Pastoral care on the Camino Frances

[Patrick Camino]

Ola peregrino's,
I am a Belgian student theology from 38 years old (third study). I walked the camino Frances last year in august/septembre (2015).
I'm writing a paper about pastoral care on the Camino Frances.
What sort of pastoral care did you experience?
In what places did you experience this?
Where there moments while walking and sharing with other pilgrims that you find pastoral (in any interpretation you want)?
Please tell me all you want!
I will add this in my paper.
If you want to mail me: patrick.am.pede[at]gmail.com

I will also go to Spain next week for 9 days to visit some parishes and people about this theme. Maybe some of you have a suggestion whom to speak with?

Thx,
Patrick

 

[Bogong]

Ola peregrino's,
I am a Belgian student theology from 38 years old (third study). I walked the camino Frances last year in august/septembre (2015).
I'm writing a paper about pastoral care on the Camino Frances.
What sort of pastoral care did you experience?
In what places did you experience this?
Where there moments while walking and sharing with other pilgrims that you find pastoral (in any interpretation you want)?
Please tell me all you want!
I will add this in my paper.
If you want to mail me: patrick.am.pede[at]gmail.com

I will also go to Spain next week for 9 days to visit some parishes and people about this theme. Maybe some of you have a suggestion whom to speak with?

Thx,
Patrick

Hola Patrick,

I walked at a time when there were relatively few other pilgrims. Despite their beliefs or lack thereof, the pastoral care I experienced was the support, love and kindness shown to me by other pilgrims of all races. The Korean couple who insisted on carrying my pack the last half k into Ponferrada when I was having a rough time of it. Being invited by two wonderful Catalan gentlemen to join them at restaurant meals, and helping me to find cheap but good accommodation on occasion outside the albergue network. Many examples. Also lovely locals with their cheerful greetings and encouragement on the way, and the gentleman who insisted on driving me back to the point where I had become lost outside Ponferrada, when he found me marching steadfastly quite a few k down the road to A Coruna. Lovely helpful people serving in the bars. Being able to share a meagre quantity of various snacks with those of one or two others in an albergue in Galicia when there was absolutely no food of any sort available in the village, and being given two oranges by the hospitalero to augment what we had for our evening meal (an apple and some nuts)

I hope in some small way I was able to reciprocate a bit.

The essence of pastoral care must surely be in recognising the church not so much as an institution but as the fellowship of believers and more broadly than this, simply as a fellowship of everyday men and women. It's epitomised in the Parable of the Good Samaritan.

De
colores

Bogong

 

[bsewall]

I am a chaplain and tomorrow I set out again on another Camino. So Patrick your post is very timely. Thank you.

As Bogong says, the vital pastoral care for me on the Camino comes from the meaningful encounters with those I meet along the way. The encounters always seem at first to be "chance", until the the experience settles in and I realize the Spirits were at work. And that is what I love about the Camino.

And, yes, I agree with Bogong that the Camino is "a fellowship of everyday men and women. It's epitomised in the Parable of the Good Samaritan."

Or to quote Ram Dass, "We are all just walking each other home." That is the essence of pastoral care on the Camino - and in life.

I tried to capture my feelings in a video:

.

 

[jmcarp]

...
I tried to capture my feelings in a video...

Beautiful! Walk with an open heart and the Camino becomes a "thin place."

 

[SabsP]

Hola Patrick,

I walked at a time when there were relatively few other pilgrims. Despite their beliefs or lack thereof, the pastoral care I experienced was the support, love and kindness shown to me by other pilgrims of all races. The Korean couple who insisted on carrying my pack the last half k into Ponferrada when I was having a rough time of it. Being invited by two wonderful Catalan gentlemen to join them at restaurant meals, and helping me to find cheap but good accommodation on occasion outside the albergue network. Many examples. Also lovely locals with their cheerful greetings and encouragement on the way, and the gentleman who insisted on driving me back to the point where I had become lost outside Ponferrada, when he found me marching steadfastly quite a few k down the road to A Coruna. Lovely helpful people serving in the bars. Being able to share a meagre quantity of various snacks with those of one or two others in an albergue in Galicia when there was absolutely no food of any sort available in the village, and being given two oranges by the hospitalero to augment what we had for our evening meal (an apple and some nuts)

I hope in some small way I was able to reciprocate a bit.

The essence of pastoral care must surely be in recognising the church not so much as an institution but as the fellowship of believers and more broadly than this, simply as a fellowship of everyday men and women. It's epitomised in the Parable of the Good Samaritan.

De
colores

Bogong

Thank you Bogong! My feelings exactly!!!


Good luck ...en veel sukses Patrick with your survey/ je onderzoek.

 

[VNwalking]

I am a chaplain and tomorrow I set out again on another Camino. So Patrick your post is very timely. Thank you.
As Bogong says, the vital pastoral care for me on the Camino comes from the meaningful encounters with those I meet along the way.

Hola, Patrick...
I couldn't say it better. The essence of chaplaincy on the Camino is human connection of all kinds: the heart to heart sharing amongst 'Camino Family' from a sometimes surprisingly open place; the care of a hospitalero when there is need; the service of so many others in so many forms. A lot of healing happens that way.
Not to mention what happens here on the forum. It's very much a virtual albergue.

I'll volunteer David for a good chat about all this (see his thread running right now about 1st aid on the Camino: <https://www.caminodesantiago.me/com...amino-some-thoughts.36906/page-2#post-386834>). And Rebekah at Peaceable Kingdom in Morotinos and Nate and Faith at Pilgrim House in Santiago.
All of these people do chaplaincy in a profoundly wonderful and usually very practical way.

I am a chaplain and tomorrow I set out again on another Camino. So Patrick your post is very timely. Thank you.

Maybe see you both out there? I join up with the Frances on the 26th in Burgos.

 

[David]

Patrick, hello. I have found that chaplaincy on Camino - or pastoral care really - is unstructured and informal ... that as with all chaplaincy listening and looking is more important than offering answers .. and it is that looking, that presence, of being, not doing ... that totally focusing on the person, that allows them to open up and to verbalise what they may not even have known that they were thinking and to start to heal .. it is, perhaps, like being a mirror, allowing the pilgrim to see themselves more clearly ... it is not unusual, when a pilgrim cries, to find that we ourselves are also crying ... and there can be a certain moment - not always - when touch can be a true healer, whether just a hand resting on a shoulder or a good hug.

Essentially all who have problems and sorrows feel unloved, unwanted, a child abandoned to a wilderness world .... a simple smile or sharing a meal or a cup of tea does much to reduce that alienation, isolation - and we all know this. Mother Teresa said that "Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat."

what I find quite amazing on Camino is that so many pilgrims reach out to others, in a way that would seem quite strange 'back home' - there is a lot of empathy on the Camino, so much kindness ... not always and everywhere of course!! - and there do not seem to be any "coincidences" - to me it seems that something else is going on that is far beyond random chance .. that other person who appears .. the helper .. the listener .. the sharer .. the jokester .. the one who comes into view who has had exactly the same sorrow and learned how to process it ... I think that it is because when we go on Camino we 'step through the door', step beyond our planned lives into the unplanned .. and it is in the unplanned that the universe simply manifests what we need .... obviously, from my viewpoint, I name that manifesting the Good God in action ..... the final command from Yeshua at the end of the parable of the Good Samaritan has strong resonance here - for all pilgrims, whether religious or not - "then go, Ye, and do likewise" - and so many do, many without even knowing it.

I wish you a good Camino and a fine pilgrimage

Buen Camino.