Reading as a Pilgrim

The metaphor of being a 'pilgrim' never used to do much for me. I suppose pilgrim always meant, in the first instance, those people who came over on the Mayflower and they have always struck me as a rather dour bunch.

Since last year, I have fully embraced the metaphor of pilgrim. As you may know, I spent three full weeks actually being one in the fullest sense of the term. Actually what I was called was a 'peregrino' which is the Spanish word. This is because I was hiking across northern Spain on the ancient road, called the Camino, to Santiago de Campostela where the church remembers that St. James is buried.

(I went with a friend, Scott. I speak a little Spanish. He speaks none. The first time we went into a bar, the bartender asked if we were 'peregrinos.' I said 'Si.' Scott told me later he thought I had just ordered us both bubbly water! If you'd like to read a brief account, with pictures, of our pilgrimage, go to christopherscamino.blogspot.com.)

I loved being a pilgrim. I loved the lightness of it. Each day, I carried less than fifteen pounds on my back and that was all I ever needed. I loved the intentionality. Everyday we were going in one direction, with one destination, the meaning of which kept subtly shifting but the location was sure. I loved the companionship, both with Scott and with others we met along the way. I loved the pace of it. We were steady, thorough and strong without being rushed. Some pilgrims choose to walk only the pretty parts and take buses through the ugly portions of the Camino that now run by modern highways. We walked every step from Leon to Campostela.

In the year and a half since my time in Spain I've noticed that the lessons of the Camino have slowly made their way into many aspects of my life. One of them is reading, particularly reading scripture. As you may know we now have three Bible studies at St. Paul's. Sunday mornings at nine we read Genesis. Wednesdays at ten we read Samuel and Kings, and Tuesdays at twelve-thirty we have been reading Acts.

On Tuesdays, we are about to begin reading all of the letters everyone agrees were written by Paul, beginning with First Thessalonians. We will be reading every word aloud of all seven of his letters, concluding with the great letter to the Romans. I am sure it will take us more than a year to read them all. There are already about eight of us ready to go and I anticipate that others will come along aside of us. We will be a little pilgrim band, traveling across the sometimes pleasant, sometimes forbidding landscape of Paul's letters.

What I have learned is that traveling through the scriptures at the pace of our human voices slows us down enough to listen and digest in a new way. As we walk along, our hearts are subtly transformed. We each in our own way catch glimpses of God's presence with us. We each come to new understandings of who, through Jesus, God is for us now.

By reading as pilgrims we are changed. Will you join us? We begin our pilgrimage on Tuesday, October 25th at twelve-thirty in Duncan Hall. You are welcome to join us on that day or any Tuesday after that. There will always be room for you in our band of pilgrims.