Approaching the cathedral in Santiago last Saturday, I was filled with awe and gratitude for the journey I had just experienced but I was filled even more with a longing to continue. My Camino did not feel complete. As I considered the true purpose of my pilgrimage, I knew approaching Santiago and the cathedral were not my main goal, but to walk in friendship with God was my purpose. And so Saturday and Sunday were filled with celebrations and tearful goodbyes with many of the friends I had come to love as my Camino family. Monday morning I put my backpack on and began the final stretch of my journey as I walked 89kms to “the end of the earth”- Finisterre.*
As I walked out of Santiago that Monday morning, my melancholic heart grieved the absence of those Camino friends from my physical presence. Strangely enough though, I literally felt the comfort of my backpack. It was one of those mornings where the pack fit perfectly and it felt like it was hugging my body. In the comfort of my pack’s embrace and in the knowledge that my Camino community is now part of my global community, I found solace and eventually joy in walking alone in the presence of God. I had began this Camino walk alone with God over a month ago and I would now end this walk alone with God.
I arrived in Finisterre on Wednesday, Oct. 11th. I had walked well over 500 miles. As I stood at the 0 km marker proving to me the Camino was complete, I was lovingly greeted by a large group of Americans who had been driving across Spain. When they learned I had walked it, they shouted and cheered for me, hugged me and asked to take pictures with me. It was an overwhelming moment of being loved and celebrated by my fellow countrymen and also overwhelming in personal wonderment of what I had just accomplished and experienced. After some delightful conversations and lots of love from the Americans, I walked out to the very point of Finisterre…where it really felt like the earth ends there and a pulsing sea ebbs into eternity.
I sat on the rocks for an hour, having no clue so much time went by. Everything felt so connected to me: the rocks and the sand, the sea and the sky, the heavens and the earth, the redemption and the brokenness in me. There was no division in any of it, but it was all in perfect harmony. And God was present in all of it. It was and is all held together in the very presence of God.
One of my Renovare Institute teachers** would comment on how we live in a God-saturated world. Those moments on the rocks at the end of the earth, my mind and my heart and my spirit were saturated in God’s presence. God, who created all things through His very existence and nature, holds it all together in His creative and unending love.
Many of us have different mountain-high experiences in our journey of faith, and we then find ourselves back in the lower-lands of everyday life with just memories and longings of what we experienced “on top of the mountain”. I know that is of course a possibility for this experience, but friends I have to say it feels like something more. Through this past year I have experience something growing and changing in me in my understanding and experience of God, and the Camino has given me some great moments of tangibly experiencing the presence and provision of God. While my physical walk of the Camino is finished, this spiritual journey continues. I hope you’ll continue to join me as I reflect on it through this blog.
The invitation to Finisterre just outside of Santiago.
At the end of the earth…
* Finisterre in Spanish (Fisterra in Galician) comes from a Latin phrase to mean Land’s End. It is one of the most western points of Europe and for many centuries was thought to be the end of the world.
**Ugh, I wish I could remember which teacher talked about this. If any of my RI people remember, can you please message me?