Peregrina and Psalm 39
By the Rev. Andrew C. Mead, OBE, DD
She prays her way along and has a keen sense of God’s immediate providence every step of the way. At the same time, she has a clear destination for the end of each day, as well as for the pilgrimage’s completion.
Except for regular two-mile constitutionals around our neighborhood in Narragansett, Rhode Island, I am not much of a walker. I have some foot issues but, more significantly, lack the resolve for long treks. However, my wife, Nancy, is what I call an epic walker. Since 2000, she has walked over 500 miles, each venture taking between 40 and 45 days to walk with a regular companion. She has walked across the north of Spain on the famous Camino, from the Pyrenees to Santiago de Compostela, twice; up the Ruta de la Plata near the Portuguese border to Compostela; around the southern Moorish section of Spain; across the bottom of France on the extension of the Camino; from Canterbury to Besancon on the Via Francigena; continuing from Besancon through the Alps to Milan; finishing the Via Francigena from Milan to Rome. She walked from Rome to Ravenna and in two more great walks went down the Italian peninsula along the Adriatic coast to the heel of the boot. Then around Sicily, including climbs up Mounts Etna and Stromboli. Oh! And smaller walks such as coast-to-coast in Britain near Hadrian’s Wall; up Ben Nevis in Scotland and Croagh Patrick in Ireland; the Cotswold Way and from London to Canterbury in England. As her husband and admirer, I know a lot about pilgrimage from Nancy, whom I call Peregrina.
Since Nancy is my best friend, believe me when I say her hiking absences made for a quiet rectory. Her pilgrimages left me in a situation which, after initial self-pity, I grew to appreciate and even enjoy, especially since retiring; and the advent of iPhones made an enormous difference.
Nancy takes weeks to prepare her pack which cannot weigh more than twenty pounds, including her water camel. As she walks, she mails things home, getting lighter as she goes. She stays in simple refugios with many other pilgrims, occasionally treating herself to a regular parador. Her selection of shoes and walking sticks is crucial. She takes a book and tears off the completed chapters. She knows how to eat and drink simply what is needed to keep going. Pilgrims keep track of one another – which is why those well-known medieval European routes provide safety. She knows how to walk with a blister and keep going, rain or shine, mud or dust, using a needle and thread and duct tape on her feet. She prays her way along and has a keen sense of God’s immediate providence every step of the way. At the same time, she has a clear destination for the end of each day as well as for the pilgrimage’s completion. More than once a local farmer or village mayor or shepherd (one named Jesús) came to the rescue when she got lost. She kept a journal the first time she walked to Santiago entitled Foot-Notes.
Twenty-two years on, having undergone a hip replacement just as COVID arrived, Nancy now leads shorter walks, mostly to promote the Anglican Pilgrim Centre in Santiago, a project of the Bishop of the Spanish Episcopal Church.
Nancy has a t-shirt with a saying attributed to St. Augustine, Solvitur ambulando, i.e., “It is solved by walking.” Yes, it is solved by walking. The Apostle Paul in his letter to the Galatians, writes that we are to walk by the Spirit, and pilgrimages have many things to teach us about how to walk that way.
Psalm 39 begins, as many of us do, with wanting to know “my end and the number of my days.” The psalmist is in what Nancy calls, “The Land of What If.” In this Land of What If, which can be a prison of worry, we look both to the past with regret and to the future with anxiety, never getting around to living now. A pilgrim is less likely to go to The Land of What If, because the pilgrim must attend to what is before her, literally to watch her step, to stop, look, and listen. Destinations for each day and the end animate the pilgrim thinking with a spirit of “Why worry when you can pray?” It is notable that the first glimpse pilgrims get of Santiago’s cathedral is from Monte de Gozo, the Mount of Joy.
The psalmist comes to see the futility of going to The Land of What If. The Lord declines to show the details of the future, as the psalmist asks at the beginning, because God knows such knowledge would destroy our capacity to enjoy the present.
During Nancy’s first pilgrimage in 2000, I learned that our son felt called to the priesthood. There were no iPhones then so I had to wait a week to tell her, until our Friday phone appointment, when we had a joyful cry. That year was momentous all around, as our daughter was also to be married in the fall.
“I am a stranger with you and a wayfarer, as all my forebears were,” concludes the psalmist. In the end he asks the Lord in words I much prefer in the Coverdale version: “O spare me a little, that I may recover my strength, before I go hence and be no more seen.” Yes, he “will make good his right to be a pilgrim.” In the words of John Henry Newman’s lovely hymn, Lead, Kindly Light: “Keep Thou my feet. I do not wish to see the distant scene. One step enough for me.” That is the nature of our calling, a long distance walk into Christ, discovering that his way, which involves the cross, is the way of life and peace.
Even on my two-mile constitutionals, I’ve learned that a great deal is solved by walking. As they advise when you have a charley horse, walk it off.
The Rev. Andrew Craig Mead, OBE, DD, is an honorary alumnus and honorary trustee of Nashotah House. Ordained in 1971, Fr. Mead served as an assistant priest in England, Connecticut, and Boston from 1971 to 1978. From 1978 to 1985, he was a rector in Rosemont, Pennsylvania; from 1985-1996 in Boston; and at St. Thomas Church in New York City, 1996-2014, when he and his wife Nancy retired to Narragansett, Rhode Island. They have a daughter and a son who is also a priest, and four grandchildren. The preceding Lenten reflection is from the readings for Lent, Psalm 39; Numbers 13:17-27; and Luke 13:18-21.