Saint Jean to Roncesvalles

 Augustine writes "My heart is restless until it rests in you, O Lord. So many times in Christian literature we find the mystery of life being represented as a pilgrimage with our real home waiting for us with God in eternity. If the pilgrimage is an allegory of life, today's beginning of the Camino attests to that.

The  French Way of the Camino for many people has Saint Jean Pied de Port as its beginning. The first day consists of passage over the Pyrenees and is often considered the most difficult stage. This day has the largest changes in elevation than any other day's travel. 

How appropriate. Doesn't the beginning of life entail the most changes. I can think of only few changes in the last ten years of my own life compared to the tremendous number of changes in the first ten years - not those external changes in technology and circumstances, but the internal changes of the self.  Consider even that the most rapid changes we've experienced in the growth of human life have occurred at the very beginning going from a single cell to a central nervous system in a few weeks. Eight years to a fifty year old is a wisp  of time compared to the last eight years that my college age children have experienced and all the changes I've seen in them as they've grown from awkward pre-teens into emerging adults.

However we look at it, this day on the Camino might be the hardest, but from what I've heard the view resulting from all that climbimg is beautiful. Pray that my knees hold out on the descent.

I'll end with the lyrics of a hymn. How strange that sitting in the airport yesterday saying Lauds (Morning Prayer) during a layover in Madrid, this was the hymn in this edition of the Breviary. I don't know the tune, but I do know that God can speak to us even through chance and coincidence;

Who would true valor see,
   Let him come hither;
One here will constant be,
   Come wind, come weather;
There’s no discouragement
Shall make him once relent
His first avowed intent
   To be a pilgrim.

Whoso beset him round
   With dismal stories,
Do but themselves confound;
   His strength the more is.
No lion can him fright,
He’ll with a giant fight,
He will have a right
   To be a pilgrim.

No power of evil fiend
   Can daunt his spirit;
He knows he at the end
   Shall life inherit.
Then fancies fly away,
He’ll fear not what men say;
He’ll labor night and day
   To be a pilgrim. 

Melody: Monks Gate 65.65.65.65
Music: R. Vaughan Williams, 1872-1958
Text: John Bunyan, 1628-1688, alt.