Author: marciaznelson

Walking the Camino, one: Leaving Behind

The first thing I noticed as my Camino de Santiago pilgrimage began on May 14 was a sense of being deracinated – yanked away from all things familiar — that grew steadily. I left from my house without my purse, and I didn’t leave by the usual door, since I took a different key with me. At the airport, I kept clutching the very small nylon bag that held my official, negotiable self: passport, two credit cards, American currency. I had no book to read. That might have been the biggest difference; I planned to travel without a book. (I was not counting the Spanish phrase book I intended to review on the plane.) Marcia the reader and writer had no computer, no book. Those were the first set of steps away from my usual identity and world of familiar references and habits.

Madrid, May 15: Travel light. It’s like I am missing things, like the recurring nightmare I have of losing my purse. My brain thinks it’s midnight.[1]

When a journey takes the traveler across several time zones, the dislocation is physiological. I changed planes in Dublin, Ireland, at 5:30 a.m. local time, in grey light and steady rain; the connection required us to take an airport shuttle and walk out in the rain to board a plane to Spain. The Dublin airport signs are written in English and Irish, a first wee clue that English is not the only option on the globe. That, and the use of Euros on the plane, which I did not yet have. I nonetheless had a cup of Irish breakfast tea, fortifying myself from an English-speaking culture, before arriving in Madrid. English is the default second, universal language at airports (at least in Europe, which is as far as my foreign travel experience extends), so I found Madrid aeropuerto clearly marked. But oh, the Madrid Metro beckoned, my first step into the wholly unfamiliar, as I slowly deciphered the workings of the ticket machine. I had exchanged money using Spanish and English, and got directions in Spanish and English.

Looking back, I can see myself slowly wading into an unfamiliar sea, strengthened by the knowledge of my destination: I am meeting my husband after a month apart; his Spanish is better and he has been negotiating Spain for a month. All I have to do is board the right train to Astorga, where we would begin our joint pilgrimage.

As I walked in the neighborhood around the Chamartin train station in Madrid to pass time in an edifying way, I was set upon by petition carriers who were distinctly eager to see some identifying information from me to verify my signature. I think retrospectively that Santiago came to my aid; I brushed these two off and afterward found the phrase “leave me alone” in the “helpful phrases” section of my pocket language book.

“Santiago came to my aid” – it’s easy to start thinking this way in a culture that is historically deeply Catholic and steeped in traditional Catholic iconography. The Camino is replete with old churches. Some have been rebuilt; not a few look like fortresses, which the heavy Romanesque structures tend to resemble. Some of them have thrillingly elaborate retablos, others more modest and modern statuary, usually of the crucified Jesus, various renderings of Mary, and the ubiquitous Santiago, distinguishable by his pilgrim’s staff. Santiago is a regular figure in countless squares and plazas, and even occasionally encourages pilgrims who are walking far from town centers, his statue rising along a country road.

We had one conversation with Ana, our albergue host in Santiago who is a great fan of 1950s American popular music, who helped us understand this relationship with the divine through so many intermediaries and expressions. She mentioned that each day of the year in Spain honors a particular saint. She also showed us her extensive collection of photos taken during trips to Memphis; her relationship to the founding days of American rock’n’roll was almost like a kind of material religion. (She had photos of various relatives and associates of Elvis Presley, and she and I sang a few bars of little known hits from the era.) She had been a pilgrim to America pursuing something meaningful. Her interest in American popular music developed as an outlet for her during the repressive Franco era, she told us. If Santiago came to my aid, Elvis came to hers. (She blogs about the subject at Let’s Keep the 50’s Spirit Alive .)

Outside changes — language, landscape, even change changing (I always had to look at the Euro coins to see what I had) – helped weed interior assumptions. Self-emptying happens acutely for pilgrims.

Rabanal, May 16: The Albergue Nuestra Señora del Pilar has massed pots of geraniums, a yappy little dog that waddles around the courtyard, and clothes drying on the line. The breeze is blowing, the birds are singing.

When I returned, Christine Valters Paintner’s assertion in The Soul of a Pilgrim made more sense to me: “Peregrinatio is the call to wander for the love of God. It is a word without precise definition in English and means something different than pilgrimage.”

Palas de Rei, May 24: Why walk, indeed? I still haven’t figured that out, but Spain is filled with cool stone churches that invite you to think about this.

It might mean that the journey is more important than the destination, trite but clearly true here.

[1] All italicized and indented passages are excerpts from my travel journal.

It’s not Heart Surgery

Last-minute preparations: stop the newspaper, clean the cat litter box, pay bills in advance, finalize lawn-mowing arrangements, fill the bird feeder. Everyday living has lots of details to it that have to be handed off or sloughed off during an absence from home. I told my husband, whom I am joining in Europe, that I feel more like I am going to prison than going to Spain.

I have been paying more attention to little things I enjoy: the flash of the red cardinal in the yard. Cats snoozing in sunny spots in the house. Will those peonies open before I leave, and will they still be in bloom when I return? (The latter is very likely.) Morning sun through the windows. These are good things, being traded in for the unknown rain of Spain, which looks as miserable as rain anywhere else if you have to walk in it. Walking pilgrims have no choice.

The pilgrimage may be in Spain, but it’s not Club Med. It’s Club Camino, for walkers along the Camino de Santiago staying in inexpensive albergues where it is possible to encounter bedbugs, though Bill has made no such discoveries.

I don’t know what I’ll discover, besides how quickly I will adapt. This pilgrimage right now strikes me as extreme retreat, with lots of walking meditation required. I am discovering a combination of travel anxiety + pilgrimage anxiety + being away from home anxiety. On the other hand, it’s not open heart surgery, which I had last summer. There’s perspective. There’s anxiety.

I know what I will miss here. I think of the prophets called by God in the Hebrew Bible, and a number of them said: Why me? This is not a calling by any means, but I can relate to the foot-dragging reluctance before a new vista opens up. FullSizeRender I don’t have to; I get to.

Shifting to gratitude and prayer always works. Bill was fortunate to get a blessing for his journey from a chaplain colleague at his hospital. I worked last night, and my duties included blessing of the hands of nurses, a sweet ritual that many really appreciate. At the end of my shift the two chaplains who came on blessed me for the road, including my reluctant pilgrim feet.

What I Learned in Seminary (the short version)

I had two goals in coming to seminary: I was planning to become a chaplain and I wanted my Bible back from narrow-minded fundamentalists.

I can check both boxes. I now work part-time as a pastoral care associate at a large Chicago suburban hospital, and in September I will start a one-year paid residency at that hospital that will give me additional training that couldn’t be crammed into one clinical pastoral education unit and will also pay me to learn. (Unlike seminary.)

As to the Bible, I now generally know which part of the book to open when I am looking for something in it. It was actually fun to read the two-volume commentary on the Gospel of John by Craig Keener that was assigned by the instructor –six years in seminary have changed my idea of what is fun – and it was even more fun to read trashy novels about Jesus in the Reimagining the Gospels course and be able to spot the scriptural errors. I have learned enough about the Bible to not take it in vain or hit people over the head with it.

ESR

Here are some of the other things I learned.

How to use soteriology correctly in a sentence: By contrast, post-scholastic theologians have shifted focus within Christology toward soteriology – doctrines of the work of Christ and, specifically, how salvation has been accomplished, a theological discussion that has animated post-Anselm Christology and especially post-Calvinist Christology. I wrote that sentence in 2011 in my introductory theology course. (Bonus point for using Christology correctly.)
How to drive 85 miles an hour, which I did when my first residential intensive in spiritual formation in 2012 was disrupted by my husband’s having a car accident and I had to return home to Chicago. I did not miss a class because the instructor kindly worked out a Skype connection. An update: today my husband is hiking the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route in Spain, where I will join him next month.
How rich education can be when you do it later in life when everyone in the classroom is highly motivated and brings a lifetime of experience into the room, making for deeply satisfying and stimulating discussions. I often describe the Earlham School of Religion to people who don’t know it as a place where you can learn as much from your fellow students as you can from the instructor, and I did.
How to make spiritual friends. This has been precious and sustaining to me.
How to be still and know God.

And finally. How to discern and enjoy the fruit of the Spirit, which is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. I do wish the apostle Paul had added gratitude – a lot of us wish Paul had said a few things differently – and as a trained exegete I am prepared to argue that’s surely what he meant.

Thanks to you all, faculty, staff, fellow students.

Make America Smart Again

Once again, as with the women’s march, the signs were the best thing about the science march.

Hard to say which one was my favorite, but “97 percent of scientists say Donald Trump is a dumbass” made me laugh every time I saw it. The knit hats that looked like brains were also nifty, but you didn’t really need them on a sunny April day. In Chicago I was one of an estimated 40,000 people who walked and waved mostly homemade signs. The one my heart supported urged: Make America Smart Again – Support Public Education. It’s truly not normal when people have to make a statement in support of real facts as opposed to alternative ones. At least alternative facts have inspired many a satirist.

FullSizeRender

The Chicago crowd was very family-friendly. My friend Kate and I stood behind a family of four with two boys, one stroller-age, and there were plenty of young scientists among the marchers. Also people wearing lab coats, and I overheard science teachers talking shop. My guess is the crowd was a mix of professionals and tree-huggers. My son is a scientist; I wrote that on the back of my sign, a picture of Mother Earth. Science saves medical patients and keeps the air we breathe and the water we drink clean (except when it doesn’t, as the people of Flint know). We take this for granted. The proposed funding cuts for the Environmental Protection Agency means we shouldn’t continue to assume this. No one seems to have pointed out to the current occupant in the White House that jobs will be lost if he has his way. Research employs people as well as makes lives healthier. I know this; my son works as a research assistant.

The speakers – whom we actually heard this time – were diverse, and I especially appreciated hearing the African-American neuroscience PhD Garry Cooper. African American boys have a graduation rate of 57 percent from Chicago public schools, according to CPS figures. That’s in the overall context of improving graduation rates in the system. That rate is dismal. We can and must do better. I happened to be reading Howard Thurman’s Jesus and the Disinherited on the train ride to the city. What Thurman says (he wrote in the 1950s) about the responses of people without social power is relevant to understanding this structural discouragement and disadvantage.

Make America Smart Again – Support Public Education.

Left Behind

My husband left me, and I drove him to it.

I dropped him off at the airport this afternoon. He is going to Spain to do the entire Camino de Santiago and is starting tomorrow. He will wake up over the ocean or, if he is lucky, in the Madrid airport at the end of the flight.

Ohareterminal5

I am back at home; the house is not empty. One of the cats is curling up for his evening nap. But the house feels quieter. No big running shoes waiting by the door. The bed looks bigger. I am noticing something catch in my throat every so often.

I must explain: I have always been the one doing the leaving. I traveled to Europe in 2007 and 2011. I have been in nine short residencies at seminary in Indiana since 2011. I used to travel for business several times a year. I had a three-month internship in Wisconsin right after we married and before that a three-month academic quarter in Washington.

My husband has never been over salt water. This is his first passport that he has actually used. He usually stays home and feeds the cats and mows the grass (or shovels the snow) and brings in the mail. Yesterday he showed me how to use our lawn mower; he will be gone for six weeks and the grass does tend to grow in spring. I need to feed the bird tonight; I’ve never changed the paper in the cage and it needs changing. I already forgot to feed the fish.

Householding has been a two-person operation for us since 1983. I’m not expecting to need to turn off the main water valve for the house in the next six weeks, though for some reason my husband showed me how to do so. I’m more worried about falling asleep alone than flooding.

Six weeks is a while. The cherry trees are in bloom in the back yard, and he saw them before leaving. I was looking at the honey locust, which has not leafed out much, and our new hackberry. The downy woodpecker was rapping loudly on the locust trunk this morning. These later-leafing trees will be suited up for the season by the time of his return. I can be his eyes; he is usually mine, watching movies in my absence. I hope I can get into the Netflix account.

Yes, I am joining him next month in Astorga so we can do a part of this together. But he is now on the road, literally, and I am checking email, a pilgrim’s tether.

Conditional

Part of preparing for a pilgrimage is readying the mind and spirit. Everyone who plans this trip must wrestle with the prospect of not completing it. I have a vague notion that thirty years ago, when I was at my physically fittest and sliding down glaciers in the Rocky Mountains, I could set off to do strenuous activity without any kind of physical conditioning. Now I follow a conditioning schedule and worry that it’s not challenging enough.

I don’t know what to expect. It never really occurred to me that I had to work at fitness until I did have to work at it following heart surgery last summer. I had not experienced significant physical incapacity until I couldn’t lie down in bed without its hurting and napped most afternoons for six weeks. Am I fortunate to be that healthy? Lucky I never broke a bone and managed to avoid surgery for decades? Rehab gave my strength back to me, as well as a sense of what I took for granted.

What lessons will the Camino teach me about what I can or can’t do, what will require more effort or less? I was talking with an older woman yesterday who is physically frail now that she is in her 90s. She seemed frustrated; she told me how much she used to walk when she worked in the city and how active a gardener she had been. I thought I would be stronger, she said. FullSizeRender

That’s kind of what I’m expecting, or hoping, for the Camino: that I can manage the physical demands.But traveling light means not packing too many expectations and leaving room for ultra-lite plans B and C.

Limits are not roadblocks, however. They are not stop signs but they are givens. I will walk slower than pilgrims who are 20 years younger. I cannot anticipate limits but I will discover them just as I discover other things on the road.

There’s also this, from The Soul of a Pilgrim by Christine Valters Paintner: “A pilgrimage is an intentional journey into this experience of unknowing and discomfort for the sake of stripping away preconceived expectations.”

Getting ready for the Camino. 3. Physical.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with 20,000 steps. Doesn’t it?

Today was my first long conditioning walk: 10 miles at Waterfall Glen in southern DuPage County. It’s a circle – actually, more like a quadrilateral. Waterfall Glen features a waterfall, not a natural feature but one constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s. It is not named after that feature, however; it honors Seymour “Bud” Waterfall, an early president of the Forest Preserve District’s Board of Commissioners.

The main trail has its ups and downs, its prairies and woods and of course the main waterfall. The trees of the Bluff Savanna include white and black oaks and shagbark and bitternut hickories, some in the range of 200 years old, young when this area was first settled by white people. Kettle Woods is undergoing restoration that has removed most of the invasive understory of buckthorn and honeysuckle (grrrr…..). Now, as shrubs are just beginning to leaf out, the view through Kettle Woods is impressively clear.

Water was standing around in lots of low-lying areas after this week’s rains, making plenty of suitable spaces for spring peepers. We heard them but never saw a one; they are little ones, so that is not surprising. We also saw plenty of runners, dogs, families pushing strollers, and a few hikers wearing backpacks, as we were.

We chatted with a man who told us he was conditioning for the John Muir Trail in late summer; I guessed he was half my husband’s age. When did we get old? I asked my husband later. Yesterday, he answered. Good to know.

I got tired about five minutes before our hike ended – reasonably good timing. The temperature rose from 50 degrees F to 60 degrees in the four hours it took us. Perfect, in other words. I started to think without dread about walking in Spain, which I do not expect to look like a suburban forest preserve. We have already begun chatting in a friendly way with fellow hikers; there will be much more of that, my husband observed. And the crunch of unpaved trail underfoot. What kind of birds, I wonder?

Getting ready for the Camino. 2. Logistics

It’s a lot easier to think about buying things for a spiritual pilgrimage than reflecting on the state of one’s soul. I had to get a backpack. My old one, with an aluminum external frame, weighed nearly half the amount I plan to carry. The new one, well.

Purchasing a new backpack is a little like buying a smart phone or anything else that is strongly influenced by technology. Each pack I have owned (this is my third) seems less like a cloth sack worn on the back and more like an engineered and specialized piece of equipment. This one is padded at the waistband and has so many adjustable straps hanging off it (they help to shift weight) that I needed a short orientation (which I hope I remember). I walked around REI with it and the weight seemed to fade, which is to say I felt comfortable. The trip itself is hard; no need to court discomfort, as it will come unsought.

FullSizeRender

The paradox here is that the pilgrim must assent to hardship; that is why one undertakes such an arduous journey. This is not getting on board a cruise ship. But this is true of anything physically strenuous, which would include a whole range of sports and activities. It may not be a matter of making things harder, or easier, but simply of being prepared for the demands of the pilgrimage and the lessons of the journey.

The material sirens were certainly singing loudly yesterday as I tramped around REI test-walking two packs. I wanted one of those, one of those, and also one of those. I looked longingly at socks, an item I do not need. I am still considering replacing old and heavy raingear and thinking about what is needed to get the best sleep. I need those things more than $70 lightweight pants. I suppose logistics considerations are not wholly divorced from more spiritual questions about simplicity and detachment from desire.

Getting ready. Part One.

So the plan is to walk the Camino de Santiago. This Christian pilgrimage route in northern Spain has been trod since the 9^th century. It honors the apostle James, according to legend buried in Spain. More legend involves James in the Christian effort to evict the Moors from Spain in a battle in 844 that didn’t actually happen. Nonetheless St. James managed to become the patron of Spain and gained the sobriquet Santiago Matamoros: the Moor killer. This historical context of conquest and killing for religion’s sake will be something to reflect on as I walk the route. History cannot be ignored, but it need not be a mire in which to get stuck.

256px-Othem_wall_paintings_04

Why am I doing this? It seemed like a good idea when my husband said he planned to do it. I happen to like Spain, having visited Barcelona. I like walking with my husband; it is one of our chief shared joys. And when I inquired, I discovered I could get academic credit from my seminary. It added up to a number of reasons to take a long walk.

I see preparation in two ways: spiritual and physical. I’ve started the conditioning, walking with a weighted backpack. My husband has already procured various waterproof sacks into which things one wants to keep dry are to be stuffed. I am wearing my old hiking boots right now, hoping they will suffice. I don’t think medieval pilgrims went out and bought new gear for the journey.

I have begun looking forward to something that has heretofore inspired mostly anxiety. I write to train my thoughts to go in this direction, instead of idling in the shadows. The spiritual preparation is harder and therefore easier to ignore. But at both levels, I have to figure out what I need to carry and what I should leave behind.

Much more later.

Travel Anxiety

I had a period earlier in my life when I was fearful about flying. I remember having some exceptionally turbulent flights that might have been the cause. It took a few years for that worry to recede. But I begin to wonder if it hasn’t been replaced by pre-travel anxiety. I notice I dread getting ready for traveling.

I’m going to walk the Camino de Santiago, a millennium-old spiritual pilgrimage route in northern Spain, in late spring with my husband. I keep waiting to get excited. Instead I’m worrying: what if he gets sick? What if I get sick? What if the accommodations are dirty? I don’t know very much Spanish. Will the cats be OK without us? I hate cold showers. My backpack is too heavy (six pounds).

I started googling. “Travel anxiety” got 54 million hits. The first aha: I’m not alone. You mean I’m not the only one who worries about going to a foreign country where I don’t speak the language and I’ll be walking 250 kilometers and wondering what to do if it rains as I walk? My first step down a path of many kilometers is a small one of relief.

Lots of help pops up when I research the Camino, which I have already started. I may be anxious, but I am also preparing: Tickets bought. Walking with weighted pack. Reading guides. And worrying.

Anxiety about the unfamiliar is normal; this I know, and I know concrete things to lessen anxiety, all of which have to do with reducing the unknown to the extent I can without becoming a control freak: find a cat sitter. Figure out what I will carry and weigh it. Keep up with conditioning.

Some of it is fear of finding out things about myself: I expect to be able to do this. What if I can’t? Then who am I? The farther I go down the road of what-ifs, the more I detour from the main route of learning, planning, hoping. This particular journey is intended to make demands. The Way of St. James is supposed to be hard. It is also voluntary.

Lelio_Orsi_Camino_de_Emaús

It is also a spiritual journey. For me that means my husband will not be my only traveling companion. Jesus, whom I have gotten better acquainted with over the past six years at seminary, lived a life on his feet, going from town to town. One of his best known journeys took place after the resurrection, when he went unrecognized by two walking companions going to Emmaus. Jesus on the road inspired a lot of Western artists. Carl Jung regards the much (re)told story, stuck in the imaginations of so many, as an instance of the “magical traveling companion.” I plan to remember that while walking.