Camino, Here I Come!

I think I was made for this moment. On May 15 I will fly to Paris, take the train to St. Jean Pied de Port and then take my first steps on the Camino Francais, the 500-mile pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela. I say that I think I was made for this because forty years ago I was following two passions of mine—religion and physical education—as an undergraduate in the Presbyterian-affiliated College of Idaho.

Photo by Max Kukurudziak on Unsplash

For me religion (which in Latin means “to bind” or “integrate”) and physical expression always belonged together. As I child I felt closest to what my church called “God” when I was sleeping under the stars in the Rocky Mountains or hopping from rock to rock fishing for rainbow trout in a cold mountain stream or climbing one of the “Fourteens” as they are called in Colorado (peaks over 14,000 feet).

But as I reached my adulthood and settled into a professional life I increasingly felt that religion was limited to the activities that took place in a church building (often sitting in pews, meeting around board tables or lingering at a potluck) and physical expression was a separate activity called recreation.

It always felt odd to me that a tradition committed to nurturing mind, body and spirit almost never paid attention to the body except on Sunday mornings when prayers were often directed toward healing various bodily ailments. It felt odd to me that a tradition the sees itself as the “incarnation of Christ,” that is, “Christ in the flesh” didn’t actually pay much attention to the needs and desires of the flesh.

So, as I said before, I think I was made for this moment. On May 15, I will be walking the 500-mile Camino Francais, one of the world’s great religious pilgrimages. My spirit and body will be equally engaged. My soul has longed for this sacred integration.

I do wonder if the big shift toward being “spiritual but not religious” in our culture is rooted in the experience I have had. Why be religious if it means one has to deny one’s physical expression in the world? Why be religious if religion itself (which means to integrate) does little to encourage equal engagement with mind, body and spirit? In other words, integration.

Forty years ago, I completed double majors in religion and physical education. I had two majors and one life. As I entered the career of ministry that reality began to dis-integrate as I felt pressure to limit religion to my professional life and physical education to my personal life.

On May 15, I will bring them back together. Two passions in one life. Two ways of encountering the Sacred on one single path.

Camino, here I come!