Healing, a simple prayer from The Iona Community.
The bay where St. Columba is said to have landed on Iona in 563 AD.
The Camino is a place for healing.
Many of us carry pebbles, stones and rocks in our hearts as well as rucksacks our backs. Walking, day after day, welds together body, mind and spirit until we know that the three are one. We carry within us things which harm us. We may have a tumour, an addiction, a grief unmourned, infertility, abandonment, betrayal, a heart dysfunction, resentments, obsessions, fears, blindness, humiliations, insecurities………… all these and many more.
The camino is an opportunity for many to talk, to share, to listen and to take part in the healing of ourselves and others. “Healing” need not be a miraculous physical cure and many pilgrims know this when they experience the oneness of mind and spirit and body which the camino can offer.
The Bishop of the Walking Church. One in body, mind and spirit.
The albergue in Gradignan, Bordeaux.
Ticks.
Le Chemin St. Jacques, by the costal route, passes through the flat forested south-West of France, reclaimed from the sea by Napoleon. It is an easy walk and was my first close encounter with ticks. There are times of the year when vigilance is recommended to spot these blood-suckers before they do damage. This can happen if they stay too long on your body, usually you legs. I always seemed to pick mine up in forests. A chemist sold me a tick remover which was invaluable when I spotted one with its head buried in my flesh and its bottom sticking out inviting the tick remover to hook it out with a simple flick of the wrist.
A kind, but suspicious Hospitalera.
I arrived on the outskirts of Bordeaux, for I was travelling Le Chemin backwards, north to Tours, where there is a magnificant albergue for pilgrims.
Albergue, Gardignan, S. Bordeaux.
The hospitalera was very welcoming in this hostal which was spacious and even had a bike available. I was the first to arrive and the hospitalera had adjusted to my going in the wrong direction, accepting that I was a genuine pilgrim. Then she noticed two people stepping out of a taxi and heading towards the door, with their rucksacks. I left her to it. After much explaining, the couple were allowed to stay the night. They were clearly in bad shape, both appearing very run down and the woman, about 15 years older than her young man, had difficulty walking. She was talkative and the young man silent. When they went off to unpack and shower the hospitalera whispered to me that she didn’t think they were “genuine”, but that she felt sorry for them. No sooner had she confided in me than a young girl turned up pushing a supermarket trolley overflowing with clothes, a guitar, plastic bags and a gigantic, bulging rucksack. She had a huge smile and cheerfully introduced herself to us both. “I’ve come from Holland.” “With all that stuff?”, I asked with little self control. “Yes”, she said, “I hope I’ll manage it all over the Pyrenees.” The hospitalera looked at me as if to say, “Here’s another one.”
The guests.
The four of us turned out to be the only guests that night and I was silently amused by the thought that none of us were, apparently “regular” pilgrims, although I had had that status conferred on me by the warden. The girl with the supermarket trolley had packed up her job and headed for Santiago. She seemed without a care in the world, strumming her guitar and explaining that Lidl was the best place to look for food in the bins at night. She dined on smoked salmon and blue cheese which had just reached it sell-by date. This girl did most of the talking. She was the only one drinking alcohol. But she was a very genuine pilgrim, having decided to simply place all her trust in God, pack up all her earthly goods and walk to Santiago. She explained, in detail to me, all the best places to stay and landmarks on the Chemin going North. She had certainly walked it – with her Carrefour trolley. When she went off to bed, the woman began to tell me her story and spoke for the young man, too.
[mapsmarker layer=”22″]
The couple had met in rehab a year before. She was an alcoholic and he, too, but with a drug problem as well: they had been “clean” for a year. She had a serious skeletal illness which made walking difficult and, while they had set off from home in Grenoble, had only managed a week on Le Chemin before she was forced to admit that she couldn’t continue. However, they had made a promise to complete the pilgrimage if they stayed clean for a year and were determined to do so. So that day they had taken the train to Bordeaux and tomorrow wanted to go on to Leon. She believed they could make it from there to Santiago. The boy began to speak, “Yes we can. We will. God is with us.”
A Healing Breakfast.
All four of us sat down to a breakfast of cheese and cold meats thanks to Lidl. My own story, that I was on a pilgrimage of reconciliation to Iona, completed the picture of why we all happened to meet up in Bordeaux that night. As those who walk the Camino know well it is possible for the constellations to align for a moment. This was one of those moments and I felt emboldened to propose to my two fellow alcoholics that we might say the Iona prayer for healing. When they showed willingness I explained that we should stand up, whereupon, the young girl said with spontaneity, “What about me. I need healing, too.”
I placed my hands on the young lad and invited his girl friend and the supermarket trolley girl to do the same. They repeated after me the words of the Iona Community healing service,
“May the Spirit of the Living God, present with us now,
Enter you, in body, mind and spirit,
And heal you of all that harms you.
In Jesus name, Amen”
In silence, we all placed hands on the woman and repeated the prayer., then on the girl and then they did the same for me while I remained silent.
The big breakfast room filled with a luminous tension as we quietly let what had just happened to us sink in. There was nothing to say for a while, then softly, “Thank you” and “Thank you” and “Thank you, God.”