My favorite Camino book: "To the Field Of Stars: A Pilgrim's Journey to Santiago de Compostela" by Msgr. Kevin Codd, an American Catholic priest. I've read and reread it before, during and after walking the Camino. Brilliantly written it captures the essence of the Camino, the physical and the spiritual as the author takes you with him on the journey. You don't have to be a Catholic to relate to it, nor even particularly spiritual (but it might enhance your enjoyment of the book if you are at least somewhat so).
This post has been edited to add an exerpt included below from the book's introduction. The entire book lives up to the draw of this introduction.
“It may well come to pass that at a certain point in the course of a life that a person hears of stars dancing in a field at night. It is possible that such a story would be immediately dismissed as the stuff of childish fantasy or a piece of old wives’ tale not to be taken seriously in these modern times … It could also be that the image of stars coming low to the earth and performing a joyful circle dance in the dead of night might nevertheless capture a person’s imagination even if such an image might seem not to belong to the world of facts and history and our modern understanding of what transpires in the course of real life.
I am about to share here a story of stars at dance. May I advise you to exercise a modicum of caution in attending to what follows, for the story of stars dancing over a field in a faraway land may so draw you away from the ordinary business of daily life that you find yourself, quite to your surprise, in a new world of unexpected adventures and remarkable people and some very profound mysteries. If this should happen to you, if the story of stars playing above the dusty bones of an old saint should capture you in a strange field of gravity, it may well draw you out of your house, down the street, and out of town. And if you leave home to see these stars cavort for yourself it will surely change you. You will come to see that which was previously unseen. You will witness miracles. You will, in the end, find yourself coming to know what is most true about these brief lives we have been given to live out on this tender earth.
… if you have no interest in adventures of the spirit, or if you have no desire to ramble on foot across a fair piece of this earth’s lovely skin, then the story I am about to tell will not matter to you. If, on the other hand, the very thought of seeing stars dance piques your curiosity at some deep level of your soul, then pay attention to what follows, for the walk to the Field of Stars, to Santiago de Compostela, is a journey that has the power to change lives forever.”
Field of Stars
Msgr. Kevin Codd
