Communion

Los Arcos to Logrono (Thursday, June 3rd) For once, I thought I'd write about the day I'd just experienced. As we left the city of Los Arcos, we walked through fields of ripening wheat and vineyards, bread and wine, communion country. Which seems very appropriate for what this Camino is all about. As Kurt from Vienna, one of my early traveling companions for the day, said, part of the purpose of the Camino is to get to know yourself, and part is to get to know your companions, to be in communion with them.

Today, we walked about 17 miles or more than 28 km which took us to a total of about 100 miles since our beginning point at St. Jean! That makes us feel as if we are actually making some progress. It was a long day, but not too difficult in terms of climbs, just endurance.

I began the first few km near others, but was essentially by myself for awhile, enjoying the coolness of the morning air and the clear, Carolina blue skies that stayed with us all day. It was a lovely day on the Camino, though it did get a bit warm by this afternoon. Temperatures are all given in Centigrade or Celsius over here, of course, so I have to do my old grade school conversion formula to figure out what it really is by our standards. (26 is 79!) Anyway, a few miles down the road, Kurt, whom I met last night as one of the 12 tenants of my room at Casa de Austria in Los Arcos, caught up with me on his bike. Unlike most of the cyclists, he prefers to take the camino slowly, not racing through. Turns out he's a judge who has taken a year off, unpaid, to travel the world while he is still physically capable. He rode very slowly for a long ways, while I walked next to him. Again, his English was much better than my German, though I've had a lot of opportunity to polish that, too. So we chatted a lot as the miles klicked by. We stopped in one small village bar for a mid-morning break, which is where I heard the temperatures and weather forecast on the tv, and then kept on going.

One of the things we passed is the cairn 'village' pictured here. All along the Camino, people have created cairns, or stacks of stones, some larger than others, some in shapes. Sometimes they draw attention to places to turn. Sometimes they are just creative. Sometimes they are by the many crosses along the path. Sometimes they are a place to unload burdens (putting down a pebble or a rock as symbolic of letting go of something from the sack of rocks we all carry). Sometimes they are just for fun or just for the heck of it. The whimsical part of me sees them in a Seuss-like way, like Whoville, where I expect little creatures of some sort to inhabit these fantastical cairn 'villages' that seem like some sort of merging of Stone Age and Space Age in appearance. I've always associated them with Celtic cultures before, but I know that they are also used as trail markings in other cultures. And what better use for all the rocks in this country?

Kurt and I go through the village of Torres del Rio, where there is this tiny little octagonal church thought to have been constructed by the Knights Templar, whose ministry it was to protect pilgrims along the way. Apparently the octagon shape is something typically Templar. We decided to pay the euro admission fee mostly to help with the cost of keeping up the building, and, like most of the small churches in the little villages, it, too, held wonderful art treasures for it's everyday interior splendor.

Eventually, we caught up with a young woman from Australia, Tamlyn, who had heard of me from Carmel and Alex from Canada. She´s a great young woman who has been a police officer, but who doesn´t enjoy it and is considering a career change with the Camino´s help of time and distance in discernment. Tamlyn is effervescent and energetic. Tamlyn and I get to talking some about our faith. She asks if I have always been a Christian. Her parents are Pentecostal, which is what she was raised. Her fiance (they got engaged two weeks before she left) is Lutheran and his family has been for generations. That´s been an issue for them. She finds the Lutheran church staid (I don´t think that was her word, but that´s the gist of it), after having been brought up her way. But her way was too much for him, and his family is too steeped in their tradition. It isn´t that big a deal for her. So we talk about it awhile. I´m not sure if the topic or finding out that I am a priest is the cause for Kurt to decide he needs to ride faster suddenly. Later he will reappear and ride with Tamlyn. Oh, the power of the collar. :(

Tamlyn and I catch up with Carmel and Alex in the main square of Viana, as they are having their lunch break and we decide to do the same. (Tamlyn & Carmel...) (...and Alex) Viana seems to be a popular stop for lunch for many pilgrims this day - they are at lots of the sidewalk cafes and all over the benches along the Calle Mayor and the plaza. Once again, it is good to get off the feet for just a bit!

Tamlyn decides to take a longer break, but Carmel and Alex and I continue on and enter Logrono together. The way into Logrono is through a long industrial area that is one of the least pleasant parts of the whole Camino. It is very hot and barren in a concrete, industrial kind of way. And it smells like we are walking through a paint booth. I fear for what we are inhaling as we walk. There are a few underpasses and we pause there to stay in the shade for a few moments before tackling the next stretch. This part of the walk continues for several kilometers. Finally, we are through with industry and we begin to enter what looks like the historic part of the city. It is perhaps the first town or city we have entered going DOWNhill. It has gotten to be a joke that everything is invariably uphill on a gravel path. The first few buildings are some seemingly down on their luck hovels with trinkets for sale. Stella will later tell me this story that I miss: there is an older lady sitting outside one of the houses. She calls out to us. We don´t really understand what she is saying and we assume that she is just trying to sell us something, so we decline. The real story is this. Years before, the local priest asked this woman´s mother to offer water to the thirsty pilgrims as they went by and to count the pilgrims. The woman didn´t know how to count. So for every pilgrim who went by, she would drop a pebble in a bowl and then, when her daughter (the woman we saw) came home from work, she would count the pebbles for her mother, and the woman could tell the priest how many pilgrims had come by and had received water. The woman eventually died and her daughter retired and took over the job of offering the water. She offers ¨water, a prayer and love¨. I wish that I had known that as I so glibly passed her by.

We passed through a lovely little park, stopped in a pilgrim information center and crossed into Logrono, a city more than 1000 years old, via a beautiful bridge. Our packs had been shipped to the Albergue La Rioja. Does anyone reading this have connections to Interpol? (Yes, I´m serious.) I am planning on reporting the man and his daughter who run the place. They took not only our pilgrim credentials, but also our passports (the number is in the credentials) and said ¨Come back in half an hour¨. They did this to everyone and wouldn´t give a bed to anyone if you didn´t. They were also a most unpleasant team to deal with in other areas. I was trying to ship my backpack ahead again, or find out how, and they wanted the money directly rather than the usual procedure of leaving it in the envelope for the company, which was odd. And when my lack of Spanish couldn´t convey that I didn´t yet know where we were going the next day because I hadn´t talked to my friends at another alburgue, they both got mad. Very different than anyone else we´ve had to deal with. None of us trusted them. In the middle of the night, as once again I couldn´t get to sleep, I could only think of black market uses for keeping our passports for so long.

After getting settled in, doing laundry, and getting my credentials back (!), I decided to sit out in the courtyard for a little bit to wait on Stella and the others. Stella arrived first, but too late to get a bed here. The other three were behind her by 20 minutes or more. They all end up at a church run (and much nicer) alburgue down the street. Down near their alburgue is this game done in inlay in the sidewalk. The game is called La Oca (The Goose) and it is about the pilgrimage to Santiago. I don't seem to have any way of contacting them since my phone can't seem to call Stella's, so I just decide to strike out on my own. The city itself is lovely. I walked up to the Calle Mayor to find a farmacia (pharmacy) for some help with blisters, have a glass of the local La Rioja (the region we´re in) wine, and try some tapas, and I accomplished all three! I had the glass of wine by myself, and just enjoyed people watching, but then got up and walked down the pedestrian mall of the main shopping area. I ran back into Carmel, Alex and Tamlyn who were enjoying Sangria, and we had a nice time continuing to people watch and enjoying the food. This bar, like a number of others here in Logrono, had great tapas. The tapas were a tortilla (totally different than Mexican tortillas) of potato and eggs, about 2 to 3 inches high and an eggplant and cheese layered dish that had been broiled, both very good. Laura, still no Santiago cake. Describe it again, please- perhaps they call it something else here.

There was major archaeological work going on next to the alburgue and children up until all hours of the night, well past midnight. Then there were those pilgrims who felt the need to get started about 4 in the morning so they could enjoy the cool of the morning... so not much sleep in Logrono, and anger at the unpleasant people who run this place...the combination doesn't make for a good way to start the day. Especially the harbored anger.

There are a lot of us who travel in sort of a clump, moving approximately the same speed during the day, and generally ending up in the same cities and alburgues at night, so we are getting to know one another a little. Communion involves a lot of give and take. Twice, at least, probably more, when I have been really frustrated with specific people for keeping me awake at night with snoring or tossing and turning, I´ve ended up getting to know them better by walking or talking with them and that changes how I see them. And that is what communion is about, isn´t it, changing how we understand people and seeing them with our heart, through God's eyes and not our own.


This is a church steeple at night from the window by my bunk in the alburgue