is this why we feel called?

[David]

Hi all - was just sent this .. not too sure about the imagery but, to me (my own personal opinion) this seems to rather sum up the call to undertake a spiritual pilgrimage to Santiago - that call; not knowing why it comes, why one must go, how one can go, if one should go ..... that call .....

 

[Mark Lee]

Like I have posted before, I did not know the Camino existed until about two years ago, and once I heard of it (a PBS travel show) I knew I had to do it. I cannot explain it.

The show was not even totally about the Camino. It was just part of that particular episode.

 

[Monk Moses]

Like I have posted before, I did not know the Camino existed until about two years ago, and once I heard of it (a PBS travel show) I knew I had to do it. I cannot explain it.

The show was not even totally about the Camino. It was just part of that particular episode.

In 1978 I saw a PBS documentary about the Camino and have wanted to do it since then. Somehow other things kept getting in the way, but the call has always been there. I either had time but no money, or money but no time. My grandfather passed away a few years ago and left me some money with the intention that I finally make the Camino, so God willing I head out of SJPdP on the 9th of September.

 

[KinkyOne]

It took me 9 years from knowing that somewhere in Spain there's such a thing to the moment of going on my first (not-finished) Camino. Well, now it is what it is
Hooked, mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, and I like it...

Ultreia!

 

[mspath]

Be sure to read this earlier Forum thread on inspiration for walking the camino.

In graduate school 50 years ago I attended courses by the great medieval art/architecture historian Meyer Schapiro. Several erudite lectures focused on the architecture along the Camino Frances, not only great monuments but also simple vernacular buildings. He stressed the importance of carved shells as the major iconic motif for identifying all related to Saint James as well as the immense social impact of the camino path across northern Spain; the path became the 'main street' with ‘burgos de francos’ or independent neighborhoods settled by former pilgrims nearby and, thus, the towns developed. ... Bingo I was hooked and decided that someday I would walk that path myself. Forty years later I did; fifty year later I still am.

Margaret Meredith

 

[Susan hopes]

Margaret, my experience mirrors yours; I attended a lecture at Loyola U in Chicago given by John Brierly in 1999 or 2000. I've been planning my camino ever since. I leave for London on June 3, and hope to begin walking on June 6 or 7.

 

[David]

Be sure to read this earlier Forum thread on inspiration for walking the camino.

In graduate school 50 years ago I attended courses by the great medieval art/architecture historian Meyer Schapiro. Several erudite lectures focused on the architecture along the Camino Frances, not only great monuments but also simple vernacular buildings. He stressed the importance of carved shells as the major iconic motif for identifying all related to Saint James as well as the immense social impact of the camino path across northern Spain; the path became the 'main street' with ‘burgos de francos’ or independent neighborhoods settled by former pilgrims nearby and, thus, the towns developed. ... Bingo I was hooked and decided that someday I would walk that path myself. Forty years later I did; fifty year later I still am.

Margaret Meredith

"with ‘burgos de francos’ or independent neighborhoods settled by former pilgrims nearby and, thus, the towns developed. "

So, us like them .. Camino addicts - nothing changes ....

 

[wayfarer]

National Geographic some twenty years ago eventualy led me to the Camino in 2012, once I read about it, it was always in my mind. Its a beautiful addiction.

 

[bystander]

My inspiration or drive to do this comes from a master at my first boarding school in the south of Hampshire way back in the summer of 1958 , so nigh on 60 years ago.
He, at that stage, was himself about my present age.
One of his hobbies here in the south of England had been taking brass rubbings from church memorials and some of these he had hanging around his classroom.
Some of the rubbings had the scallop shell symbol on them and he explained the significance of them to us.
He, himself, had undertaken part with his disabled brother (lost a leg in the trenches in WW1) of the camino and had crossed the Pyrenees in the late 1910s or very early 1920s.
I don't know how far they went or if they completed the journey to SdC.
However that explanation of the shell symbol was enough to light this very long slow-burning fuse!
Lastly one my distant remote ancestors, the Black Douglas, died in Spain as part of the La Reconquista Espanola fighting the Moors in the cause of Santiago Matamores!