Psalm 118:24
My wife and I recently returned from our seventh excursion on the Camino de Santiago (or the Chemin de St. Jacques as it is called in France). We have become quite familiar with the spiritual exercise that this pilgrimage walk affords and know more than ever how to participate internally with the type of incarnational prayer that walking 20-25 km each day inspires. We have also become much more accepting of the many states of souls that such a discipline produces in us. If nothing else the Camino is a profound school where one learns how to walk with equanimity through the desolations and consolations of life.
Like an ever-changing weather system, each day on the Camino features very marked periods of darkness and light—times of wonderful freedom and well-being as well as times of desolation when you just want to quit and go home. Everything seems amplified under the microscope of solitude and silence. “I’m tired…it’s getting too hot….not another hill….not another blister …my back is sore…my feet are sore…I hardly slept last night…how much longer?” The “noon-day devil” shows up in both the literal and figurative heat of the day. It takes the wind out of your sail. You wonder why you ever took this on in the first place.
But there are also many consolations in a day that are just as unpredictable and fleeting. A sudden cool breeze, the shade of a tree you walk under, the taste of grapes you’ve picked from a vineyard along the path, the fresh smells of an early dawn, the precious silence where the only sounds you hear are those of your own footsteps, and the well-being you feel throughout your body as, climbing many steep hills in the course of a day, your heart and lungs are fully exercised.
And then there are the many unexpected thoughts and visions that come to you with a rare quality of spiritual enthusiasm, joy and hope about your life and future. There are also those fresh gusts of courage that, for no explicable reason, suddenly show up as a spring in your step in spite of having walked wearily for the past 5 kms. And most significant are those wonderful and unexpected waves of inner freedom that grace you as a gentle infusion from God—what Ignatius of Loyola calls “consolations without cause.”
The main thing these quickly changing spirits teach you is the temporary nature of both consolations and desolations. How they suddenly show up in your day and, unless you fixate on them, they just as quickly disappear. To accept them all rather than chase the one and try to avoid the other, I think, is part of the art of walking our life pilgrimages well.
Through physical pilgrimage I have learned that it is not the hardship of the road that discourages me as much as the narrative I tell myself about those hardships. Our negative inner dialogue can exhaust our spirits much more than the outside stresses of our day do. Instead of digging deep for the courage to persevere, we find ourselves resentfully dreaming of alternatives to the life we are living. And we end up defeating ourselves by overly fixating on our discontent rather than simply accepting the desolations of a day as a normal part of life.
Jesus taught us that each day will have trouble of its own (Mt. 6:34). Who knows what today will bring—what weather we might be given, how many hills we might face, what people will unexpectedly cross our paths, or how our bodies and spirits will hold up to the demands ahead of us? Whatever the day brings, Psalm 118 reminds us that “this is the day that the Lord has made”. And it is in this day, not in the day we might prefer, that we are called to rejoice and be glad.
Abbot John Chapman
Rob Des Cotes
Imago Dei Christian Communities
FOR GROUP DISCUSSION:
- Which response are you more prone to resort to when you face a desolation: digging deep for the courage to persevere, or spending time dreaming of alternatives to the trials you face?
- Consider Abbot John Chapman’s comment that “we refuse God’s will if we are constantly dissatisfied with what we get from Him.” How can you more fully embrace “the day the Lord has made” and learn to rejoice and be glad in all that it entails?
- How does the way you speak to yourself about your desolations make them more difficult to bear? Instead of compounding your desolations with this additional layer, how might you better approach the hardships you face in terms of the inner dialogue they inspire in you?
FOR PRAYER: Take opportunity one day this week to keep a journal of every consolation or desolation that you experience. Note the ones that have identifiable causes, but especially note the ones that come to you “without cause.” In your prayer, ask God to help you accept both desolations and consolations as a normal part of how He works each day in your life.