Allow me to attach my clerical collar and presume (ahem!) to preach a sermon on pilgrimage.
Why you walk to SdeC is infinitely more important than how you get there. The Camino is the finest walking holiday in the world, without a doubt. You can walk it simply to enjoy the extraordinary experience it offers, and more power to you if you do! You'll have the time of your life! But when you get to SdeC you'll be asked if you walked the Camino for spiritual/religious reasons - and there's the rub! Merely arriving in SdeC does not make one a pilgrim.
Most of the folks I encountered on my two previous Camino walks spoke of themselves as pilgrims, and they were completely wrong. Fine folks - I relished their company! - but folks who missed the essence of pilgrimage entirely.
I more than once heard one saying "We true pilgrims are here because we choose to be, not because we have to be. This is a burden we take upon ourselves." Another would proclaim that, "We are to here prove ourselves, to purify ourselves, to separate ourselves from the lazy and shallow world out there." Another says, "And we do this by relying only on ourselves. A true pilgrim must walk the whole way to Santiago, and never use a car or bus. A true pilgrim must carry everything he needs on his back, and be as totally self-sufficient as possible.” A fourth says that "Suffering is the key to all this. A true pilgrim proves his purity, his detachment from the world, his worthiness, by suffering. The truest pilgrim would be the one who relies on no-one else, who walks all the way barefoot, who sleeps in the open air, who lives on nothing but what he can cook himself."
One thing I seldom heard is that a pilgrim talks with God, and trusts God to meet his needs. And that’s why every time these folks got going on about the true pilgrim and left God out of the equation, I’d head for my bunk. I don’t like to argue.
Walking the Camino as a pilgrim is not at all the same thing as walking it as an extreme sport.
And walking the camino as a pilgrim has nothing at all to do with "them." It has everything to do with what's going on inside you.
The purpose of walking the Camino as a pilgrim is not to prove to oneself, or to anyone else, how tough one is, how earnest one is, how superior one is to everyone else. Walking the Camino as a pilgrim is a faith exercise. The Camino provides an exceedingly precious opportunity to unplug from the grid, (at least for 100 K!) and get back to talking again with God. And the true pilgrim, in my opinion, is precisely not the one who is there because he chooses to be, he is there because, in a mysterious way reminiscent of a calling to the priesthood, he's there because he’s called to be there. It's not about self-sufficiency at all. It’s about listening to the still, small, voice! That's something most modern Camino walkers are too remote from the Faith even to contemplate.
And I suggest that one reason that so many of the walkers in Spain find this hard to understand, is that it goes completely against the whole notion of self-sufficiency, which remains a dominant value in Western/American culture. Self-sufficiency is so important in America that there’s a whole industry dedicated to equipping people to go out and test themselves. If you go into an adventure sports store like Gander Mountain or REI you're going to find everything you might want or need to make it, on your own, in the woods. And I do mean everything! You can be fully prepared for any contingency. You can take care of yourself, entirely by yourself, you won't need anything from anybody. You can be in control. You can be the master of your fate.
But - does that sound like a pilgrim? I don't think so!
A pilgrim knows that he controls little or nothing. A pilgrim puts his trust in God.
I have no wish to offend, here. I offer these my thoughts in the uniquely ecumenical spirit of the Camino. And I ask you to to pray for me, a sinner.
Pax
