by Fein, Judith
He confided that the second walk was less moving than the first—an experience he says many returning pilgrims share.
“It only happens once in your life,” he said in a low voice. “After that, my wife and I wanted to give something back to the pilgrims, to help them along on their journey. We joined the Confraternity of St. James in England and went to meetings. We decided to become hospitaleros and here we are.”
After a pause, he added, “I never did service before in my life. It’s wonderful. It’s a bit like the first experience I had.”
In rural Moratinos, population eighteen, a former American journalist named Rebekah Scott lives with her English husband, Paddy, in an old, painstakingly restored and repaired farmhouse they call the Peaceable Kingdom. The Camino goes through the village and passes by their house, and Rebekah spoke with knowledge and enthusiasm about the famous road.
“Do you know that the churches and monumental buildings along the way are meant to be seen on horseback? The best vantage point is from four feet off the ground, where the rich could see them,” she said.
Tomas, the Croatian handy man who was helping the couple, is also attached to the Camino and to a dog named Mimi he found while walking. He tried to take her with him, carried her for about twenty miles, and then was forced to leave her behind. After he reached Santiago, he went back to visit Mimi, earned a little money doing handiwork, and walked the Camino again. And again. And again.
“There is counseling for people who keep doing the walk. What will they do after they stop walking? There’s a kind of post-Camino stress syndrome,” Rebekah explained. “Maybe they have no work and no purpose. They can stay cheaply while they walk and depend on the generosity of strangers. They are drifters on the Camino. And then there’s the whole subject of who is a pilgrim. If you stay at paradores (expensive hotels), are you a pilgrim? Are you one if you bike or ride a horse? In the past, people were sentenced to walk the Camino, to get them out of town. There’s a whole history of people telling war stories about their walks.”
Rebekah paused, served me some delicious Thai curry, and then resumed.
“When you walk, you become aware of everything; you hear the stream, the birds, your senses become acute. You lose weight, get fit. I’m a hospitalera now. I volunteer at hostels, listening to the pilgrims, cleaning up, cooking, applying first aid. It’s a nice break from the ordinary. And you get to know another town.”
The casual way Rebekah spoke belies her deep dedication and service to the Way of St. James. She and Paddy built a labyrinth for the pilgrims and leave small gifts there. In their barn, they have made space for the pilgrims’ donkeys, horses or bikes. And in their house, they have three bedrooms for pilgrims and a bathroom where walkers can luxuriate in a tub. Rebekah also cooks for them. In her spare time, she trains hospitaleros.
Elyn Aviva recently moved from the U.S. to Sahagún, to be on the Camino. She has published fiction and nonfiction books about the holy trek; the latter deal with her walk of gratitude after cancer surgery, and her first walk, in 1982, before the Camino became so popular. She tried to explain to me her fascination, which she said borders on obsession.
“I guess I’m attracted to the Camino the way a moth is to a flame. When I first learned about it in 1981, it grabbed me by the back of my neck and it’s never let me go. At various times I’ve thought I was ‘done’ with the Camino, but I keep going back to explore it from yet another angle, to write yet another book. I’m currently working on synthesizing a number of Spanish books on the esoteric, hidden symbolism of the Camino so that this information will be available in English,” she said.
When I asked why she wanted to live on the road, she answered without hesitation, “It’s good to be ‘on the Camino’ but not walking it—seeing and hearing the daily flow of pilgrims passing through, offering assistance to those in need (looking for a guidebook, needing to go to the doctor, needing someone to translate at the pharmacy or in a restaurant)—being part of the Camino while staying at home. For now.”
She talked about people who served the Camino and helped her on her first walk. “They opened up a deserted schoolroom for us, or gave us food when we had none and there were no grocery stores available. I remember people running after us to point out the correct path, or calling out that we had taken the wrong route. I remember others offering to buy us drinks, or giving us something to eat. And I remember being asked to light a candle on their behalf in Santiago. Decent people, faith-filled people, ordinary people—not paid to be of service, not hired to do a job, but acting from their soul’s desire, from their deep, abiding faith.”
Once again, I tried to understand what it meant to serve the Camino. “So it’s about serving pilgrims, rather than the road itself?” I asked.
“You could say I serve the Divine, the Great Mystery,” Aviva replied with a smile.
The rest of my time in Spain, I contemplated pilgrimages and service. I visited other pilgrimage sites—like the famous fourteenth-century Monastery of Guadalupe in the picturesque town of the same name, in the Extremadura region. There, too, I saw pilgrims with enormous, weighty backpacks, sacrificing their comfort, enduring hardship and stress, pushing their limits for a higher or more important personal goal. I had already decided I was not going to walk the walk, but maybe honoring the sites was an indirect way to be of service. I had no backpack, but I had expended effort to get there: booking air travel, securing accommodations, renting a car, paying money, standing in line.
I wondered how else I could have a pilgrim experience.
Recently, I sent money to help victims of a natural disaster but I didn’t actually go there to volunteer. Did my check count as service, or was it too easy to just sign my name, rip it out of my checkbook, and mail it? What about people who were even less pilgrimage prone than I was because of lack of time, stamina, desire, or money? Could they ever know the satisfaction, pride, sense of accomplishment, and service of a pilgrim? Could I?
I decided that the answer for me was no, but then, sitting in a restaurant in Trujillo, the town that spawned Pizarro, who conquered and pillaged Peru, I had a breakthrough. I had recently spent a lot of time listening and talking to a young woman who was overwhelmed by motherhood and I introduced her to another woman who was going through the same thing. They spontaneously formed a two-person support team. Before that, I had assisted a young man who was applying to college by writing him a letter of recommendation. And I called, wrote and spent time with local and faraway friends who were sick or grieving the loss of a parent, spouse, or pet. Sometimes I just listened, and other times I tried to offer help or consolation.
Maybe the new mother, the man setting out for college, and my aching friends were pilgrims, on the road of life. Perhaps helping them in some small way could be counted as giving them assistance on their path.
By the time I was sipping regional wines in a café outside of the walls of the medieval city of Cáceres, I reflected that I, too, am a pilgrim in life. And I can thank people who help me on my pilgrim’s path.
When I returned home, I told a friend that I felt as though I were on a pilgrimage in life, and she was assisting me.
“What!?” she said, incredulous. “I’m not doing anything. I’m just walking and talking with you.”
“And that’s exactly what I need,” I answered truthfully.
I said the same thing to another friend, who is struggling with a serious and, for now, incapacitating illness.
“Me? Helping you on your pilgrimage?” she asked. Then she burst out laughing. “I spend my life praying and thanking God for keeping me alive. I used to be so active. Now I feel useless—as though I have nothing to give.”
I let her know that her gratitude and her faith were inspirational to me and I felt that in bearing so much discomfort she was somehow serving humanity and the universe. She twisted her mouth into a wry grin, obviously not believing me.
I told her that the most eloquent expression of the service pro
vided by simply enduring was found in the work of the brilliant seventeenth-century English poet John Milton. The light of his life dimmed, externally, when he became blind. But his inner light shone radiantly through his poem “On His Blindness.”
When I consider how my light is spent
E’re half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide,
Lodg’d with me useless, though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, least he returning chide,
Doth God exact day-labour, light deny’d,
I fondly ask; But patience to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts, who best
Bear his milde yoke, they serve him best.
His State Is Kingly.
Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o’re Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and waite.¹
My friend grew silent and thoughtful. “I guess he was serving humanity by writing that poem,” she said quietly. “People who feel discouraged and hopeless in life can still turn to him, even though he’s been dead for centuries.”
After a long pause, she added, “Even after death, I guess it’s possible to lighten the load of life’s pilgrims.”
FOOTNOTE
1. Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.
A few years ago, I was among the tourists in St. Martinville, Louisiana, the birthplace of Cajun culture. I remember staring at the statue of Evangeline and wondering who the Cajuns were and where they came from. Their lilting, drawling French was charming, their music and dancing upbeat, and their crawfish, roux, boudin, and hearty gumbo were addictive.
I soon learned that the word “Cajun” derived from “Acadian” and that the Louisiana Cajuns were descended from Acadians who were ejected from Nova Scotia in a deportation which is sometimes referred to as a diaspora. Henry Wordsworth Longfellow had memorialized the dreadful dispersion of the Acadians in his poem, “Evangeline.”
Although the heroine, Evangeline, was a fictional creation, the poem was about a very real tragedy that befell the Acadians in 1755, and Longfellow’s poem, published almost a century after the events, tugged at the hearts of millions of sympathetic readers around the world who knew nothing of the horrific Acadian story.
Recently, I was in Nova Scotia, at a very moving site called Grand-Pré, and the pieces of the Acadians’ story began to fall into place.
Originally from France, the Acadians had arrived in Nova Scotia, developed a sophisticated irrigation system, turned salt marshes into fertile meadows, farmed, and transformed the land into a rich breadbasket. The most famous of their settlements was Grand-Pré. When Britain and France declared war, even though they had no reason to distrust the Acadians, the British confiscated their farmlands and livestock and forcibly herded the Acadians onto dangerously overcrowded ships which sailed off in perilous waters to unknown destinations.
In the chaos of the embarkation, grief-stricken families were torn apart. Children were separated from parents, husbands from wives, and lovers wailed as the ocean stretched out between them. The Acadians were shipped to New England, France, England, and some made their way to Louisiana. Over the course of eight years, as many as ten thousand Acadians from Grand-Pré and other villages were dispersed. More than fifty percent of them died from hunger, illness, anguish, shipwreck, forced labor, and miserable living conditions. And for many years the Acadians wandered from place to place, facing expulsions, further deportations, and the trauma of perpetual dislocation.
Today, Grand-Pré is a tourist attraction in the scenic Annapolis Valley in Nova Scotia. The visitor reception and interpretation center offers a moving and informative film about the Acadians; glass cases contain artifacts found at the site; there are archeological digs and the foundations of an Acadian dwelling, a well, a statue of Evangeline, and a cross that marks the site of the original cemetery.
To me, the highlight of the site is the memorial church which dates back to 1922. It was designed, built by, and belongs to the Acadian people. And it is the place where they have told and continue to tell their own story.
It is a commemorative, rather than a consecrated, church; it stands near the site of the original Catholic Church where the Acadian men were first rounded up in 1755 and informed that they were going to be expelled from their homeland.
Like the handful of other visitors to the church, I grew silent and contemplative as soon as I entered. On the walls were paintings of Acadian farmers in their fields, the British requiring an oath of allegiance from the Acadians who refused to give it, the reading of the Deportation Order in the church on September 5, 1775.
A stained glass window, in somber blues and grays, depicts the fateful embarkation. A rowboat overflowing with people suggests the chaos and overcrowding, and the portrayal of deportees saying goodbye to their families on shore evokes the misery of separation and loss. A red ribbon runs through the window; it represents the British color and also the tie of family. On September 5 every year, the sun shines through the window and the red line is reflected in a commemorative plaque on the opposite wall that describes the Deportation Order on that day.
But there is another element in the window that is the very heart of the Grand-Pré experience: the survival of the Acadian people is celebrated by a sunrise and the whole window is encircled in gold.
Today, there are more than three million descendants of the expulsed Acadian farmers. Some of them returned to their ancestral land in Nova Scotia, but others are spread across the Atlantic provinces of Canada, New England, France, the Falkland Islands, Belize, Haiti and, of course, Louisiana. Even though the British tried to get them to assimilate into the Anglo world, wherever they landed, they managed to retain their very vibrant and proud culture. There has actually been an Acadian renaissance. No longer satisfied to let Longfellow—who was not Acadian—be their spokesman, the Acadians are committed to telling their own story. They are reclaiming their past and shaping their present and future. Think of the Cajuns—their music, dancing, their food. They are making their mark in the world.
A young woman named Amy, an employee of Parks Canada who guards and disseminates information in the church at Grand-Pré, told me, “I was raised in this area, but I started to get ‘new glasses’ and understood so much more when I began working here.”
What she meant was that the English version or the whitewashed story told by non-Acadians became eclipsed by the story of the Deportation from the Acadian point of view.
The day I was at Grand-Pré, I connected with Sally Ross, who wrote a book called The Acadians of Nova Scotia. She told me that one of the reasons so much is known about Grand-Pré is that two of the occupying British officers kept diaries where they recorded the events of the dispersion. The diaries validate the Acadians’ accounts of the atrocities.
Several years ago, the Queen of England issued a recognition of the wrong committed to the Acadians at the time of the Deportation. Not an apology, but a recognition of the Acadian version of the events.
Sally Ross told me that Grand-Pré has become a pilgrimage place for visitors and for Acadians whose ancestors lived and were buried there. That is certainly understandable, but I was surprised to also hear that Grand-Pré is considered a romantic destination. People—not necessarily Acadians—go there to propose marriage, get engaged, renew wedding vows. I saw a young couple bring their newborn baby to Grand-Pré. And I learned that older visitors to Nova Scotia insist on coming to the site for inspiration.
As I walked around the area, I couldn’t get this aspect of Grand-Pré off my mind. I stood in a green field and looked at a bronze statue that depicted a wandering Acadian family: a mother, father, son, and daughter; the father held a pilgrim’s staff. Why didn’t the artist depict a miserable, downtrodden family?
Why did they look noble, proud, strong? Why did the artist, like visitors to Grand-Pré, consider the site so uplifting? I kept thinking about this and it wasn’t until after I got home that I began to assimilate what I had seen and heard.
The romantic aspect of Grand-Pré is probably easiest to understand. Longfellow’s poem tells a wrenching, tragic love story of separation set against the backdrop of the expulsion and dispersion. The heroine, Evangeline, remained loyal to her beloved, grieving and longing for him, wandering the earth, looking for him. Finally, she found him, among those dying from pestilence. He was an old man. She cried out his name and he heard her and she knelt at his bedside as he died. She thanked God that she had finally found him. Where better to affirm love and undying loyalty and devotion than at Grand-Pré?
But why do elderly people and people with babies go there for inspiration? I think there are several parts to the answer. First, and perhaps foremost, the Acadian people have survived. They have lived through trauma and suffering, but, in the end, they triumphed. So Grand-Pré represents endurance and perseverance and the ability to overcome great pain and hardship.
Second, the history of the Acadians can never be entirely healed (How can you heal the horror of forced dispersion?), but the fact that it has been told by the people whose story it is and acknowledged by the descendants of the offenders is certainly healing. And the fact that the story is known by people around the world is a great balm.
Third, and very significant, is the fact that the Acadians refused to be kept down. Their spirit of joy, creativity, and vitality permeate the site. They faced devastation and came up battered but triumphant. Grand-Pré whispers to visitors that if the Acadians could do it, so can they.
