Pilgrimage: Fiddling on the Camino

Pope Francis at Mass September 25, 2016

I recently returned from a pilgrimage to Italy.  I travelled with a group of people from all across Canada, Halifax, Victoria, Whitehorse, Winnipeg and quite a few other places.  There are many dimensions of a pilgrimage.  There is the physical movement, the places, the destinations, rubbing shoulders with strangers and oases of prayer and quiet. 


Our journey began in Rome and ended in Venice.  In a short period of time, just over a week, we touched many places.  But I learned that part of the important dynamic when travelling as a group is how we relate.  It began like many long trips -- not everybody found the bus at the airport in Rome.  By the third day when we were in Assisi change began to happen.  When each of us stood to share our reasons for going on the pilgrimage, our mutual status as strangers began to evaporate.  As the days and the journey continued we began to look out for one another and to bond.  For me, this seemed like our common lesson, whatever our own graces from God may have been.  We are on the bus together. 

Crypt chapel in St. Mark's in Venice

I was pleasantly surprised to find a disc by Oliver Schroer essentially documenting his journey along the most traditional of pilgrimage routes that remains very active today, the Camino, leading to the shrine of St. James, Santiago de Compostela in Spain.  Schroer, who died in 2008 at the age of only 52, was a musician with fairly diverse musical involvements largely in the folk and traditional worlds.  He appears, for example, on a disc of traditional Irish tunes recorded by Kate Crossan that is in my collection. 

On this disc he recorded what certainly seem like impromptu performances in the churches he visited along the route.  His website is still current and includes a journal of this part of his life.  The pieces lend themselves to contemplation but are also quite alive.  It is a privilege to be the beneficiary of his sharing himself in this way. 

The disc was made only four years before he died.  The pilgrimage as an invitation to walk together not only through life . . . bu through it to what God shall reveal . . . the pilgrimage is what we are on now, to the life that is to come.