71: Reflections on James, Part I: only conventional wisdom?

I got back to the albergue and found Helmut sitting at the table.

"Look what I got", I said, showing him my newly acquired Spanish New Testament. "Some pilgrim reading. I only had the gospels with me so far, but I wanted to use this opportunity to study the Book of James."

"The Book of James is interesting, isn't it? It's more like conventional Jewish wisdom than distinctly Christian theology."

"Yeah, he sounds a lot like the Proverbs. Talks about keeping the tongue in check, about not being too certain about what you'll be doing in the future, and that kind of thing..."

"Of course, there are echoes from the Sermon on the Mount as well".

"For sure. But there isn't much of the mysticism, the 'not I, but Jesus' talk that you get in Paul's epistles, for example. James mentions Jesus, like, twice in his letter?"

One monk at Taize had advised me to consider using another book of the Bible for my pilgrimage theme. He said that his impression of me was that I was someone who currently needed to meditate more on God's love, and less on practical wisdom and morality.

But I was not going to change plans at that point. If I'm going to the traditional site of St. James' remains, I'll read St. James' epistle, even if it is a different St. James. And of course I was balancing my readings with the resurrection accounts from the gospels.

The other thing was that I have a habit of making my theme passages the ones that give me most trouble. For most of my life the Book of James was the most accessible of all the Epistles, but over the last few years I had had increasing difficulty with it. If a passage gives me difficulty, I try to spend more time with it and see if I can understand how it all fits together.

70: Mioño to Castro Urdiales

While I don't think I slept, I did actually doze off in spite of the noise. I picked up and started walking again. A minute later I passed by a park, with an attractive lawn and a playground and some shady trees.

Isn't that the way it always goes, I thought. You try to catch your siesta on a hard bus stop bench next to a construction zone, and there's a park just a few steps further.

But the reason the park was there was, of course, because I had taken a nap on that bench. Had I walked on looking for a pleasant place to lay my head, there would not have been a park for hours.

A short while later I found myself walking through what looked like recently constructed suburbs. I was already in the outskirts of Castro Urdiales. When I eventually stopped at a gas station to ask the way to the pilgrim shelter, the attendant knew nothing about a pilgrim shelter, but one of the clients told me that it had been recently constructed, but was quite a ways away, "near the bullfight arena". He was giving me a long description of the shortest way to get there, but I had already decided I would just walk downtown and hit the tourist information office. They at least have maps.

It was a good thing I took this approach. Not only would I have gotten hopelessly lost otherwise, but I would not have gotten in to the building even if I had found it. At the information office they gave me the all-important map and circled the place where the brand-new shelter was. They also circled the police station, where I would have to go first in order to register, get my pilgrim stamp, and get a key to the albergue.

There was an older Spanish couple there who were also doing the pilgrimage. They had passed me on the pavement just a few minutes before. "Not...A...Race...!" I'd repeated to myself through clenched teeth as I tried to pick up my tempo to not lag behind a pair of senior citizens. Now I had the satisfaction of seeing them ask about hotels. For a moment I felt smug that I was doing the "real" pilgrim thing with all its gritty asceticism. Then I realized how pathetic my sentiments were.

On my way to the police station I met a few boys playing on the streets. They were impressed with my look, my trenchcoat and walking staff and floppy wide-brimmed hat. They asked me where I was from and how far I'd been walking, and those statistics impressed them as well. And I thought they must see pilgrims all the time.

Castro Urdiales is a beautiful town. As I walked towards the albergue I made vague plans of coming back after a shower and without my backpack to hang out on the beach for a bit or to shop around in the narrow streets or visit that cathedral on the hill. I met Anabel, who was coming from the shelter with, apparently, similar plans.

Immediately upon arriving at the shelter, I set about putting my plan of taking a shower into action. I took some clothes into the shower with me and washed them there as well.

Helmut and Helga from Austria were there too. There were two French sisters who I could not communicate with, and there was Matthieu from Quebec. Later on Lone from Denmark joined us, so we were a merry little pilgrim gathering.

In the end I did not have the energy to go back downtown like I had hoped. My feet felt like fire and like leather, and there were some more blisters to operate on.

But I did shop around locally and found a bookstore which did, indeed, have a pocket-sized New Testament. I also picked up some groceries.

69: Steps towards (despair) grace: I have killed Christ

We are told early on in our Christian life (and usually long before our Christian life begins) that Christ died for our sins.

But "Christ died for my sins" is usually a very theoretical view. As Christians we say that "it was my sin that put Jesus on the cross" or that "we all have crucified him", but do we know what that means? It is a bit like saying that "in Adam and Eve we have all sinned": deep down, each of us considers ourselves a bit better than the rest. Whatever theological truth we may cling to, there is a part of us that believes that if we had been there in the garden of the forbidden fruit, there would have been no Fall of Man, and that if we had been there in the crowds of Jerusalem, the crucifixion would not have taken place.

I have learned better. It was me who sinned by wanting to be like God. I was afraid of the place in which He had put me, and I wanted to have it in my power to put myself in another place.
It was me who killed Jesus. I killed him because I was so angry at having been at the mercy of God, at being powerless to determine my own life and at being powerless to resist God or avenge myself on Him. When he showed up in human form, as a person that I could physically hurt, I took the opportunity.

But I also killed him because I couldn't get him to stop loving me. Now that I was finally able to avenge myself on God, he did not even strike back or resist. He absorbed all the hatred and anger that I had against Him and continued to love me. He kept taking it even as it escalated. It became a challenge to see what I could do to him, and it got to where I could even kill him, and he wouldn't stop loving. Nothing is quite as odious as killing someone who loves you in return. But perhaps I am not ready to receive love until I have hated to the point of murder. Perhaps I cannot accept forgiveness until I have done something as heinous as killing the Lord of Love. Perhaps I cannot perceive that I need forgiveness until I have realized that I hate love so much that I would rather kill it than accept it.

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.