The Reasons for Pilgrimage

There are people walking the Camino journey for all kinds of reasons.  For some, mostly, but not exclusively, the young, this walk is simply a fairly cheap and interesting physical challenge, best undertaken with a group of friends.  Any religious element is at the most an historical context to the journey.  We have met a number of groups enjoying the camino as a collective challenge.  This includes an international group of women celebrating one of their number's 60th birthday.  

For those individuals who begin this walk with a purpose, the reasons are various. For some it is devotion, seeking God or maybe even seeking favour with God (depending on one's personal journey and spiritual theology).  For a small number it might even be penance, seeking redemption from some mistake or something they have done wrong and can find no other way to put right.  Perhaps a more common reason is the desire for healing and solace from hurt and pain, particularly the grief of lost relationships. Some are seeking guidance in times of transition; the old giving away to some unknown new direction.  On the very first day we met a Dutchman who had just sold his business and retired.  He had finished his Camino but was not yet ready for home and wanted a few days to reflect quietly before returning to a new life.  Others are seeking a specific personal transformation in their lives.  For each of these there is 'call' to the Camino and to the journey with its challenges, gifts, pains and joys.  The walk itself embodies a symbolic representation of life and somehow transforms it as one returns home.

The disconnection from everyday life with its pressures and expectations is an important part of this journey.  Normal life realities are replaced with the rhythms and necessities of survival as a pilgrim - food, walking, shelter, safety, finding the way, looking after your body, as you are completely reliant on it to keep going day after day.  There is much we take for granted in normal life which is high on the critical necessity list for pilgrims.  The pilgrim experience is very earthy and basic.  It consequentially has a spirituality of its own - an earthy trust in God, an immediate sense of dependence and of God's presence in nature and in other people.  Nature is raw and in your face, rain, wind or sunshine.  Pigrims are vary aware of the needs of provision and protection.  There is something rich and speacial in the camaraderie of fellow pigrims welcoming you to a cafe at the end of particularly long or challenging stretch.  Something of profound affirmation felt in shared experience which is rare in everyday life.  And there are others on the way.  Locals offer gifts of the land as you pass their gardens and orchards.  There is an identification with the pilgrim that is never felt for the tourist.

There is a saying on the Camino, that the journey will not necessarily answer your questions but it may help you discover what they truly are.  So part of the Camino experience is that the reason for which you start is often different from the transformation with which you end.  The Camino journey is full of unexpected surprises the meaning of which only become clear, as we have found, well down the track as normal life is embraced on one's return.