Turning Aside

It was too soon to take a rest, really.

Last night, I danced as 2024 became 2025. The changing of the year always feels a bit fraught. So this is Christmas. What have you done?

But this year it doesn’t. What have you done? At least this - sold nearly everything—car, clothes, furniture. At least this - swallowed my pride and sent an email asking for leave from the board that I served on in which we approved people’s leave. At least this - said, “This isn’t working.” At least this - left a church and a job and a house. At least this - cooked and chopped for three months on a Scottish island. At least this - walked 225 miles across Spain.

—-

On the fourth or fifth day of the Camino, I took a rest day. Too soon, people might say. Too soon, I told myself. But I was jet lagged and tired. I had walked from Pamplona to the small town of Puente la Reina. It was a hard walk, especially a rocky downhill that had felt miserable. It was only seventy that day, but the walk seemed to never end. I got to the hostel, delighted to be there, grumpy that I hadn’t made the side trip to an octagonal church I wanted to visit, Santa Maria de Eunate.

I saw a flyer on a board in the hostel about a guided tour. I argued with myself about it — why walk extra? The taxis weren’t running for some reason. I would lose the people I was walking with on my stage on the Camino. I was stopping too soon, I thought, and this, like everything, felt like A Metaphor for Something Else.

A side quest, someone said. On your rest day, you’re walking five extra miles? someone else joked. It was hot, and I’d gotten a rash on my legs, maybe from heat, maybe from the grasses in the field. I will be behind, I told myself, if I see this church that was one of the things I wanted most to see on the Camino. I laughed. What on earth is behind?

I walked and I walked, and there it was. Maria Teresa (“Call me Maite,” she said), the guide from the flyer, met me. She was supposed to meet a French guidebook author for lunch, but since she was doing a tour, why didn’t the guidebook author join us? “Three Maries,” she said, after we realized all of us had a Marie or Maria in our names.

—-

No one quite knows who built the octagonal church at Eunate. It may have been a family chapel. It may have been built by the Knights Templar. It bears a resemblance to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. I don’t remember, honestly, much of what she said, just looking up in awe. At the windows, at the golden stone, at the arches outside, the etchings on the stone. Each symbol for a different stonemason who wanted credit for their work. I don’t remember, honestly, much of what she said, but the passion she said it with, the coolness of the church that felt like sanctuary from the heat.

My phone died a few moments before Maria Teresa asked if the guidebook author would sing a song, a medieval song, an ode to Mary. In the middle of the dome in the cool stone building, she began to sing.

---

I am grateful my phone died, that I have no video. I’ll remember Maite, tears in her eyes, thanking Anne Marie, thanking me. Hugging Anne Marie, hugging me.

“I didn’t do anything, I told her, “except show up.”

I don’t remember much of what she said, but I remember that for my paid tour, she would not let me pay.

Oh no, she said. You saw the flyer. You messaged me. You waited a day and walked to come to see this place. If you hadn’t, we wouldn’t have been here to hear this song.

“Thank you,” I said. “God bless you,” I said. “Thank you,” she said. “Buen Camino.”

—-

One of my favorite phrases in Scripture comes from the book of Exodus. Moses, in between places, countries, allegiances, families. He has burned his goodwill with the Egyptians and with the children of Israel. Moses finds himself on a mountain, wandering.

Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight and see why the bush is not burned up.” When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.”

—-

I have been well trained to achieve, to set goals, to make resolutions. To succeed, to help, to improve, to grow, to serve.

So this is Christmas. What have you done?

This is what - something glimmered at the corner of my eye. By some grace, I didn’t care about being behind. There is no behind. By some grace I turned aside.