Messiah didn’t even occur to them.

I wonder how many of these same chief priests had been present three decades earlier when some astrologers from the East came to Jerusalem asking where the newborn king was. The priests could answer that question all right – questions like this were the substance of their lives. But why did it not enter any of their minds to walk a couple of miles to Bethlehem and see what the heck is going on? Most likely because, in their world view, the Messiah would come from the Jews for the Jews, and whichever Jew was most versed in Scripture would be the first to recognize His coming. The idea that a couple of uncircumcised magi with their God-condemned divination practices would be given the word while the chief priests would remain ignorant of it was one that, again, did not occur to them.

Of course it is easy for us to condemn them, but this “did not occur to them” is actually pretty scary. How can I prevent a similar error? Open-mindedness alone is not enough. An open mind is one that does not immediately reject something it is presented with, but it cannot accept or reject ideas it is not presented with. So how do I know which possibilities aren't presenting themselves, which ideas I can neither accept nor reject because they simply do not occur to me? I can rack my brain all I want; an idea that doesn’t occur to me will not be found. That would be a contradiction. But what may be impossible for my brain to even think up may be perfectly obvious to an outside observer. After all, we think, how could the idea really not have presented itself to the priests? Didn’t they hear Jesus’ claim to be God? Wasn’t that the precise reason for his execution?

The only answer I have found is one that has implications which offend many Christians: in order to be open to the truth, the chief priests would have had to allow themselves to doubt what was most sacred to them. I really do not think there could have been any other way for them to recognize Jesus as the Fulfillment of the Law that they loved so dearly and had devoted their lives to. From our angle we can see that clearly enough, but you’ll notice that you get uneasy when it comes to putting this into practice. It's easy to go on a little intellectual foray you call a "journey of doubt", but genuinely questioning what's sacred to you is an almost impossible undertaking no matter what you believe. This is why it usually takes some major trials in life to get you to really submit to the process.

It is easy to see that the priests should have been a little less sure of themselves when you already believe that they were wrong; but it is another matter to attack your own certainty where you believe you are right. You can tell someone that their image of God needs to be re-evaluated, but you’ll learn that you can’t really re-evaluate your image of God without feeling to some extent like you’re doubting God.

But we must not be too alarmed by this. We may have been taught that faith is the absence of doubt, but it isn’t. The absence of doubt is foolishness, not faith (MacGyver’s grandfather already knew this). You cannot learn, cannot be corrected, cannot grow without doubt; these things require you to let go of what you think you know, which is another way of saying that they require you to doubt. And without that, you can't have true faith either. The most frightening heresies are usually not taught and followed by people who doubt, but by people who have convictions which they are literally incapable of doubting.

So how is “questioning what is most sacred to us” different from those detrimental forms of doubt, the many ways one can waffle around or flirt with the sacrosanct or avoid committing to any certainty or get completely lost? I’m not exactly sure. I suspect that when they have paralyzed us, our doubts may have become what is most sacred to us; they may have become our religion. And when that happens, they in turn need to be doubted as well. I don’t know. What I do know is that some religious scholars missed the World’s Greatest Event because they refused to question their most sacred ideas.

9: Coffee With the Twelve Tribes

I had just been resting beside a trail from which only mountains and ocean were visible and only seagulls could be heard, but less than 15 minutes later I found myself walking down an increasingly suburban street. There were large houses with large yards. One of these had a sign which read something like “welcome pilgrims”. There was a man standing in the yard.

“Excuse me,” I asked him, “is this a pilgrim shelter?”

“No, it’s a commune.”

This immediately interested me. “What sort of commune?”

“Well, we … hey do you want to join us for coffee?”

“Sure.”

I was going to have coffee at a commune!

Coffee was taken on an outdoor table and included some cake and ice cream. The man told me his name, something very Jewish-sounding which I promptly forgot again. I’m terrible with names. His wife joined us as well. They looked more or less like you’d expect members of a commune to look: he was tall and strong and had a bushy beard which was showing some grey. His hair was tied back into a small pony tail. He wore a plaid shirt and a dark vest. His wife had long hair and wore a long, plain dress. A few children came and went during the course of the next few minutes, and they too had names which sounded like words someone had pinched out of a Hebrew dictionary.

“So what sort of commune is this?” I asked again when we were settled. The man still seemed reluctant to say. He sipped his coffee languidly.

“Well, we’re a community of believers…”

…Yes? I wondered to myself. But nothing more came.

My body language must have betrayed my desire to know more. The woman interjected, “Yes, but the question you’ll be asking is, ‘what kind of believers?’”

That was indeed the question I would be asking.

The conversation picked up from there, and little by little I learned that their commune was part of a larger religious group called the 12 Tribes. Their central teaching is based on the two passages in the book of Acts in which it talks about the church in Jerusalem being a community in which no one had any property to himself, and where everything was shared. The 12 Tribes group believes that unless you follow this model of community, you are not a follower of Jesus.

I did not learn very much of this at that conversation, however. They mentioned a few times that the shofar was about to summon everyone to evening prayer. When the shofar blew, they invited me to join their prayer time.

It was all very quaint. In addition to their “normal” Gypsy-Amish clothing the women wore head coverings for the prayer time, and the men wore leather headbands. They sang some Jewish-sounding songs and they danced while they sang. They read a Bible passage from a standard Spanish Bible translation, but they substituted “Yahshua Messias” every time the word “Jesucristo” (Jesus Christ) appeared. They had a time of testimony in which they all said how great it was to belong to this family and of how God was healing them of many difficulties. They had a time of prayer for which the women and children huddled together in the center, and the men stood around them with their hands upraised.

After prayer time they invited me to dinner. All the food was organic and ecologically grown. Their own sustenance as a commune came from an on-premise bakery in which they also adhered to strict standards of all-natural recipes.

After dinner they invited me to spend the night. I think we could both see where this was going. I saw that they were showing old-fashioned hospitality, but that they also hoped that through their testimony and their conversation I might be won over. I’m pretty sure they saw that I had seen this and deemed it a worthwhile price. I helped them bag some of their bread loaves to be delivered in the morning. They showed me where I could shower and brush my teeth. They showed me where there was a bed for me, the bed which Kephas (whose birth certificate, I’m willing to bet, lists his first name as “Pedro”) made available for me while he went to sleep on the sofa.

All this time and until I left the next day I was being proselytized. They took it in turns to talk to me about how deep the errors of the Catholic and Protestant churches are; of how it is impossible to please God as long as you live a selfish life in which you own things, rather than sharing everything with the members of a commune; of how the end times were coming and their movement was a fulfillment of prophecy; of how I had misinterpreted Nebuchadnezzar’s dream all my life, because I had failed to grasp that the feet of iron and clay represent not the Roman Empire, but the Protestant and Catholic church (the Orthodox church went unmentioned in all this); of how following Yahshua was not “some mystical thing”, but a practical day-to-day attitude of loving the people in your commune.

For the most part I was able to listen to all this without feeling like I needed to argue. I knew how futile it was to try to reason with ideas such as these, and I did not want to abuse their hospitality by challenging their theology. But the last point was difficult for me. I feel that to know God at all is already “a mystical thing”. To know the God of Christianity is even more so, because there are all these complications like a Triune personality, and a Last Adam who somehow lives in me and absorbs the wrath but channels the grace, and to whose likeness I am being conformed through His Spirit, and all sorts of other stuff that cannot be conceived of, much less experienced, in any but mystical terms. What convinces me about Christianity is not that its morality differs greatly from that of other moral systems; it does differ, but not much. What convinces me is that it alone seems to have a radically different, and radically spiritual, answer of how to live the life that all moral systems teach and yet all also admit is impossible to achieve. And this answer lies in a mystical union with the Creator of the Universe and the Redeemer of humanity. Following Jesus means you can maintain a practical day-to-day attitude of loving all humans because you have “some mystical thing”.

After a very short night’s sleep, I was awakened by singing voices. It was 5 AM, and morning prayers were beginning.

It was easy to feel a lot of things for them. I felt pity, in a way, because my brief contact with them had already shown that they were very closed. In their theology, heaven would contain only themselves and the members of the 1^st-century church. They seemed to be trying to re-invent the wheel, as it were, ignoring the many communes and communal movements that had existed, and still exist, within the Church. In fact they ignored most of Church history except for the messy bits which their own 30-year-old movement could be favorably compared to (when your movement has only existed a few decades, it is guaranteed to look more wholesome and together than after 2,000 years). They forced some strange interpretations on many Bible passages. They kept their world small and simple. They were very friendly and hospitable. Very friendly and hospitable. Think of the most friendly Mennonites you’ve ever met, and you’ll get the idea. But they were also narrow and legalistic. Legalism always feels a little alarming to me.

But I also felt happy for them as I heard their stories of how they had found a home here. And they were certainly very committed to a hard spiritual school – submitting to an entire life of extreme community. This may lead them to much deeper “mystical” things than they expect. As I watched them during their prayer times, I suspected a deeper kinship than we might have acknowledged to each other. It struck me that it is ultimately the Parent, and not the sibling, who knows all the members of the family.

The "Twelve Tribes" commune outside of Donostia San Sebastian. I'm thinking that I should have taken pictures of the commune members, but I didn't know how to do that without appearing rude. (The "Welcome Pilgrims" sign did not make it into the picture.)

8: Meditations on the Resurrection, Part 2: They did WHAT?

The Guards at the Tomb

No one witnessed the actual event of Jesus’ resurrection, but the Roman guards were the ones who came closest. They were only a few steps away when the angel came down and rolled the stone aside.

Curiously, the impression one gets is that the tomb was already empty. Jesus did not need the stone to be removed before he could get out; the stone rolling away was the like curtain rising to show the stage for the next, and even more breathtaking, act of God’s unfolding drama.

Not much is said about the guards, and three of the four Evangelists don’t mention them at all. Understandably, they are in a state of shock. Maybe they are lying on the floor; neither the angel(s) nor the women seem to take any notice of them at all. Only Matthew gives them a few verses in his gospel, and these verses are among the most hilarious, and the most tragic, of the entire Bible.

The guards have the front row seat in the theater, and maybe we can learn from their experience that “front row” can be too overwhelming. But privileged seats or no, they are the misfits in the resurrection accounts. Not only do they get the unmitigated scare of their lifetime, not only are they ignored by everyone in the story; they don’t seem to be planned into the story at all. Between Easter and Ascension the resurrected Jesus is witnessed by people who feel a great joy at seeing him again, people to whom he had meant something.

And by the guards, in a way.

It doesn’t mention that Jesus himself appeared to them, but it seems that they can be counted as witnesses to the resurrection – earthquakes and angels and an empty tomb and all that. But this seems purely coincidental, an accidental byproduct of a last-minute decision by the chief priests to have the tomb guarded.

The guards are just ordinary blokes doing their job; they have no hopes of a Messiah, no apparent connection to this Jesus. By contrast to the other people Jesus appeared to, there is no sense of Jesus seeking them out; it would be highly unlikely that Jesus would have given these Roman guards a Resurrection experience if they had not happened to be in a particular place at a particular time.

The guards had a simple task: guard a tomb from a handful of provincial fishermen. And failure at such a simple task carried the death penalty. And while they had not exactly failed the task of defending the tomb against some fishermen (who didn’t even show up), they did fail the task of defending the tomb against God and His angels.

Of course, someone who believes in God and angels may let them off the hook, may conclude very rationally that there is no way a troop of guards, even the best Roman guards, could reasonably be expected to keep the upper hand against such odds. But the Roman superiors probably wouldn’t believe the story. So in addition to having received the scare of their lives, the guards are also scared for their lives.

In such situations there is a great need for friends, and friends are easiest to find among people who have something in common with you. With unerring instinct, the guards run to the chief priests; at least they have in common with them the wish that this hadn’t happened, and the desire that no one finds out that it has happened.

And here’s where the story takes its tragicomical turn: these priests, men who have spent their entire lives studying Scripture and waiting for God’s Messiah, do not feel the least desire to find out what these supernatural events are all about. What they do feel is that their reputation is at stake. Since the lives of the guards are also at stake, there is significant potential for mutual blackmail in the situation.

I cannot decide whether their solution is brilliant or lazy. They bribe the Roman superiors into sparing the guards in return for the guards pretending to be the most incompetent jackasses in the empire. The priests save face and lose some money, the guards lose face but get away with their lives. Brilliant.

Or just lazy? Did no one bother to think of a plausible excuse, so they preposterously claimed that the very thing they were sent to prevent was what had happened? Why would the guards sleep on the job if their life was at stake? And, more hilariously, how can a sleeping guard recognize a Galilean disciple, to claim afterwards to know the identity of the bodysnatchers?

I’m not sure of the spiritual significance of the guards’ resurrection experience. It could be said that in this story, God put the guards’ life in danger, and the priests and Pharisees saved their lives. But there are two obvious points:

1. God doesn’t always reveal Himself only to those who are looking for Him, and
2. Even if you’re the one who is closer than anyone else in the world to a momentous spiritual event, it does not follow that your life will change. It does not even follow that you’ll be aware of the significance of the occasion.

7: First real day on the trail

Once again I woke up with the crack of dawn, but I remained in my sleeping bag to keep warm and hopefully fall asleep again. This attempt did not last long; I was feeling self-conscious, lying under a stage in a picnic park behind a church in daylight. I got dressed and went to one of the picnic tables. Last night I had gotten a 2-for-1 deal on a pair of pizzas in Irun, and I finished up their cold remains for breakfast. The park service came to maintain the lawn, so I packed my things to get out of their way.

It became immediately clear to me that my expectations of pilgrimage would undergo a few alterations. I had tried to have no expectations at all, but that is simply impossible. I now noticed that I had not expected to be hiking. I had not expected trails like last night’s, and I saw that it continued this way. A narrow path led up the mountain and along the ridge. My friend Bryan defines the difference between traipsing and hiking as “hiking is where there’s an actual risk of you falling down and breaking something”. There did not seem to be such a risk here, but it still did not feel like I would be able to walk 5-6 hours a day for 40 days with a guitar on my back if the trail was going to be like this the whole way.


I was on Jaizkibel, which is more of a high ridge than a mountain. It reminded me a lot of where I grew up. To the East of Quito there is a similar ridge, collectively called Pichincha, which affords a similar hike. Today there was fog in the lower elevations, and only occasionally would the fog thin enough for me to catch glimpses of the valley to my left, and the sea to my right. That is, the sea itself was not distinguishable, but outlines of ships were visible.


I remember that day as a long walk, even though I covered less distance than on many of the following days. Most of it went along mountains by the sea. At one point the yellow arrows pointed me to a small pier where a ferry picked me up and brought me across an inlet. The ferryman had virtually no voice; he half croaked, half whispered that I had to pay 60 cents for the fare.


This was Pasaia San Pedro. The town was charming enough, but I was surprised at the hostile graffiti on some of the walls. I did not understand most of the words themselves (almost everything was in Basque), but one can get a feeling of the sentiment behind them, especially when there are symbols and illustrations to accompany the written word.

After Pasaia San Pedro the trail went up to the mountains again. There was a large lighthouse which dominated the view for a while. The trail continued, offering a view of a rugged shoreline.


I started worrying about water. In my hikes in the Alps, there had been fountains everywhere; today I had walked mostly through mountainous areas and hadn’t found any fountain. Twice I had asked a local if I could have some water. One lady was not accommodating at all, but the other one gladly complied. In fact for the rest of my pilgrimage I was to encounter a disarming hospitality again and again.

My half-empty water bottle was not the only problem, though. I began to realize that my idea of sleeping wherever I laid my head was not going to work out very well. There hadn’t really been many places to lay one’s head. It was the hot hours of the day, and I had not slept well the last few nights. It would have been great to find a shady place in the grass and just lie down for an hour or two. But no such place was to be found. There were rocks, there were bushes, there was a steep slope, and there was a trail.

Eventually I did come to a spring. I had a good long drink of water, and I washed my hands and arms. I took off my shoes and washed my feet and legs. This felt so good that I undressed and got myself completely under the stream of water.

Of course, a handful of hikers chose that moment of my solitary day to walk by. I sort of hid behind a rock and we all laughed. I washed a few of my clothes in the fountain and sat down nearby to rest a bit.

When I finally found a place where there was some grass and shade, it was almost 6 in the evening. I laid down for a bit, and started wondering whether or not I should spend the night there. Was I likely to find anything as good within the remaining two or three hours of daylight? True, I had no food left, but I did have water. I did not really need to eat again until morning. I could just drift off, fall asleep here, to the sound of very distant breakers and not-so-distant seagulls...

...but of course it did not work that way. After less than an hour of failed attempts at falling asleep I was feeling restless, and decided to keep walking, and to find something else before it got dark.

6: Getting to Irun

I was resting at a little chapel or shrine called “Notre Dame de Sokorri”. I attempted to take a nap in the shadow of a tree, but my attempt was unsuccessful. I shouldered my load and went on walking.

I must have taken a wrong turn soon after, because I found myself on a road that was going down into a generic upper-class suburb. I tried to find a way to go west, but couldn’t find one until I was back on the carretera.

For the entire remainder of the day, in fact, I ambled about trying to find a good walking road that would lead me westwards. I ventured onto field roads and forest roads, but most of the time these led back to the carretera. Others ended up going any direction but westwards, or they ended on someone’s private farm, or dwindled into dirt roads and trails which suddenly ended with thick underbrush or a barbed wire fence. More than once, after backtracking out of a dead-end and landing on the carretera again, I had to suppress my urge to stick out a thumb and hitch a ride.

“No”, I reminded myself. “You’re a pilgrim now, not a hitch hiker. You’re walking. Get used to that.”

Eventually I made Hendaye. It started raining heavily, but I was prepared. I had packed a lot of plastic bags to keep all my things dry, and even two large white bags which were really bicycle coverings. These were to be my surrogate tents and umbrellas along the way. I took out one of these and draped it over myself and my backpack/guitar bag somehow.

As I was crossing the bridge into Spain, I felt that the reactions I was getting from people seemed to indicate that something was odd. On the other side I caught my reflection in a shop window, and I noticed that I looked a lot like a member of the Ku Klux Klan, with a towering white hood formed by a corner of the bicycle covering and the top of my guitar bag.

In downtown Irun I sat down in a café to drink something warm and to write in my journal. It was the first day of a new adventure, and on such days your thoughts are many and jumbled and somewhat inspired. Even in retrospect, the beginning of the trip is much more vivid in my memory than the weeks following.

I finished a coffee and croissant and headed out to the streets again. The people I asked did not seem to know where the Camino de Santiago was. They told me to head out to San Sebastian, but they pointed me towards the carretera. This put me in the uncomfortable position of asking for directions and then not going in the indicated direction.

I followed my instinct instead. The sun was already going down behind the Jaizkibel. I figured that a trail leading westwards would probably go over that mountain, or maybe pass it to the north.

But the road took me to swampy land first. I was wondering about the wisdom of spending the night in a swamp, but I noticed what looked like an information stand. It turns out that I had wandered into a natural preserve. There was a map on the information stand, and it showed some of the trails through the park. Among them was one trail that came from outside the park and led back out again, labelled “Camino de Santiago”.

Hooray, I thought. Finally. Fifteen minutes later I was on the trail, marked by a somewhat worn-out sign with the yellow arrow and the symbolic seashell that I would see so many more times during the next few weeks.

The sun had already gone down, and it was getting dark fast. The trail was well-marked with yellow arrows, and I followed it out of the park, and up past some houses towards a forest. I had to take out the flashlight now.

I had seen a church tower in the distance for about an hour, and it seemed that this path was leading in that direction. Once I was there, I thought, I’d find a place to spend the night. I occasionally saw it through the trees, illuminated by floodlights and looking like it could be a monastery. Who knows, I thought, maybe someone is still up and about and ready to give some hospitality to a pilgrim.

Yeah, right. As if one can just encroach on the hospitality of monasteries. But to tell the truth, this was all very new to me. I’d been a pilgrim for only a day now, and on the actual pilgrim path for only a few minutes. I had done no research. Pilgrimage seemed like such an anachronistic idea, and so did the idea of finding shelter for the night at a monastery, so maybe the two ideas co-existed in this context.

It was very dark. The path became a steep muddy trail into the thick of the woods. This would be impossible without my flashlight, I thought. I was breathing hard, and the load on my back felt heavy. Would this be the kind of walking I would have to do for the next 39 days?

The yellow arrows pointed deeper and deeper into the woods, and the trail got rough. It consisted mostly of large stones, gnarled roots and puddles of mud. I suddenly felt like someone in a horror movie, lost in the woods at night following markings that had been put there by some sociopath who lures innocent pilgrims into his lair in the thickest part of the forest.

I shook that off and even laughed at it. But I still did not feel at ease. As a child I had been pathologically afraid of the dark, and even though I learned over the years to confront the fear, or to act in spite of it, I have never completely conquered it.

I was relieved when the forest finally cleared. Beneath me to the right were the lights of Irun, Hondarribia and Hendaye. To the left was the cathedral, flooded in light.

There was something of a picnic park around the church, and in spite of the late hour there were several cars parked there. People were enjoying the nighttime view or hanging out at what seemed to be a tavern a little further along.

I set about looking for a sheltered place to sleep. Behind the church there was something like a stage, perhaps a remainder of a recent wedding or some other function. I spread out my sleeping bag underneath the stage and tried to go to sleep.

There were trees that looked like giant multiple amputees. I would see these trees again many times during the pilgrimage, but I hadn’t seen them before. I woke up repeatedly during the night, and as I saw the odd trees illuminated by floodlights, and heard the owls calling to one another, I felt a strange eeriness that continued to haunt me into my dreams.

I don't know what kinds of trees they are or even if they look like this by nature or as a result of trimming and pruning, but I saw them again and again on the pilgrimage. At night they could look pretty spooky, and I'd fancy that they were talking to each other.

5: Meditations on the Resurrection, Part 1: Let's Give 'Em Something To Doubt!

The Bible contains some strange passages, and it would be difficult to pick the strangest one of them all. But the gospels’ accounts of the 40 days between Jesus’ resurrection and his ascension would definitely be high contenders.

The resurrection is Christianity’s great feast. It marks the triumph of life over death, of good over evil, of whatever epic struggle you want to insert here. It is the epic epic. It seals Jesus’ identity as the Son of God, and our identity as overcomers in him. Without Christ’s resurrection, as St Paul reminds us, “our faith is futile”.

Considering all of this, it seems that the resurrected Jesus goes about things in exactly the wrong way. He’s the walking, talking Body of Evidence to silence all his critics and detractors, to convince skeptics and convert unbelievers. Also, he’s got the ultimate last laugh.

But he doesn’t silence critics or convert unbelievers, and he only convinces those skeptics who, in easier times, were already convinced. And he doesn’t ha-ha anyone. He is usually not immediately recognized by the people he appears to, and he does not hang around for very long once they do recognize him. The first witnesses of his resurrection are people whose testimony would be considered invalid in a court of law at that time. He is apparently doing his best to make the accounts of his resurrection as unbelievable and discreditable as possible.

Is this the same Jesus who told us not to hide a light under a bushel, and not to bury the talent we’ve been given? Why is he treating his resurrection like classified information, like an inside joke, like, like… well, like a light that he’s very effectively keeping under a bushel?

He had said it himself: unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains only a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces great fruit. He may have been talking primarily of his own death and resurrection, but it is a fundamental principle of his teaching, and of our lives, especially as this death and resurrection becomes our guiding spiritual reality: we lose what we try to hold on to, and we gain what we voluntarily forfeit. And we gain it hundredfold.

Jesus voluntarily forfeited his life to find it again, but he also voluntarily forfeited something else: the most logical means by which to “bring great fruit”, to draw the great masses of humankind to himself. He knew the nature of doubt better than the doubters themselves did. He knew that “if they do not believe Moses and the prophets, neither will they believe when someone rises from the dead.” He knew that the sort of people who would shout “Hosanna” one day would shout “Crucify him” by the end of the week. He knew that true faith would have to make a much more subversive entrance, that the most valuable treasure would have to be carried in earthen vessels.

But this may be even more important: Jesus knew that faith is not what you have before you doubt, just like hope and joy are not what you have before you fall into despair. Faith, hope and joy are the Promised Land, and doubt and despair are the river, the desert, and the sea that must be crossed to get there. He knew that what skeptics and doubters often need is not less doubt but more. Doubt to the point of unbearable discomfort. He knew that the sort of openness we need to arrive at if we are to step out of ourselves even for a moment will never be achieved as long as we have the luxury of “letting facts speak for themselves.” He knew what he was saying when he told Thomas, “blessed are those who believe without seeing.”

Glory be to you, O Christ! “Surely you are a God who hides himself.”

4: getting out of St. Jean

I get off the beach and go into town. I buy a baguette at the first bakery I find, and sit down on a bench for breakfast. I still have a few small packs of jam left over from the Taize meals. Many of the young people who were there for the week were throwing away a lot of food. I wonder if the people who throw away food are aware of how offensive it is. I mean, we’re all told it’s sort of a thing you don’t do, like throwing glass into the paper recycling bin. But do they know it’s offensive?

After breakfast I walk over to the tourist information office. It is still closed. The internet café is open, but it is very expensive.

Too bad. I haven’t been online for over a week. Gotta update my blog so that people at least know that I’ve started the pilgrimage safely. Gotta see if there were any important eMails.

After a short internet session I return to the tourist office. The woman behind the counter speaks practically no English, and only broken Spanish. I ask her if I can get a pilgrim’s stamp in my passport.

Not that she knows of. I’m thinking of St. Jean Pied-de-Port, she says.

No I’m not. I’m intentionally walking the Camino Norte because I’m trying to avoid the big crowds. I was told that the Camino Norte begins at St. Jean-de-Luz. The man who picked me up when I was hitch hiking in Luxembourg told me that they give you a stamp in your passport here.

But it’s OK. I only need a stamp to show off with later on, right? (I didn’t know about the “pilgrim’s passports” yet. I had done no research.)

She couldn’t even tell me where the trail began, so I just started walking westwards. I bought some peanuts and some roasted corn on my way out of town.

The walk was frustrating. There was a sort of highway or busy country road (in Spanish the generic term is carretera) leading towards Irun. There wasn’t much of a shoulder to the road, and the traffic was disconcertingly close as I tried to walk there. I walked in the roadside ditch for a while, which was not a happy experience either. When a trail appeared to the right, I gladly got on that, figuring that there would probably be some back roads to get me to the Spanish border. Two goats were tied to some nearby bushes.

I met an elderly couple out for a walk. They gave me a friendly greeting and immediately asked what language I speak: French? English? Spanish?

“No French,” I replied. “The other two are not a problem. Also German.”

“Ohh, a polyglot”, said the man.

“Well, hardly. You’re speaking English, and you most likely speak French and Basque as well, and Spanish, too?”

He nodded.

“See? You speak more languages than I do.”

“But where are you from?”

“I’m German. But I grew up in South America.”

“Ah. Alles klar.”

“And Basque, what is it like? I was reading the street names last night, and it looks to me a bit like a Slavic language, but I heard that it’s closer to Gaelic…”

He was shaking his head.

“No, it’s not like any other language.”

“But where did you Basques originally come from?”

“From Heaven,” he said, and smiled. “Direct out of Noah’s Ark into this beautiful country. See that fortification there? 11th Century. But the Basques have been here long, long before that.”

I was pretty sure I had heard that the Celts and the Basques had roots in common, but I couldn’t remember if it had been a reliable source. Besides, even the connection between Celtic and Gaelic was foggy in my mind.

“And now I’m trying to walk the Camino de Santiago. Does this path lead anywhere?”

“Oh yes. You’ll find it takes you to the top of a little hill, where there’s a pretty little chapel. It keeps going on the other side until you get to Hendaye. Then you can cross the bridge into Spain.”

“Thank you very much.”

“You’ll be walking along the north coast of Spain?”

“Yes.”

“Make sure to visit Ondarroa. It’s a beautiful little coastal town. Beautiful.” (Here he kissed his fingertips in the way that Italian cooks stereotypically kiss their fingertips when talking about extra delicious pasta.)

“Well, thank you very much. Have a good day.”

They waved goodbye and continued their walk. I soon found the chapel and rested a while in the shade. I took some time to pray, some time to write, and some time to read through the gospel resurrection accounts. Those, and the Epistle of James, were going to be my themes for meditation on this pilgrimage. The Epistle of James because I was walking towards the traditional site of his remains (although this was probably not the same James), and the resurrection accounts because it was that time of year. For my pilgrimage I was hoping to spend forty days walking, the forty days from Easter until Ascension Day, the same forty days during which Jesus kept appearing to people who had known him.


Every Monday I took a picture of my shoes. This is what they looked like when the journey began.

3. St. Jean-de-Luz on Easter Monday (April 9th, 2007)

As always, it took me a while to find a place to sleep. I considered a church doorway, then I went to the beach. It was actually a very good setting – the lights from the promenade sort of illuminated the beach, but it was dark enough that if you laid down in the sand, you’d be almost invisible to anyone walking by. But there was someone apparently walking his dog further down the beach. I decided to hang out until he had passed by, but after a while it became clear that he wasn’t really walking his dog anywhere. What the heck were they doing? They appeared to be walking, even running, but they remained on the same stretch of beach about 100 meters away from where I was. Were they playing fetch or something? At 3 in the morning?

I’m always suspicious of people doing things at 3 in the morning. Of course, I’m up at 3 AM myself here, and I’m a guy with a trenchcoat, a guitar and a backpack, so I guess I inspire suspicion as well.

I decided I’d look for another place to spend the night. I found a bench. Benches aren’t that great, because they’re hard and narrow. In addition, this one was pretty public. I don’t like sleeping in public places, because you make people uncomfortable and they often return the favor.

There were drunken voices coming from the local bar. A few people were pouring out. Great, I thought. One couple came walking towards me. The girl was holding a flower in her hand.

They were laughing drunkenly, but when they saw me, they fell silent. Then the girl came to me and handed me the flower.

“Merci”, I whispered. They disappeared into the night.

OK, this bench is no place to sleep for the few remaining hours until daybreak. I take my guitar and go back to the beach. That guy is still there with his dog. What on earth are they doing?

I stop caring. I spread out my sleeping bag in the sand and get inside it. There’s a cold wind blowing across the beach, but I fall asleep soon.

I wake up as the day is breaking. It’s Easter Monday. A tractor is combing the beach and smoothing the sand.


The beach of St. Jean-de-Luz at daybreak.