A Long Walk in a New Direction

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”

— Anais Nin

Today I begin walking the Camino de Santiago, or The Way of Saint James, a storied pilgrimage across Europe to the town of Santiago de Compostela in Spain, where the cathedral guards the tomb of the apostle. It is a journey that began in the 9th century; in 1492 the pope declared the Camino to be one of the three great pilgrimages of Christendom along with Jerusalem and the Via Francigenato to Rome. More recently, Pope Benedict XVI described the Camino as “a way sown with so many demonstrations of fervour, repentance, hospitality, art and culture which speak to us eloquently of the spiritual roots of the Old Continent."

I have said of this new chapter in my life that it is time to take a long walk in a new direction. The Camino seems like a good place to start.

None of this is without trepidation. I am about to walk 300+ miles alone, along a path I hope will rise to greet me, on an unfamiliar coastline in a foreign land. There are moments I wonder, What have I done? There are moments I believe there is nothing I can’t do. As I suspect is the case for most of us, however, I spend the balance of my time hovering in a less well-defined space: wanting to leap, afraid to leap, hoping to summon courage from a well that feels too recently drained.

So this morning, my thoughts turn to my children.

When he was 17, I flew with my son to Austria, where he enrolled in university, which is not what we in the States think of as university. One attends to study, yes, but students are in no other way supported. No dorms. No meal plans. No “Office of Student Life.” I flew with him to Europe not only to see him off to school but because he had to secure his own apartment and furnish it, open his own bank and utility accounts, arrange his own insurance policies – none of which he was legally old enough to do; I had to co-sign everything because, by government standards, he was still technically a child. He knew no one there. He’d been taking German lessons independently in preparation for living, for study, but it was still a foreign language. And on a dark morning, under a dim streetlight in the wee hours of a cool September day that harkened autumn, I hailed a taxi to the airport, kissed him goodbye, and left him on a street corner in Vienna to make his way back to Salzburg alone to begin his new life. At 17. Seventeen!

When she was 16, my daughter moved to Italy for a year on an academic and cultural exchange. I waved goodbye from the outside of the TSA security checkpoint in the USA, and she walked alone onto a plane bound for Rome. Once there, her domestic transfer fell through, her greeter didn’t show up at the assigned place or time, and she called me so she wouldn’t be alone in spirit though she was alone in fact. From thousands of miles away, I reminded her I could not do for her what she would have to accomplish for herself, so she troubleshot on the fly, asked for local help, and with effective rerouting found her way to her assigned community in the south of Italy. At 16. Sixteen!

Christ, my kids are possessed of such intrepid spirits! On days like today, when a long and unknowable road unfurls before me, and I wonder what I am capable of, if I am capable, I call to mind their example. Their fortitude is their own, certainly, but this morning, with my courage in need of succor, I remind myself that their daring doesn’t come from nowhere. You know what they say: Apples. Trees. They have learned to be strong by having seen strength manifest, and that strength need not be on obvious display to take the first step. It will rise when summoned.

In thinking of my children I deliberately borrow back some of that moxie, some of their mojo. I shall walk, with faith. Not in an apostle, but in myself. I will leap, and trust the net to appear.

As it always has before.