Vol. 1 Episode 7: No Accidental Pilgrims

In this episode, I go into some detail about how my wife and I ended up on the Camino de Santiago back during the summer of 2015 and how our pilgrimage was affirmed by a sign from God--no kidding! Well, at least that's my interpretation of the events. Like Jack Stanton in the movie The Way, I truly believe that no one does the Camino by accident--no one. 

Transcript

 Hello and welcome to another episode of These Holy Bones, a podcast about the ancient pilgrimage to the Cathedral of Santiago. Where the bones of St. James are interred beneath the high altar. I'm your host, Robert Nerney. And today I'd like to talk about how, and maybe why I ended up on the Camino over 10, about 10 years ago and about what provokes people to do such a thing as walk an ancient pilgrimage to a cathedral to visit a long dead  Saint, St. James, one of the apostles of our Lord.  And the crux of my of the reason why I went on the commute o.  Would be my faith that would be the crux but what were the specifics what got me to Recognize that it was something of value or what got me to recognize that maybe the lord was calling me to This this type of experience this pilgrimage this very traditional act of faith on the part of christians Since the beginning of christianity it was a piece of art Yeah That got me interested and that same piece of art has kept me going in a lot of ways and that is the movie The Way  by Emilio Estevez starring Martin Sheen, his father.

 Martin Sheen's father is from Galicia and that is where, that's the region in Spain where the cathedral is located in. Galicia.  I was teaching a high school course and we were supposed to do a unit on pilgrimage and I looked through the anthology and there were excerpts from  Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and I thought I don't think my students  would really appreciate Chaucer at this point in their lives.

 I know I was making a value judgment and so I had seen By  Emilio Estevez I owned the DVD at the time so I brought that into my classroom I explained to my students what it was about. I we talked a little bit about pilgrimage. We've read an article  In our anthology about pilgrimage  and that was from a book that I own and I'll talk about that maybe at some other time and They we watched the movie It was not one of my favorite movies at the time.

 I thought it was slow I don't think I really understood the significance of pilgrimage at that point in my life And I had the students so it took a few days to watch And they had to answer questions as they watched the movie to keep them engaged. They were 11th graders and at the end of the the viewing they had to write  An essay explaining, it was an opinion paper.

 So they had to express their opinion and support it with five different  scenes or different aspects of the film. So it had to be supported. So it was valid  when they passed them in. I read them and I was pleasantly surprised that. The students found the pilgrimage very appealing.  I was surprised. I was really surprised actually.

 And I showed those essays to my wife and she said to me maybe we should do the pilgrimage. And I said that would, might be interesting.  And she said, Nah, that's not a really good idea. And I said, nah, that's cool.  We put it on a shelf. I don't even think we put it on a shelf. But a month later she said, maybe we should do that pilgrimage and we should pray for our children.

 I said sounds good to me. So we started to read about the pilgrimage. We read five books. Different accounts, they were travelogues, but different accounts of pilgrims experiences on the pilgrimage. I remember that I enjoyed, I think, a few of those reads. They were full length, 250 pages. 

 And they were all I think all of them We're about the Camino Francés, which is the most  popular of all routes to Santiago. The Francés  starts in Saint Jean Pied de Port, in the southern France, in the foothills of the Pyrenees, and it goes up into the Pyrenees, into Spain, and Roncesvalles is the first Spanish town you encounter, and then you walk across northern Spain,  and Approximately 500 miles, 800 kilometers.

 And you go through Pamplona, you go through Burgos prior to Burgos, you go through Lagroño, you go across the Meseta, which is beautiful. It's this plateau of wheat acres and acres of wheat that is grown in Spain.  You enter León, beautiful city, beautiful cathedral in León. Just there's a beautiful cathedral in Burgos.

 And then you continue on back up into the mountains. Then you come out of the mountains and you reach Saria from Saria. You have about 117 kilometers to go. And then You make your way to Santiago. That is the francaise. Now there are other routes I have traveled from Porto to Santiago and I've traveled the Primitivo which  is suspected to be the first pilgrim route to Santiago.

 Alphonse II, I think walked it, um, that is what got me on the Camino in 2015, myself and my wife, but,  and I say it is God, it was God calling us to do this. And you say that's that's fine. You have faith and you think God calls you to do things, but I just think, you know,  life is not so directed by this greater power.

 But I want to, I would like to tell you a story about that first Camino and it was not a pretty Camino. It was, myself and my wife were not in the best of shape. We read five books. We didn't really train that hard. We weren't really, we, I don't think we were cognizant of what we were going to encounter. 

 I remember in that the first couple days up in the mountains, people would look at us and just shake their heads and be like, are you guys all right? Are you going to make it? And we're like, do we look that bad?  And I remember being exhausted after the third day as we entered Zuberi. We stayed there for a few nights to recover.

 And onward across Spain we took the occasional bus, maybe the occasional taxi. So we weren't like your ideal pilgrim walking every step but we were making our way across Spain. And I remember on one particular day, it was very warm, very hot,  and I was probably dehydrated. And we walked into a town on the Meseta. 

 So this is after Burgos. So we're  over 200 miles into the into the Camino, into the pilgrimage. And there was a  albergue on my left and on the door, it said completo,  but I have no no information. Knowledge of Spanish. I had no idea. It meant that this place was full. I knocked on the door. I opened the door.

 There was a man at the kitchen sink, washing dishes and in perfect English, much better than mine. He said, can I help you?  And I said, yes, do you have a private room? In this Albergue? He said no, we're full. It says it on the door. We're full completo.  I said, okay. But he said that I do own another house or I have another house.

 It's not on the Camino on the route. It's about 20 minutes from here, but if you'd you can wait and I will take you there and you can stay there tonight. I was like, that sounds great. And I think I was, at that point, I was so exhausted and so dehydrated, I was open to anything.  And on my right, on the wall, there was a big poster of Emilio Estevez with a and it had a Sharpie signature and it said, Amigo, and there was a message and it said, and then it had Emilio's name.

 I said, oh, that's a really nice poster. He goes, yeah, I'll tell you about it in the car.  So 20 minutes later, my wife and I get in the backseat of this gentleman's car. We don't know him. He doesn't know us. And he's going to drive us to this house that he he owns. And as we are making our way to this house off of the off of the Camino route, he tells us that his sister  married Emilio Estevez, his son, Taylor, that they had met years ago. 

 When Taylor was was with his grandfather, Martin Sheen, and they were driving the Camino because Martin Sheen at the time was doing the West Wing and he had no time to walk the Camino, but he wanted to experience it. And that they ended up at this house and that Taylor, the The grandson met this gentleman's sister and they fell in love and they eventually got married.

 And I was like, I looked at my wife. I said, what is this guy talking about? And my wife just shook her head. And he said, I love California. I go there every year. I just got back.  And I was like, I'm not really sure this is, I don't know what's going on. So we get to the house with the only ones there.

 There are six separate rooms. We have our own private room. We have a  person that works in the house, made us dinner. We had a beautiful dinner. It was a wonderful time. And in that house, it was another poster that was signed with a Sharpie. It was a depiction of the film, the way, and I'm not sure who signed this one. 

 And then in the morning. We had breakfast with the mother and father of this gentleman, and they and his house during the there's a montage after Burgos where they're walking across the Meseta and there's a scene where Yauss is helping the, this older man and this woman make dinner. And then he brings it out  to the other three pilgrims to Tom, Sarah, and to Jack.

 And this is all done to the music of Alanis Morissette. And I was like, okay. So we ended up. At a place that's in the movie with two people who are also in the movie and cameo scene, they just make cameo appearances.  I was like, there's, and then in the morning, the mother who's in the movie, she drives us back to the Camino 20 minutes back to the route.

 And we say goodbye. Thank you very much. And we're on our way. And In reflection, there's no possible way that you, there's no way that was just a chance encounter. That the movie got me, myself and my wife, on the Camino. And the confirmation  of of our pilgrimage that year was that experience.

 Staying at that home, meeting the parents and, the this gentleman that took us there.  So it blew me away. And so when I tell that story,  I always say it was God that  Took me and my wife took us by the hand and brought us to spain  To walk and in that case, we never even made it to santiago after leon actually it must have been yeah after leon.

 So after the meseta we we decided To pack it in and go home. We never made it to santiago that year and that brought me back to the camino in 2016 When I told my wife, you know when we got back home in 2015 I think I have to finish this camino and she said that's great, but you're going by yourself  You So  referencing, going back to the movie as a reference point, I love  Jack Stanton's  statement to Joust as they're walking  and Joust is saying, it seems like Tom Avery is walking this by I love that.

 Maybe happenstance by chance and Jack says that he started his pilgrimage in Paris three months ago And that if he knows one thing for certain it was that the way of st. James  Is an experience that no one walks by accident that there's always a way  Some reason why they're walking the Camino and I really believe that this past Camino in 2024 was one of I have to say I didn't walk the entire thing.

 I walked 400 miles. I had some blisters, some problems with my right foot. As I approached Saria, I thought, Oh, I'm going to make the whole thing again. This is such a blessing.  And I didn't. And then I took a train into Santiago and I figured I'll have a few days there and I can interview people for my podcast and it'll still be  the experience that I wanted to be, that I wanted to be.

 And then my mother in law, I was called and she was on her deathbed and I had to leave Santiago without even visiting the cathedral. It was such a an abrupt end  to such a wonderful experience this past year. And I was on that Camino for, a number of reasons. I met some beautiful people who talk about God leading people on this particular pilgrimage.

 They all seemed like they were meant to be there. They were just wonderful people and very memorable and just really,  Great human beings, and you never know. You like, I, it's funny because on the Missy someone's saying, oh, we're all going to make it to Santiago.

 And I always say, and plus I'm Irish Catholic. So you never, sure about anything. I always say we'll see. We'll see what happens. We'll see what happens tomorrow when we leave the albergue. Or I leave my hotel That's where i'm staying. But yeah, I just think that there's so many confirmations  In my life.

 That was my ninth Camino that that god leads you out there and that it may not be Exactly what you think it should be but you're out there for a reason and I think that's a  it's a beautiful mystery  So I want to end on that but I want to You Make make clear that I do believe that  everyone on the Camino is called to the Camino and it's not some  It's not a fluke.

 It's not serendipity.  It's much more providential. God has a plan. And pilgrimage is such a beautiful experience and such a strong Catholic tradition. And it's also a spirituality. I read that recently. I was like, Oh, that's incredible. That's really interesting that it's not just an experience.

 It's a type of spirituality that we can can nurture. And I think that one of the biggest gifts in my life, I think besides my marriage and my children, my grandchildren is the Camino. It's been one of the greatest gifts that I've ever experienced. And I don't feel worthy because I know I'm not worthy, but I just want to thank God for the Camino, which is such an incredible,  rich ancient tradition and I just thank God for it every day of my life  and that's it.

 And I want to thank you for spending some time with me. I hope you enjoyed this podcast. And of course, like always,  Buen Camino.