Why walk?

Greetings to my fellow pilgrims-- all of whom I will meet very soon-- and also to those supporting us in Internetland with thoughts and prayers!

All of us undertaking this trek through northern Spain have been fortunate enough to receive a booklet of daily prayers and meditations (I believe from our illustrious tour guide) as spiritual "food" for each day of this upcoming journey.

I had better confess from the get-go that I have "cheated"-- that is, I have gone ahead and read the first meditation, which is for tomorrow (May 31), the first day of the journey, when we will be embarking across the Atlantic. Yet, I am glad that I have read this first chapter, for it includes a question I am still turning over in my mind. It asks, "Why did I say 'Yes' to this pilgrimage?"

I don't know fully why. It's a mystery. What I can recall is the point I was in my own journey when I first received the invitation to join this very special trip. At that time, back in the early months of 2009, I had just returned from a 4-month tour overseas in a rural Ugandan village with the Peace Corps. I had been "called back" to the United States from that tour much sooner than I had expected-- needless to say, I had been determined to finish all 27 months of the "normal" span of a Volunteer-- but God had something else to say.

Back in those early months, I found my self face-to-face with the not so pleasant range of human emotions: disappointment, fear, grief, and even bitterness. Feeling adrift and often alone, terrified of what the next steps would be or wouldn't be, and wondering if God would abandon me to a fate of a life of isolation and purposelessness, the invitation to join on a pilgrimage to a shrine almost a thousand years old (The Shrine of St. James at Compostela-- which I had written a paper on my senior year at Furman but can't recall very much of now) stood like an exclamation point amidst question marks. This exclamation point was a call to faith, and a summons of courage and level-headedness to move out of darkness and into light, on the path that God would reveal.

So, at that very point when I first heard of the pilgrimage to Spain, I had actually begun a pilgrimage to the selfhood God has held for me since the beginning. Though, at the time, it did not feel like a pilgrimage at all-- more like stumbling, faltering steps to the person I had always been but had forgotten.

This pilgrimage did not occur in a vacuum. Parker Palmer writes, "There is no selfhood outside of relationship". The relationships I have experienced in those early months and beyond helped lead me outside of the doubts I constructed for myself and to a life lived with "power, love and a sound mind"as the Apostle Paul describes.

Now, outside of those early months, in a very different place in life, I am undertaking this pilgrimage to Spain out of gratitude for where I have already been lead. When I agreed to go to Spain, simply saying "Yes" was extremely difficult because I was afraid. I had to admit I could not anticipate the future and yet believe that the goodness of God would transcend what appeared impossible.

In my case, saying "Yes" was born out of a desire and a call from God to community, wherein our gifts are shared. Saying "Yes" was to affirm that God has acted and would continue to act with power. We are not called to be alone, and our tasks can transcend what is seen if we simply allow God into these very sensitive areas in our lives.

I want to close with a meditation from the Taize tradition:

"Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est"

Where there is love and charity, there God is.