Learning to Walk in the Moment
Before we begin, we contemplate our walk on the Camino. Most people that walk the Camino have daily walking goals. Me included. But for this pilgrimage, our walk will be focused on the journey and the goal of spiritual transformation. To do that, we need to keep our thoughts in the moment and not the destination. Our goal is to experience God, and say “yes” to that experience. If we do not have enough time to walk the full day, we will call a taxicab.
Understanding the spiritual practice of receiving the day is a good complement to a pilgrimage focused on the journey and the goal of spiritual transformation. Receiving the day and celebrating each day as a gift are consistent with the spiritual practice of mindfulness. Thich Nhat Hanh begins his book, Peace is Every Step, by saying:
“Every morning, when we wake up, we have twenty-four brand-new hours to live. What a precious gift! We have the capacity to live in a way that these twenty-four hours will bring peace, joy, and happiness to ourselves and others.”[1]
Dorothy C. Bass, in her book Receiving the Day: Christian Practices for Opening the Gift of Time, says that the spiritual practice of receiving the day is also about honoring today:
“The day in question, we should note, is not just any day [ ]. It is this day. Now. Too often, this is the very one that escapes our attention, the day whose gifts we scorn. The bitter aftertaste of yesterday . . . keeps us from tasting the day that is now on our tongue [ ]. And anxiety about tomorrow, even a tomorrow that may not come for years, gnaws away at the experience of today . . . .”[2]
Pilgrimage practiced in connection with honoring the gift of time allows us to experience God’s presence in each present moment. We are not focused on the sorrows of the past or dreams for a different future. We give thanks for this day.[3] We say “yes” to God in this moment.
Approaching each day as a gift from God also lets us experience our lives as part of creation. As we walk on the Camino, we see the beauty of the Earth. We see how creation is a gift from God, and that, as part of creation, our lives are also a gift from God.
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars that you have established;
what are human beings that you are mindful of them,
mortals that you care for them? (Psalm 8: 3-4 NRSV)
When we belong, we model the behavior of those we belong to. We belong to God as part of God’s creation. So, as we begin, let us ask: “How do we model the God of Creation? How do we bring the light of the God of Creation into this world?”
Further reading: https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html
[1] Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life (New York, NY: Bantam Books, 1991) 5.
[2] Dorothy Bass, Receiving the Day: Christian Practices for Opening the Gift of Time (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2020) 25 (emphasis in original).
[3] Bass, Receiving the Day, 25-26.
Pilgrimage: A Journey of Transformation 
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