Camino de Santiago: Pilgrimage As a Journey of Transformation

Stage 20 – Sahagún to Mansillas de las Mulas

The Walk.

After Sahagún, I started to get excited for Leon. It’s not quite the end of the Meseta. But after Leon, the long stretches of walking without places to stop become less. There are also more opportunities to connect with others along the way. I find my thoughts begin to shift away from contemplating my interior self to contemplating my place within community.

But, not to get ahead of myself, I need to focus on the walk to Mansillas de las Mulas. From Sahagún, there are two routes you can take. What is listed in the guidebooks as the “alternative” route begins with a walk from Sahagún to El Burgo Ranero. When you get outside of Calzada de Coto, you need to walk down from the elevated road and follow the lower road to the left. If you stay on the elevated road and walk towards the right, you are on the traditional route – you are walking towards Calzadilla de los Hermanillos. We managed to miss the turn and ended up walking on the road to Calzadilla. Luckily, we saw a Camino arrow that said “El Burgo Ranero”. It took us to an agricultural road leading us back to the “alternative” route. This was good because we were staying in El Burgo Ranero for the night. As with life – it is good to know where you are going.

The walk along the alternative route follows the road. There are more places to stop – at least before El Burgo Ranero. Also, the walk for the next day – the walk from El Burgo Ranero to Mansilla de las Mulas – is a couple miles shorter. If you take the traditional route, the stop for the night is Calzadilla de los Hermanillos. The next day, you will walk almost 11 miles before your first stop in Reliegos. I think the traditional route takes you along an ancient Roman Road. I might try the Calzadilla path on my next walk through the Meseta.

The next day’s walk – to Mansilla de las Mulas is a quiet walk. There are no services until Reliegos, although there are a couple of pilgrim rest areas. Reliegos is a nice stop. Both times I stopped at the Catina de Teddy – I had pastry and coffee. I think they also serve lunch. If Catina de Teddy is busy, there is a second cafe a little farther down the road.

By the time you get to Reliegos, you will be ready for a rest. Although Mansilla de las Mulas is only 4 miles farther, you will enjoy the walk more after a coffee and a pastry.

Mansillas de las Mulas was our stop for the night – we were excited to be only one day away from Leon.

We go to God together.

I walk the Camino because it gives me the time I need to create space within my heart to feel the presence of God. It is a gentle process.

I spend the day with God looking for the places where I see God in my life and my relationships. I seem to be focused on me and my experiences of God. I am aware that I am missing the connection between God and community. I think that sometimes I forget that the faith journey is something we share with other people.

On this day’s walk, I let my thoughts shift to how important faith is to the community. I let myself anticipate arriving in Leon, with its beautiful Cathedral and the energy that comes from other pilgrims joining the Camino.  From Leon to Sarria, the feeling of community among walkers gains in strength.  This feeling reminds me that spiritual growth – salvation if I may – is not something we do alone.  We go to God together, or not at all.

 I have read that the original creation story of Israel was Exodus – told mainly through the poem of the Song of the Sea.¹ In Song of the Sea, the dwelling place of God is Mt. Sinai.² God gathers his people to the place where God dwells.

In your love you led the people you redeemed;
in your strength you guided them to your holy dwelling.³

At the time of Second Isaiah, God’s dwelling place has shifted – from Mt. Sinai to Mt. Zion.  The prophet Second Isaiah reaches back to the story of Exodus to encourage the people to return to the place where God dwells.⁴ He must encourage them to leave Babylon, travel through the wilderness of the Syrian desert, and believe that they can be re-created into God’s people. He retells the story of Exodus to remind the people of the power of God to act in a saving way, and to promise that God would deliver them again to Zion and restore them to a new creation – to a new, re-envisioned, relationship with God.⁵

I am the Lord, your Holy One,
            the creator of Israel, your King.
Thus says the Lord,
            who opens a way in the sea,
            a path in the mighty waters,
Who leads out chariots and horsemen,
            a powerful army,
Till they lie prostrate together, never to rise,
            snuffed out, quench like a wick.
Remember not the events of the past,
            the things of long ago consider not;
See, I am doing something new!
            Now it springs forth , do you not perceive it?
In the wilderness I make a way,       
        in the wasteland, rivers.

Second Isaiah reminds the people of his victory over Egypt, where horse and chariot were cast into the sea.⁷ But the prophet’s purpose is to tell the people that God was calling them back to Mt. Zion, in the land of Judah, to again become community in a new and transformative way.⁸

I always look for the places where God creates something new.  Walter Brueggemann, in Cadences of Home, suggests that we should not accept the status quo or live in despair when we encounter spaces where God seems absent. We should, instead, respond with “fresh, imaginative theological work.”⁹ Brueggemann believes that we should recover the old traditions of faith and retell them in a way that meets the challenges of our time.¹⁰ This is what Second Isaiah does when he reimagines the story of Exodus to encourage the exiles in Babylon to return to Judah and become God’s people again.

This is how I read the New Testament. I see in the story of Jesus a reimagining of the old stories of faith. It gives me a way to speak to the challenges of the world that I live in today.  Working with the ideas of a historical theologian, N.T. Wright, I see Jesus entering Jerusalem on Palm Sunday to embody God’s return to power. I see Jesus bringing God’s saving action in Exodus to life by putting into motion God’s final victory over evil.¹¹ I see Jesus’ resurrection as fulfilling the promise of God’s kingdom. I see God’s presence in the resurrected Christ.

When I see how God is present in the resurrected Christ, I see how we are called to live as part of the body of Christ. I call forth the images of God calling his people to live where he dwells, as he did in the stories of Exodus and Second Isaiah.

Saint Paul:

So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the holy ones and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the capstone.  Through him the whole structure is held together and grows into a temple sacred in the Lord, in him you also are being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.¹²

What does it mean to me to find my salvation through the relationship I share with others through Christ? Demetrius Dumm, O.S.B., in Cherish Christ Above All, describes this relationship as learning to allow the love of Christ to flow through you for the benefit of others.  It is more than just imitating Jesus’ love.  It is about becoming one with Christ to receive God’s love and to make that love available to others.¹³

It reminds me of my walk in the beech forest outside of Roncesvalles.  I was filled with the feeling of being rooted in God, like the trees were rooted in the Earth.  Central to the feeling of God that I experienced on that walk was the feeling of wanting to be the Earth for others.  Allowing myself to be steeped in the feeling of God’s love made me want to reflect that love to others. 

Demetrius Dumm instructs that allowing the love of Christ to flow through us – instead of trying to imitate Christ – is the healthy approach to loving others.  He suggests that bringing the love of Christ to others does not require a person to sacrifice who they are as individuals.  The goal is not to make everyone “conform” to a community ideal.  Instead, loving as Christ loved means letting each member of the community discover and develop their own unique gifts for the benefit of everyone.¹⁴ It also means each member must be able to support the community without losing their own sense of identity or sacrificing their own distinctive personal qualities.

The loving of Christ is thus made very personal and delightfully varied as it is refracted through the prism of a community of strong and distinctive personalities.¹⁵

Saint Paul, in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, describes the characteristics of this type of love.  He describes this love as patient and kind.  He states that it is not jealous, not arrogant, not rude, and not something that broods over its own injuries.  It rejoices with the truth.  It hopes and it endures.  Demetrius Dumm believes that these everyday virtues – patience, kindness, sensitivity, humility, tolerance, forgiveness, and trust – create community more effectively than initial feelings of affinity or forced community gatherings.

To love as a mere human being is wonderful, but to have that loving enhanced by blending it with the loving of Christ is to give it a power for good and for freedom that goes beyond human possibilities.¹⁶

Walking the Camino can feel like my own journey.  It is easy to forget that we do not go to God alone – we go together.  I think that is what it means to be called to dwell where God lives.  To be one body in Christ, and live as part of each other.

For as in one body we have many parts, and all the parts do not have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ and individually parts of one another.¹⁷

I think we all have an obligation to create a world that reflects the love of God. To live where God dwells. But, learning to do that, I must let the love of Christ flow through me.  And I must practice the virtues that are embodied in that love – patience, kindness, sensitivity, humility, tolerance, forgiveness, and trust.  I also return to the idea that the love of Christ is a radical hope in the Kingdom of God.  I choose to believe in a world where all people are valued for who they are and seen as important parts of the whole.  We go to God together, or not at all.

---

---

1. Exodus, Chapter 15. ↩︎
2. Bryan D. Estelle, Echoes of Exodus : Tracing a Biblical Motif (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press 2018), 93. ↩︎
3. Exodus 15:13 (NABRE). ↩︎
4. Estelle, 151. ↩︎
5. See Estelle, 165-167. ↩︎
6. Isaiah 43:15-19 (NABRE). ↩︎
7. See Exodus 15:21. ↩︎
8. Estelle, 165. ↩︎
9. Walter Brueggemann, Cadences of Home: Preaching Among Exiles (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997),116 (emphasis in original). ↩︎
10. Ibid. ↩︎
11. N.T. Wright, Michael F. Bird, The New Testament in Its World: An Introduction to the History, Literature, and Theology of the First Christians (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2019), 234. ↩︎
12. Ephesians 2:19-22 (NABRE). ↩︎
13. Demetrius Dumm, OSB, Cherish Christ Above All: The Bible in the Rule of Benedict (Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1996), 61. ↩︎
14. Dumm, 64. ↩︎
15. Dumm, 65. ↩︎
16. Ibid. ↩︎
17. Romans 12:4-5 (NABRE). ↩︎