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.