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On the Via de La Plata, my first Camino, I learned a lot about prayer and in this blog I will return to the theme of prayer often. I left Seville just before Holy Week when the preparations for this solemn festival were in full swing.
Jesus, ready for burial and a procession through Seville.
What do you think when you see these photos? What do you feel? I imagine all sorts of reactions from compassion to anger to mirth. Perhaps it is hard to accept the imagery and the public displays of emotion which erupt on the streets of the villages and towns of Spain in Holy Week. I love it……. although for many years I held it in theological suspicion which closed me off to understanding why this matters to so many.
This encounter with Spanish piety at the beginning of my pilgrimage stands out in contrast to what actually happened for me in my schooling in prayer over the following 40 days.
I suppose my Camino prayer-life began with a very simple, poorly adressed question. I was not clear to whom I should speak: to God? to Jesus? the Holy Spirit? The Father? Do they have the same postcode? (16860, Turkey).
With an open heart I was genuinely asking, “What should I be doing on this Camino? Is there a purpose in this journey? Tell me why I am doing this!” Asking whom? I didn’t know, but vaguely, God and probably Jesus, by a process of elimination. I got an answer.
How did I receive the answer? I still wonder myself if it was just one part of my brain talking to another part. Nonetheless, the answer seemed to come suddenly and from no corner of my awareness of which I was conscious.
The answer, which surprised me, seemed to come packaged in love: it felt warm, reassuring, certain. “Just enjoy it.”
Enjoying the Camino with some Amigos del Camino from Seville.
On subsequent Caminos I have begun walking with the same prayer/question and had equally surprising but very different answers.
With my Catholic Christian background, this answer, wrapped in love and peace, felt wholesome. I can imagine it coming from the Love and Peace within me, but I can also externalise it, as the Spanish do and feel the physical Jesus walking beside me, a bit to my right and a half-step behind. It doesn’t matter what explanation I give the phenomenon of receiving a reply, from that moment on I accepted that I had nothing else to do but enjoy the Camino.