Thursday, May 19, 2011

A Little Excitement: Four weeks from today...

Four weeks from today, I'll be walking through the alpine meadows of the French Pyrenees with my pack, my fellow pilgrims, and nearly 500 miles of Camino in front of me. Mom and Dad leave in just about three weeks. I can finally say that I'm starting to get excited. Mom seems pretty gung-ho. Dad, I'm not still sure about. It's really rather entertaining: he still occasionally makes noise about just renting a car and being the "chase vehicle" for us walkers. Mom can usually silence that nonsense pretty quickly with one of her patented "Ray Woman Death Stares."

We've been keeping up with the walking, though the folks are able to get in more mileage than I am - they are walking at home during the week and have a "test run" planned for next week. They're going to hike from their house to a hotel 22 miles or so away, spend the night, and then return the following day. They asked me if I wanted to join them. I declined. That was perhaps a poor decision on my part, but truthfully, taking up my entire weekend to do a dry run was not appealing. I do still have to keep up with regular life around here, and the amount of walking we are doing eats up a lot of time as is.

I find myself wondering if that's an allegory for life. Are we often afraid to commit to do things we know we probably should because we are so concerned with keeping up with the other less important things that seem imperative to us? I don't particularly think I'm not committed to being ready for this pilgrimage, and I don't think that not going on a "test run" makes me uncommitted or a bad person, but I do have a healthy dose of built-in Church of Christ guilt that doesn't need much encouragement.

I suppose if I wanted to take the high road, I was rationalize this by saying that I had faith that God would make up for any of my shortcomings on the Camino. Even I can't be that patronizing without getting a little sick at my stomach, so let's call it what it is: I didn't want to give up an entire weekend to walk, at this point. I will deal with the consequences.

Nonetheless, we are still walking. Last weekend was short, because I had to go out of town for work, and the folks had a fundraising dinner to attend (shameless plug: if you haven't heard about the Campaign for Pepperdine, click here: http://www.pepperdine.edu/pr/stories/2011/may/pepperdine-launches-campaign-changing-lives.htm).

The week before that we did 18 miles. I was in pretty good shape until we stopped at the halfway point for a break. Once we got moving again, it got hard. Miles 15 and 16 were the hardest, but at our usual stop before we went up the big hill (we were hiking Sycamore Canyon), I adjusted my pack. Lo and behold, the last two miles were much easier. Turns out that a little thing like your pack being too loose and shifting all over makes a BIG difference. Lesson learned.

With four weeks to go, I'm dialing back the "training" a bit. I still walk with a pack at lunch, but I am not killing myself to run and do my elliptical at home every night. Maybe I should not be, but I'm a bit afraid of doing something stupid and injuring myself at this point.

I've also begun compiling lists of things I need to do before departing for a month. It's a little more involved than being gone for just a week or two: Bills have to be set up on auto pay. Plans have to be made for battery storage for the older cars, arrangements for rent checks need to be handled, copies of passports, IDs, credit cards, etc, compiling the list of items to buy both here and there. It will all happen, but with the excitement comes a little bit of trepidation at times.

I am beginning to work through some of the materials that have been provided to me by some gracious friends, Andy Wall and Jack Williamson, who are also ministers at my church, and by a colleague (if I can be so presumptuous as to use the term), Pepperdine Provost Darryl Tippens. Hopefully this will help prepare me mentally and spiritually for the journey.

I find myself almost yearning for the opportunity to take a break from my routine and have nothing to do but walk, watch the rolling hills of Northern Spain move slowly by, and listen to what God has to say. I'd encourage you, even if you can't take a month, to find an opportunity to do the same.




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