2018 - May

Dear Friends,

I have been blessed on several occasions. But the summer of my 50^thyear didn’t feel like one of them.

I’d just finished my 15^thyear in ministry, and was leaving a church I’d come to love. I recently lost everything in a house fire. Shortly after that I lost my mother and my marriage.

I decided to walk the Camino de Santiago Compostella – a 500 mile spiritual path from France – across the Pyrenees – to ‘the end of the earth’ at Finisterre, Spain near Santiago. Once, a Catholic pilgrimage, today it transcends any one religion. The Camino draws pilgrims the world over. Anyone willing to walk through pain and fear to find joy and purpose.

One afternoon, 300 miles in, I finished my daily 20+ mile walk, arriving at a hostel. Like many hostels, it was next to a church.

Most of the towns on the Camino – and the churches in them – were built to provide hospitality to pilgrims. All such towns understood – especially in the earliest days – that the welcome offered to pilgrims meant the difference between life and death. A bed, a meal, some medicine and attention… these were sacraments. And they were given to all, not just those who looked, or believed like they did.

But besides these, we were given something else. We arrived on the annual feast day where a special pilgrim’s mass was being held. I sat with two hundred pilgrims, dirty and tired, packed in a chapel alongside a hundred townspeople – most of whom ran the hostel, the store, the restaurant or the small infirmary. Few of the pilgrim’s were Catholic. Few of the townspeople were not.

Maybe it was because I was a hundred miles past where my cynicism stopped walking. Beyond my pride. Beyond even self-pity. But when the priest – in broken English – spoke of Love lasting beyond everything breakable – bodies, promises, dreams – I began to weep.

And when he called us to the alter and put both hands on my head and said, ‘God loves you,” I felt different.

It didn’t matter that my arms were folded in front of me in the sign of a non-believer. It didn’t matter that my God hangs out in different places and speaks a different language than his. What mattered was that acceptance and compassion was offered and I set my cynicism and ego aside so it could be received.

This is what it is to be blessed. It’s what happened when I was a child brought before the church who dedicated themselves to raising me… it’s what happened at my ordination when I became a minister dedicating myself to help raise others.

On the Camino – and in this church - it’s like that: a little bit of both. We’re sometimes blessed; sometimes the one doing the blessing. But, regardless, to be a holy rite requires going the extra mile, leaving behind pride and offering up love.

As I prepare to leave for a short time, I invite you to be blessings to one another. Provide hospitality of the heart. Reach out. Love one another.

To the Glory of Life.