camino — but some of us were also, clearly, on The Way.
And the road was growing difficult. Everything unnecessary had to be jettisoned. Everything that hindered, that held back, that weighed down and encumbered-it all had to go.
Entering Santiago, I observed triumphant pilgrims walking or dragging themselves into the city with flaccid packs, a few carrying only what they had stood up in that morning: a hat, a stick, a bottle of water stuck in a pocket. Everything else had been cast aside in order to complete the journey.
The destination was important, to be sure; the path was not an aimless wandering through the wilds of Spain, after all. Santiago had long gleamed like a city of gold in our imaginations, and that image of safety, rest, and refreshment exerted a mighty pull. But it was the journey itself, the physical act of going, that transformed the pilgrims. For if there was to be any transformation in the spiritual orientation of the pilgrim’s soul, that change would take place not on arrival as if by magic, but in the long, hard work of The Way.
