We're doing what?!

Our pilgrimage has required a fair amount of planning and, for better and worse, I've been the chief planner. I've been trying not to get carried away, but it's hard. There is so much to see and do! I have visions of us landing in Dublin, getting our rental car, bolting half awake south to Glendalough to see the monastery and lakes, and then west to visit the Rock of Cashel before we move on to the west coast where we drive the Ring of Kerry, do a loop of the Dingle Peninsula and head north to the Cliffs of Moher, through the Burren, and then onto Galway, where we will take a ferry to the Aran Islands, one of the last outposts of Irish speakers. Then up through Connemara to Croagh Patrick, which we will climb, before motoring south to the Marian Shrine at Knock and then to the Famine Museum in Strokestown and then back toward Dublin, visiting the ancient ruins in the Valley of the Boyne on the way. In Dublin, we will go to the zoo (Luke's choice) tour Trinity College, which contains the Book of Kells, attend Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral, and see some relatives before catching our plane to Edinburgh. We'll throw in a few visits to pubs, other relatives, and relatives in cemeteries.

All in about a week! You probably now understand why John and Luke are looking the way they do in the photo. It's an insane plan. Because while some planning is good and necessary, too much isn't. And it certainly isn't in keeping with the spirit of a pilgrimage.

We can't see and do everything we'd like; we have to pick and choose among very good choices. Even more importantly, we have to remain open to the unplanned opportunities that arise in a day. This is true of traveling and it's true of life, too.

It so tempting for me to think I'm in total control and that I know best. But we are co-creators with God of our lives and our world and things go better when we pay attention to God's nudges and whispers. Hopefully, one of them will be, "Drive the Ring of Kerry," 'cause I really want to see it ;)

Where We All Came From

The first leg of our trip is to Ireland, the home of our ancestors: John's and mine and maybe even Luke's. The possibility that Luke could have Irish blood in him was brought home to me through a class my mom and I took at Bradley's OLLI program almost four year ago called Deep Ancestry.

I took this class in part because I thought it would be good to get some genetic information on Luke (we swabbed our cheeks and sent the material to National Geographic). Because of the chromosomes in the human body, males are able to trace their maternal and paternal lineages, while females are only able to trace the maternal. We had to choose, so I had Luke trace his maternal lineage.

Through the testing, we learned that his mother's ancestors made a very short trip from our common maternal ancestor in east Africa to west Africa where they lived for thousands of years before one of his relatives was kidnapped and put on a slave ship for Haiti.

In retrospect, I wish I would have had Luke's paternal lineage tested because this may have revealed his European ancestry. It could be Irish--as Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., an African-American who hosted "Finding Your Roots" on PBS discovered--or he may have some other lineage. Luke is who he is, but those of us who have this ethnic information about ourselves know how it shapes our identity.

A graph of my maternal lineage, Haplogroup K, is above. One of the interesting facts about this haplogroup is that many of the Ashkenazi Jews (Jews from central and eastern European ancestry) are also part of this haplogroup.

As you can see from the above graph, the genetic testing also showed us the route our ancestors took out of Africa to the places where we now think of ourselves as from. We learned a lot in this class. Perhaps the most mind-blowing fact of all was this: we are all, every one of us on this planet, descended from one woman who lived in east Africa, between 100,000-200,000 years ago. She is called Mitochondrial Eve. We are all carrying some of her DNA in us.

We really are one human family.

Laughing On The Way

After yesterday's serious post, I came across the following article from the New Yorker, "Journal From a #Blessed Road Trip, Inspired By Henry David Thoreau", in my Facebook feed. "Oh goody," I thought. More road trip/pilgrimage accounts. It didn't take too long to figure out it's a parody. And a funny one. I laughed really hard while worrying if I sometimes write like this. My favorite entry was May 8.

It's good not to take yourself too seriously. As one of Thoreau's contemporaries, Robert Louis Stevenson said, "Sit loosely in the saddle of life."

Not Just A Vacation

I've been doing some reading about the Camino de Santiago (Way of St. James). I've collected several books over the years (see above) and then of course there's the internet, where I discovered the following passage from Codex Calixtinus, the very first guide book written for the Camino in the 12th century.

The pilgrim route is a very good thing, but it is narrow. For the road which leads us to life is narrow; on the other hand, the road which leads to death is broad and spacious. The pilgrim route is for those who are good: it is the lack of vices, the thwarting of the body, the increase of virtues, pardon for sins, sorrow for the penitent, the road of the righteous, love of the saints, faith in the resurrection and the reward of the blessed, a separation from hell, the protection of the heavens. It takes us away from luscious foods, it makes gluttonous fatness vanish, it restrains voluptuousness, constrains the appetites of the flesh which attack the fortress of the soul, cleanses the spirit, leads us to contemplation, humbles the haughty, raises up the lowly, loves poverty. It hates the reproach of those fuelled by greed. It loves, on the other hand, the person who gives to the poor. It rewards those who live simply and do good works; And, on the other hand, it does not pluck those who are stingy and wicked from the claws of sin.

Oh my. As I was reading this on Easter Sunday afternoon, John came into the room. "That Easter brunch we went to?" he said. "There was way too much food." And there was so much food. It was delicious and we ate our fill. But it was more than anyone needed.  John is especially sensitive to this issue as he spends a lot of time in Haiti, a place that is, to use the current euphemism, "food insecure."

Whenever a coincidence like this occurs--I am reading or doing or thinking something--and something else comes along and validates it or in some way connects to it--I wonder if God is trying to send me a message. We all have those serendipitous moments. 

So what is the possible message? I think it may be that this trip, which is in a lot of ways an extravagance, is not primarily a vacation. It's not primarily about having fun and eating out and relaxing and racking up the sites seen, although I'm sure--I hope!--it will contain some of that. It's a pilgrimage and it will hopefully be about growing closer to God, becoming more of the people He wants us to be. 

That sounds daunting, but maybe it's not as complicated as it seems. When I asked John what the solution to this dilemma was--the incredible abundance we have versus the scarcity that much of the world experiences-- he had a great, simple, doable one-word answer. 

Moderation.

How It Came To Be

Some time in the mid 90’s, I came across a book, “Off the Road: A Modern-Day Walk Down the Pilgrim’s Route Into Spain” by Jack Hitt. I read it and despite the author’s agnostic bent was seized with the general notion of making a religious or spiritual pilgrimage and the more specific thought of walking the Camino de Santiago–the 500 mile trail across northern Spain to the alleged burial place of St. James the Apostle.  For a couple of decades, the closest I got to making this pilgrimage was thinking about it.

So last October, when my friend Peggy Arizzi called me to tell me about an opportunity to make the Camino de Santiago through a tour offered by the Bellarmine Jesuit Retreat House and said, “I want you to think about it,” she didn’t realize that I had been doing that for 20 years. When Peggy approached me with the idea, I immediately moved into the phase of, “How can we make this work, not just for me but for John and Luke too?”

And as I thought about it, while flying across the Atlantic to walk the Camino seemed like a fantastic idea, what seemed even better would be to visit Ireland, Scotland, and France also. To pay the money to travel that distance it seemed to make sense to see other places. With Luke in 7th grade and understanding, excellent teachers at St. Mark’s prepared to make it work academically for him, the timing was now-or-never.

Why Ireland, Scotland, and France?

Ireland: the beautiful home of our ancestors. John has never been there, and I know he will love it. He is very Irish.

Scotland: the home of our friends Ailish and Leo, who have adopted five children from Haiti and who have extended many invitations to us to visit.

France: John’s dad was a World War II veteran who was part of the D-Day invasion on the beaches of Normandy. We have 27 letters that he wrote as he made his way with the 90th Infantry Division through France to Germany. We want to visit the D-Day sites, including the cemeteries, where a friend of his is buried.

So, it will be a four-part pilgrimage.

Compostela: Field of the Star

John, Luke, and I are going on a trip, a pilgrimage of sorts, that will culminate in walking part of El Camino de Santiago de Compostela. This translates into English as The Way of St. James of the Field of the Star. What does it mean?

Santiago de Compostela is a city in northwest Spain and the alleged burial place of the apostle St. James. Complicated legends surround the saint, but a condensed version is that after bringing Christianity to Spain, St. James returned to the Holy Land where he was martyred. His disciples brought his body back to Spain and it disappeared for 800 years. Around July 25, 813, a bright star led a hermit to a field containing an ancient burial ground which held the body of St. James. A huge cathedral was constructed and Santiago de Compostela became one of three great pilgrimage sites during the Middle Ages, the others being Jerusalem and Rome.

Stars play an important role in guiding us. Mariners sailed by the stars. We speak of the North Star as a guiding light. A star led the three wise men to Jesus. The pilgrimage site of Santiago de Compostela was created in part because of a star.

Stars have a magic about them. We look up in the sky at their glistening beauty and try to comprehend how far away they are. The star closest to us makes life possible on earth.  The awe we feel for stars influences our language; we speak of people who are bigger than life as stars. Those who have been sprinkled with stardust are magnetic and successful. On the level of physics, our very bodies are made from atoms that were once at home in the stars.

I am calling this blog the Way of the Star because of the importance stars play literally and metaphorically in guiding us. We hope to follow the light of the Star on our pilgrimage.