I walked into Eauze at 1 a.m. This was a pilgrim first for me, ending this late. I didn´t want to either as I was stuck on a road for the last three hours with thumb out as the occasional car passed by on a country road. No luck. I guess picking up someone so late at night brings a whole host of worries, particularly that you know they have nowhere to go to sleep as are the hostels are closed. I have a friend walking on another path and hesitated for a moment to try and hitchhike to reconnect with him as he is not too far from me just on the vioe d´arles which lies just south of the via podiensis where I find myself. I also wanted to go to lourdes anyway and will have to break south, but after a few hours of trying I lost heart. I hate these sort of days that interrup the flow of a pilgrimage, and take you off the path and potentially leave you walking along busy roads for hours. To avoid the elevator problem I simmply walk along country roads with my hand out. People are less likely to stop, sure, but you are also moving toward your destination. But theres a real path to Lourdes in about 60km and I got tired so I ended up finding a bike path to the next stop on the via podensis Eauze. It was about 25km away, and I changed my mind at about 6pm. So I had my work cut out for me.
The bike path was totally void of water so after a few hours of walking on it I took the first possible exit to quench my increasingly extreme thirst. It was a hot day, about 30 degrees and sunny. The town I stopped in, called Gondrin, turns out to be one of the only towns on the tourist map I have. I asked an old lady where I could find water and she offered to bring me some. I followed her to her house and she asked me to wait outside. She tried to give me directions back to the camino but I knew I was already too far afield and would be hugging the road to Eauze and, because it was already 9pm or so, trying to nitchhike. SHe also gave me some stale bread and a nice apple and orange along with two orthree refills of my thermos.
I was hungry when I arrived in Eauze, its really a shame to have come so late as Eauze is home to one of the best christian hostels on the via podiensis, one where I can stay for free and eat alot (there is always ample leftover pasta and rice to cook and take with me). Also pray as they pray the hours and have a nice chapel. But as I approached the city im thinking about practicalities, I need food and I need to charge my phone. I scan the dumpsters for food as bigger cities like this one have more generous dumpsters as a rule. This turned up mostly dry, found half of a good peach. My other need was a recharge. I am thinking public bathrooms or a socket outside of public buildings. Turns out Eauze was having some sort of town festival and there was a massive offering of free sockets in the public square set up for this fest. I plugged in, set up my tent right by so it would be less likely to get stolen while I am sleeping. A man approached me and offered me a cigarette, the public fest had moved esewhere as music was still blaring even at 1am. I declined. I told him I was hungry. He told me he had a kebab store and to wait 10 minutes. Almost in disbelief I waited. Could it be, will I get a döner kebab, my precious döner kebab? THe man returned as promised in 10 minutes with two brown bags. Niether with a kebab, but I wasnt disappointed. The one bag had a fantastic warm panini with cheese wrapped in tin foil, a good portion of sliced salami on the side. The other bad had an obscene variety of beverages. Coke, Red Bull, Tea, Orangina, Fruit Juice, and two waters. I was floored by his generosity. He even returned with a blunt for me, which I again declinied. Anyway, these sort of deliveries do build trust in God´s Providence. Its incredible.
But what was really incredible was the next evening. I approached the Cemetery just before Saint Christie D´Armagnac at around 6pm. My legs were shot from the previous day and I had a late start in any case. Was so tired I took a nap in the afternoon in a hayfield. Not an impressive walking day for me to say the least. But I was shooting at least for Nogaro which is 20km away from Eauze, I thought maybe Id get further and walk in the evening again but a storm was comming. Anyway, I see a older woman, say 60 or so, standing in the porch of the chapel and she greets me. We briefly talk, I enter the chapel, sing my minimum of one gregorian chant, and exit planning to keep walking. She thanked me for the song and we began to talk. Her name is Marie and shes from Madegascar. She said shes going to sleep in the church for the evening and had already arrainged her things. She says she felt called to do the camino, said she was doing it for spiritual liberation. Great, me too I think. She believes in a higher power, is a baptized catholic who doesnt practice, basically the norm. Anyway, we talk for about a half hour or so and she asks about my pilgrimage and life, I share and offer to sing a short concert for her in the church. The small stone, I think 18th century structure had fantastic acoustics. I love the austerity of the french and roman chapels. She loved the concert and said it helped with her liberation. After my singing we started talking about the faith a little more. I started making her a rosary as well. But basically, she has the fiath of a generation of catholics who were poisoned by the church. She´s a relativist, perinnialist. All religions are equally true, good ways to God. Its what the vaticans been signaling and hinting at since the 60s and its what her generation was let to believe. Of course only the most loyal or stupid stay in the church with this ideology. if the circus isnt necessary, why stay? She said scandals and hypocrisy were too much for her and she exited. I have had this conversation so often. I do try to correct the person. You cannot learn anything from bad examples, Jews say Jesus was a false prophet, Muslims that the idea of God having a Son is blasphemy, mustnt one be right and the other wrong, if so, doesnt it matter? They usually concede. One of the reasons for despising the second vatican council are my experience with people like this. These people are the norm, people like her are legion. The conservatives who still hold onto some vestige of the exclusivity of the faith after the reforms are a tiny minority. They are powerful because they are active, but one thing i dislike about the conservative take is that it presupposes these people didn´t somehow get the messaging right and really I think the stronger argument is that they did get it right but the messaging was diabolical. I´ll stop now.
She was open to all that I shared and the gentle criticism of her point of view. Anyway, it was a beautiful evening. She sat on a wooden bench on the porch of the church and I sat facing her on the stone floor of the porch with my back against a wooden strut and food on the ground. The sun set over the delapidated cemetery and the sweltering heat of the day had done its work to make way for the warm summer nights I love, and loved in chicago, and find hard to come by in germany.
But the connection between the two stories is another bizarre food delivery. The woman was expecting me. A man who had driven by and stopped to talk to me the two previous days had come by that evening with eggs and salmon for me. He told her I would be staying there that evening and to give the food to me.
I hate to give the impression that I give rosaries for renumeration as I dont want renumeration for them. Nor for my singing either, but I guess I do do that sometimes when I am desperate for food or money. I was hungry and was hoping she would offer me something to eat. I tell her I am going to go to the next town to look for food. THen she tells me the story of the man coming, describing me and and telling her to give me the food. She suggests we share as she had bread and soup packets. She had a nozzle to burn petrol and found a can of gas sitting on the porch presumably for pilgrims. She boiled water for the soup as we began to feast.
Its these moments of rare beaty of chance meeting and making the most out of nothing that make walking the camino also being a missionary along the camino so wonderful. I had an egg, salmon on top of a hot dog bun, and a cup of warm vegetable soup out of a packet. She had the same. It felt strangely glamourous and for me it was. I never get salmon. Adding to the mystery was that a strange man had brought the food for me before I ever arrived. The meal was crude and the setting couldnt be more austerely beautiful, the cemetery couldnt have been more verdantly peaceful, and the encounter itself was marked with generous honesty and sweet earnestness.
For me evenings like this give at least some grounds for why this mission makes sense. God loves this soul, she has been led astray. At least at the end of this evening shes heard someone who she found credible defend the faith and offer an alternative to her point of view, she has a rosary, and a guide for how to pray it, and its been personally commended to her, she know has heard a few beautiful gregorian chants. She knows buddhism and christianity differ as to whether God can be properly described as being personal, and a host of other things. Some plant seeds, some water, others harvest. But at least I felt like a lot of good could follow from the meeting, especially if she prays the rosary I made for her. Most of what I do, I never see if it blossoms, and given the soil its unlikely it will.
In any case, getting my dinner delivered to me two nights in a row was a camino first. The third night, the night on which I wrote this post, I didnt find dinner. But there´s a wonderful feeling living on the extremeties, living in need and living in vagrancy and encountering others in the same situation. She apparently cant afford the normal lodging to do the whole walk so she´s sleeping in chapels like I am. I was surprised with what little food she had. We both ended up camplng in our tents as an old lady came to tend to a grave and warned us not to disrespect the chapel by sleeping in there.
It was interesting she tried to criticize the tourist pilgrims as so many pilgrims try to. WHy? I ask her. We are getting the best possible adventure, we are getting the most grace and blessing. She concedes. Its the blessing and beauty of poverty, really the message and reality of Bethlehem. Trying to make the most of whatever is there to be used, to be eaten, to make shelter, and the miracle of the chance encounters one finds on this harrowing and bedazling frontier. Poverty enlivens gratitude, and want forges solidarity, and both of these things seem to reinvigorate time itself and time shared together with those in the same situation, in a foreign land, on the margins, wandering toward our lofty destination. But this time, this transfigured sort of time, where everything is a mix of chance wraught by brute necessity, and nothing is repeated, like in Bethlehem, for the Kings and Shepherds, this time and shared time is the wealth of the pilgrim, a time that is the anticipation of living in the fullness of time to which we are all called.
Brother…..God bless you….God bless your words put in writing…..God bless the path under your feet….🦶
🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼